Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

Last updated: 30 September 2026

This page covers both how Latarr handles your data (the privacy policy) and the rules for using it (the Terms of Use, at the end). Latarr — the mobile app and this website — is operated by Michael Gathiaka, 143 Boleyn Road, Forest Gate, London E7 9QH. Contact us at [email protected].

The short version

• Latarr saves places and dishes from social posts you choose to share into it.
• Your saves are private to your account. We do not have a social feed and we do not show your data to other users.
• We use a small number of third parties to sign you in, read the posts you submit, and turn them into structured places (listed below).
• We do not sell your data. We use one first-party analytics tool (PostHog) to see which features are used and to get crash reports — you can turn it off in the app.
• Latarr shows no ads today. We plan to show ads to free-tier users later; see Advertising.
• Location is only used to show nearby saves and, if you opt in, to notice a visit to one of your own places — see Location.
• You can edit or delete your data, or delete your whole account.

Information we collect

Account information

Sign-in is handled by Clerk. If you use Apple or Google we receive your Clerk user ID, name, email address, and profile image from that provider. If you sign up with email and password, Clerk stores your email address, an optional name, and a hash of your password (we never see the password itself). We also keep your notification preferences.

Content you save

For each link you submit we store:

• the submitted URL and its canonical form;
• the caption or transcript scraped from that post;
• the raw response from the scraping service and the raw output of the AI extraction step (kept as the record of why a save resolved the way it did);
• the resulting place — name, type, address, coordinates, map-provider place ID, tags, and a place photo URL;
• any location item named in the post — a specific dish, drink, or other thing tied to the place — name, description, price if stated, category, tags, and a link back to the source post.

Things you create in the app

Lists you group saves into; a single journal note on a place or location item, which you edit in place; a “want to go” flag; and a visit log — you can log as many visits to a place as you like, each with an occasion, a verdict, whether you’d go back, and an optional price tag. A saved dish or drink instead gets a “want to try” / “tried” status, with the same verdict, price, and note once you’ve tried it.

Device & technical information

• a push-notification token for each device, so we can tell you when a save has finished processing;
• server logs that include your IP address and basic request metadata;
• internal usage events recording which processing steps ran for a save (used for cost monitoring).

Product analytics & crash reports

We use PostHog (hosted in the EU) to understand how the app is used and to receive crash and error reports. It records:

• a fixed set of in-app action events — e.g. a save created, a list made, a place edited, onboarding finished. These carry none of your saved content;
• screen-view events — the screen’s route name only (e.g. that a location screen was opened), never the ID of the record shown — and app open / update events;
• your answers to the short fixed-choice questions asked during onboarding (e.g. where you come across places, how you save them today) — stored as profile properties to tailor the app; there is no free-text answer. Your answer about the kinds of place you save also creates a couple of starter lists on your account (e.g. “Coffee shops to try”), using the ordinary Lists feature — nothing new is stored about the answer itself;
• if you use the in-app Send feedback form, the category and message text you write — sent as a PostHog event, since that is its whole purpose. This is the only free text PostHog ever receives from the app;
• automatic crash and error reports (the error message and a stack trace);
• technical context attached to each event: a random device identifier, app version, operating system and device model, language / region, and your IP address (used for a coarse, city-level location);
• while you are signed in, events are linked to your account ID, and your name and email are stored on your PostHog profile.

PostHog does not record your screen or replay your session, and we do not use it for advertising. You can turn analytics off at any time in the app’s settings.

Location

Latarr asks for location permission to show which of your saved places are near you on the Map tab. While you have the app open, your device may also send us its last known location — latitude/longitude and the time of the fix — so that optional reminders (like a weekend-planning digest) stay relevant to roughly where you are. We only ever hold your latest point, never a history, and this does not trigger a new location read or permission prompt on its own.

Visit detection is a separate, opt-in toggle in the app’s Profile settings, off by default. Turning it on asks for background (“Always”) location permission so the app can notice, using an on-device geofence around up to 18 of your own saved places, when you’ve spent a few minutes at one of them, and prompt you the next day to log the visit. Only the place ID and the times you arrived and left are ever sent to our server — the raw location fix never leaves your device. You can turn this off at any time in Profile.

Website

If you submit your email on this site to be notified about the beta, we store that email address (and the time and IP of submission) for that purpose only, and add it to our mailing-list provider, Resend.

This site uses PostHog (hosted in the EU) for privacy-friendly visitor analytics: page views, the page you arrived from, any campaign tags in the link, and a rough country worked out from your IP address. It sets no cookies, does not identify you, does not track you across other sites, and is never used for advertising. We record one anonymous event when a beta signup is submitted — a count only, with no email attached. You can block this with any standard content or tracker blocker.

How we use information

• to authenticate you and run your account;
• to fetch the posts you submit and turn them into structured places and location items;
• to show, search, and organise your saves;
• to send you a notification when a save finishes, and any optional reminders you’ve turned on (want-to-go nudges, a weekend digest, a prompt to log a visit), or account / beta emails you have asked for;
• with Visit detection on, to notice when you’ve dwelled near a saved place and prompt you to log it;
• to monitor cost, prevent abuse, debug problems, and keep the service secure;
• to understand which features are used and to receive crash and error diagnostics (product analytics);
• to comply with law.

Our legal bases (where UK/EU GDPR applies) are performance of our contract with you; our legitimate interests in operating, securing, and improving the service (including product analytics and crash diagnostics, which you can opt out of in the app); your consent (for optional location access, Visit detection, reminder notifications, and beta emails); and legal obligation.

Third parties that process data for us

We share the minimum necessary with these sub-processors:

Place photos come first from the place’s own public website — our server fetches a preview image from it, where it lists one, and stores a copy on our own infrastructure, a plain unauthenticated page request that carries none of your data, so it isn’t listed as a sub-processor above. Only when a place has no usable website image does the app fall back to a live Google Places photo (never stored long-term), shown with a credit to its author and to Google Maps.

Most of these providers operate in the United States; PostHog is hosted in the EU. Where personal data leaves the UK or EEA, transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent safeguard.

Sharing

We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anyone else’s own marketing. We may disclose data if required by law, to enforce our terms, or as part of a business transfer, in which case we will tell you.

Advertising

Latarr does not currently show ads and contains no advertising SDKs. We plan to show ads to free-tier users in a future release; paid subscribers will not see ads.

Before ads are introduced we will update this policy, list the advertising provider as a sub-processor, and update the app’s App Store privacy disclosures. Where the ads or the provider would track you across other apps and sites, or use a device advertising identifier, we will ask for your consent first — and on iOS show Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt. By default we intend to serve only contextual (non-personalised) ads.

Retention

We keep your account and saved content until you delete it or close your account. Deleting a saved item removes it and its associated scraped and extracted records. Deleting your account removes your profile and saved data; backups and logs age out on a rolling basis (normally within 90 days). Beta-list emails are kept until the beta ends or you unsubscribe.

Product-analytics events and profiles in PostHog are retained for up to 12 months. Deleting your Latarr account does not yet remove your PostHog data automatically — email [email protected] and we will delete it.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Access to production systems is restricted. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your data.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete your data, and to object to or restrict certain processing.

• Access & correction — most saved data can be viewed and edited directly in the app.
• Export — download every place, dish, list and journal note you’ve saved as one JSON file from Profile > Download your data, any time.
• Deletion — delete individual saves in the app, or delete your account to remove your profile and saved data.
• Opt out of analytics — turn off product analytics in the app’s settings.
• Turn off Visit detection or reminders — each is an independent toggle in Profile; turning off Visit detection also stops background location access.
• Everything else — email [email protected] and we will respond within the time the law allows.

Children

Latarr is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

Terms of Use

These terms are a contract between you and Michael Gathiaka (“we”) for use of the Latarr app and this site. By creating an account or using Latarr you accept them. If you don’t agree, don’t use Latarr.

Who can use Latarr

You must be at least 16 and able to form a binding contract. One account per person; you are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your sign-in details secure.

Beta software

Latarr is early software provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. Features may change or be removed, processing may fail or be delayed, and we do not guarantee the service will be available or error-free.

Links you submit

When you share a link into Latarr you confirm you are allowed to submit it, and you permit us to fetch that post and process its text (including with a third-party AI service) to produce your saved place. You keep your saved content and we do not claim ownership of it. You are responsible for what you choose to save.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use Latarr for anything unlawful, or submit content you have no right to submit;
• abuse, overload, probe, or try to circumvent the rate limits or the processing pipeline;
• reverse-engineer, scrape, or resell the service, or access it other than through the app;
• use Latarr to build or train a competing product.

Third-party content

Place names, photos, links, and details come from third parties (Instagram, TikTok, Google, a place’s own public website, and the posts you submit). That content is not ours, we do not endorse it, and it may be inaccurate or out of date. Your use of Instagram, TikTok, and Google remains subject to their own terms.

Our rights

The Latarr app, name, design, and software are owned by us and protected by intellectual-property law. These terms give you no rights in them beyond using the app as intended.

Suspension & termination

You can stop using Latarr and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms or puts the service or its running costs at risk. Terms that by their nature should survive termination (such as the disclaimers below) continue to apply.

Disclaimers & liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Latarr is provided without warranties of any kind, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost data, or loss of profit or goodwill arising from your use of it. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law (such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud). Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to £100.

Changes & governing law

We may update these terms; continued use after a change means you accept it. These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from your use of Latarr, are governed by the law of England and Wales and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts.

Changes to this page

We will update this page when our practices or terms change and revise the date at the top. Material changes will be notified in the app or by email.

Contact

[email protected]
Michael Gathiaka, 143 Boleyn Road, Forest Gate, London E7 9QH