Privacy

Australia Is Beautiful is a place-first guide to Australian locations. This page explains what information we collect, why, and what we do and don't do with it. It's written to be read, not to hide behind legalese.

The short version: we collect the little we need to let you sign in and contribute, we don't track your movements, and we don't build a public profile of you. Everything you contribute is shown without your name attached.

What we collect

When you create an account

Your email address and a password. The password is stored only as a secure one-way hash — we never store or can read your actual password. If you sign in with Google instead, we receive your email address from Google to identify your account; we don't receive your Google password.

We ask for nothing else at sign-up: no name, no username, no avatar, no bio. The account exists so you can contribute, not so you can build an identity — there are no public profiles here.

When you contribute

Depending on what you do, we store:

• Photos you upload, and the field notes (captions) you write about a place.
• Ratings and reactions you give to places and moments.
• Places you save, and places you suggest adding to the map (a pin, a name, and an optional note).

When you upload a photo, we re-encode it and strip its embedded metadata (EXIF)— including any GPS coordinates your camera may have recorded — before it's stored or shown. The original file you selected is never served to anyone; only the cleaned, re-encoded version is.

About your location

If you tap “Near me”, your browser asks your permission and, if you agree, gives us your approximate position once, so we can center the map on you and show nearby places. We use it in that moment and do not store it. We never track your location in the background, and we never build a history of where you've been. “Near me” is always something you choose to tap — the site never reads your location on its own.

What we don't do

• We don't track your movements or keep a location history.
• We don't sell your data to anyone, ever.
• We don't attribute your contributions publicly. Your photos and notes appear as shared by “an Explorer,” never under your name. Your ratings are counted anonymously. Places you suggest are never publicly credited to you.
• We don't build advertising profiles or share your information with advertisers.

How we use what we collect

We use your information only to run the service:

• To let you sign in and keep your account secure.
• To publish your contributions (after review) as part of a place's page — anonymously.
• To send you a small number of service emails: verifying your address, and letting you know when a moment you shared goes live, isn't approved, or a place you suggested is added. You can turn these off.
• To understand overall activity on the site in aggregate (how many places, how many contributions) — never as a per-person trail.

Content review

Photos and notes you upload are reviewed by a person before they appear publicly. This is to keep the guide accurate and safe. A reviewer can see what you submitted in order to approve or decline it; declined content and enforcement actions are kept as a record so the review process works, but this is never shown publicly or attributed to you elsewhere.

Cookies

We use a single essential cookieto keep you signed in. We don't use advertising cookies or third-party tracking cookies. If you sign in with Google, Google may set its own cookies as part of that sign-in — that's governed by Google's privacy policy.

Who else is involved

A few services help us run the site:

• Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google, and only to identify your account.
• Our email provider — to deliver the account and notification emails described above.
• Our hosting provider — the servers that run the site and store its data.

The map itself is served from our own servers — it doesn't call out to Google Maps or a third-party tile service, so browsing the map doesn't share your activity with a map company.

Your control over your data

• Delete a moment. When you delete your own photo, it is removed permanently — the file and its record are gone, not hidden.
• Delete your account.You can delete your account from your settings. This permanently removes your own photos and notes. Contributions that only survive as anonymous aggregates — for example, your rating folded into a place's average — remain as those aggregates, de-linked from you, because they were never identifiable to begin with.
• Access and correction. You can ask us what personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it. Contact us at the address below.

Children

This service isn't intended for children under 15. We don't knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us and we'll remove it.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we'll update this page and the “last updated” date above. Significant changes will be made clear.

Contact