Privacy Policy

SeeWassup ("we," "us") is a crowdsourced eyewitness news platform. People post GPS-verified reports about what they see, and those reports are aggregated onto a public live map. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what is public.

The core of the product is public, geotagged reporting. Posts, the location attached to them, comments, and usernames are visible to anyone who uses SeeWassup. Please read the Location and Public Content sections carefully before you post.

1. Account Information

You sign in with Google. Through Google's OAuth, we receive your name, email address, and the profile identifiers Google associates with your account. We use these to create your SeeWassup profile and to sign you in. When your profile is created we generate a public username from your name or email; you can change it in your profile settings. Your username is public; your email address is not shown to other users.

2. Location

Location is central to how SeeWassup works and is used in three distinct ways:

• Precise GPS at the moment of posting. When you submit a report, we capture your device's precise GPS coordinates and accuracy to verify that you were physically present at the incident. A report captured within roughly 200 meters, close to the time of the event, earns a "witness verified" marker.
• Location attached to public posts, by design. The location of your report is stored with the post and shown on the public map and in the public story it belongs to. This is the entire point of the product — reports are public, geotagged eyewitness accounts. Do not post from a location you do not want associated with a public report.
• Approximate location for the "Near Me" feed. If you use the Near Me feed, we use your approximate current location to rank nearby stories. This is used to serve you the feed and is not published as a post.

If you deny location permission, you can still browse the map and read reports; posting a witness-verified report requires a location fix.

3. Camera, Photos, and Video

When you choose to attach media, we collect the photos and videos you capture or upload. Media you post is public.

We strip embedded metadata from photos before storing them. Every image is re-encoded on your device before upload, which removes EXIF metadata — including any GPS coordinates embedded by your camera — so that data is not stored or served with the file. The map location shown for your report comes from the GPS reading described above, not from photo EXIF.

Videos may still carry technical metadata written by your device (for example, codec or container-level fields). We do not yet strip container-level metadata from video files. If this matters to you, avoid attaching video you consider sensitive.

4. Public Content

Reports, captions, attached media, comments, and usernames are public and are visible to anyone using SeeWassup, including through shared links and social previews. Reports may be automatically grouped into stories and summarized. Search engines and other services may index public pages. Treat anything you post as public and permanent.

5. Moderation and AI Processing

Submitted content is processed by automated systems and third-party AI services to transcribe video, screen for unsafe content, categorize the report, and cluster related reports into stories. Content that violates our safety rules may be hidden or rejected. This processing is required to operate the platform.

6. Service Providers

We rely on third parties to run SeeWassup. They process data on our behalf so we can provide the service:

• Supabase — database, authentication, and media storage.
• Vercel — web hosting.
• Mapbox — map rendering.
• Anthropic, OpenAI, and Groq — AI processing of submitted content (analysis, moderation, transcription).
• Google — sign-in.

7. Error Monitoring

We use Sentry to detect and diagnose crashes and errors. When something breaks, Sentry may collect diagnostic data such as device and browser type, the error, and technical context about what the app was doing. A small sample of sessions may be recorded to reproduce bugs. This data is used only to keep the app working.

8. Advertising

The web app includes integration for Google AdSense. When advertising is enabled, Google may use cookies and similar technologies to serve and measure ads, subject to Google's own policies. Advertising is off unless we have enabled it; when it is enabled, this section applies. We do not show ads based on the content of your private data, and we do not sell your personal information.

9. Data Retention and Deletion

We retain your account and posts while your account is active. You can delete your account from your profile settings; deleting your account removes your profile and detaches your identity from your past reports. Because reports are public eyewitness records, a story a report contributed to may persist without attribution. You may also request deletion or ask questions about your data by emailing us. Residual copies may remain in backups for a limited period after deletion.

10. Your Rights

You can access and update your profile at any time, change your username, and delete your account. If you are in a jurisdiction with data-protection laws such as the GDPR or UK GDPR, you may have additional rights, including access, portability, and the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. We do not sell your personal data.

11. Children

SeeWassup is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy or requests about your data? privacy@seewassup.com