Privacy Policy

Last updated: 17 October 2026

This privacy policy explains, in plain English, how FindTheCool collects, uses, stores and shares your personal data when you use our website and app, and the rights you have over that data.

Who we are

FindTheCool ("we", "us", "the site") is a community-driven guide to air-conditioned and otherwise cooled venues in the UK, at findthecool.com and in the FindTheCool app. You can reach us at admin@findthecool.com with any privacy question or request.

What we collect

We collect only what's needed to run the site and its community features:

• Account details. An email address and password if you sign up directly. If you sign in with Google or Apple instead, we receive the basic details that service shares: your email address and your name (with Google, also a link to your profile picture). With Apple you can choose "Hide My Email", in which case we only receive a private relay address that Apple forwards to you, and Apple only shares your name the first time you sign in. We keep these details with your login but don't show or use the name or picture anywhere; your public name on FindTheCool is your username. We never see your Google or Apple password.
• Username. Every account has a public username, chosen by you, shown next to your contributions (places, photos, ratings, comments, Crawls, leaderboard position). It does not need to be your real name.
• Places and ratings. Places you submit (name, address, description, type, city, pin, optional photo) and the ratings you give (how cool or cosy a place is, with an optional comment). When you rate a place, we also save the outside temperature at that place at the time, looked up by the place's location, not yours. These are the core of the site and are shown publicly once approved.
• Other contributions. Tags, amenity facts and toilet ratings you add to a place; comments on places and Crawls; Crawls you build; check-ins you make on a Crawl, with any note you leave. These are public, with your username.
• Reports and hidden members. If you report a comment, we keep a copy of it, who wrote it, your reason and who reported it, so the report can be checked. If you hide a member's comments, we keep that list against your account; only you can see it, and the member is not told. Your hidden list is deleted with your account. Reports are kept after that, without your name, together with their copy of the comment.
• Saved places. Places you "heart"/save are private to your account and never shown to anyone else, except in the narrow case of a friend group's "loved by this group" filter, which only reveals which specific places are loved by a group you are already a member of — never who saved what individually.
• Reports. If you report a place (closed, no longer cooled, wrong address, etc.), we record the reason, any details you add, and your account so the administrator can follow up if needed.
• Points, groups and the Wardery. Points, achievement tiers and friend-group membership come from your contributions. If you play the Wardery, the places you claim (which place, and when you first and last checked in), your Wardery map, titles and any landmark you hold are public.
• Crawl Cards. When you finish a Crawl you can make a Crawl Card: a picture of your walk with its stops, times and distance, and a photo if you add one. Only you and the site's administrator can see a card, until you save or share it yourself. If you choose to submit a card to be featured on our Instagram account, we record that you agreed, and may post the card and your caption there.
• Notifications. If you turn on alerts (for example, when someone takes one of your Wardery places), we store the push address your browser or phone gives us and a short description of the browser or device, so the alert can reach it.
• How you found us. A link we share may carry a short label saying where it was shared, such as "?ref=whatsapp". If you sign up within 30 days of arriving by such a link, we store that label with your account; without one, we note "direct", or "app" if you signed up in the iPhone app. It is kept privately with your account, only the administrator sees the totals, and it is deleted with your account. Nothing else about your visit is recorded.
• How the Crawl Card is used. We record when a member starts, makes, saves, shares or submits a Crawl Card (which step, when and which account), to see whether the feature works. Only the administrator can see these records.
• Uploaded photos. Photos you add to a place are stored in our Supabase storage and become part of that place's public listing once approved. Before uploading, the site makes a fresh copy of the photo, which leaves out the location and camera details stored inside the original.

What's public, taken together. Ratings, points and Wardery claims are public with their dates and your username. Someone could put these together to see which places you have rated or held, and when. If that matters to you, use a username that isn't your real name.

Your location

• Your rough area, from your internet address. On a first visit to Explore, our host, Vercel, tells us roughly which town your internet (IP) address is in, so the map can open near you instead of on the whole UK. It is not stored, never used to sort places by distance, and the site never asks your permission for it because it is no more precise than a town.
• Your device's position, only when you ask. If you use "Use my current location", "Near me", or allow auto-locate on a phone, your position is used in your browser to sort places by distance and to check the local temperature (see Open-Meteo below). When you add a place and use your location, it is also sent through our server to suggest nearby places by name (see Overpass below). We do not store it.
• Checking in on the Wardery. Checking in compares your phone's position with the place's: you have to be within about 75 metres. Your position is checked and then discarded; the check-in itself (which place, and when) is public, as above.
• A photo's own location. When you add a photo, the site may read the location stored in the photo, in your browser, to place the pin. That location is not uploaded with the photo.
• Recording your route on a Crawl. If you switch on "Record my walk", your position is recorded every few seconds while that Crawl runs and saved to your account to draw your Crawl Card. In the app, it keeps recording with the screen off, and a notification shows the whole time. Recording stops when you switch it off, end or finish the Crawl, or check in at the last stop. Only you can see a recorded route. A Crawl Card you make from it carries a simplified copy of the route, which the administrator can also see, and others see only if you share the card.

Cookies and storage on your device

FindTheCool does not use tracking cookies, and doesn't show a cookie banner, because it doesn't need one. It does keep some things in your browser's storage, on your own device:

• Your login session (in local storage, not a cookie), so you stay signed in between visits.
• Small settings and reminders, such as whether you've dismissed today's heatwave banner or a season notice, whether you play the Wardery, and hints you've already seen.
• The label from an invite link (see "How you found us" above), for up to 30 days or until you sign up.
• Work in progress: an unfinished Crawl, a route being recorded, a place you were adding when you were asked to sign in, and where you were on the directory map.
• Things waiting for a signal: a rating, check-in or new place (with its photo) made offline is kept on the device and sent when you are back online.
• Offline copies: pages, public place data and the map tiles you have viewed are kept so the site can still work without a signal.
• Our page-view analytics (see below) are cookieless by design.

None of this is used for advertising or cross-site tracking, or sold to anyone. Clearing the site's data in your browser removes all of it.

Third parties we rely on

• Supabase — hosts our database, sign-in and photo storage.
• Google — if you choose "Continue with Google" to sign in, Google's own privacy policy covers that step.
• Apple — if you choose "Continue with Apple" to sign in, Apple's own privacy policy covers that step. If you chose "Hide My Email", Apple forwards our emails to you.
• Resend — sends our emails. Members only get sign-up confirmation and password reset emails. It also emails the site's administrator when a new place, photo or comment is submitted or a comment is reported, with the contributor's username and what they wrote, so it can be reviewed. We don't send marketing emails.
• Cloudflare Turnstile — when you sign up with an email address, checks you are a person and not a bot, so strangers' addresses can't be signed up. It looks at your browser and internet address while the sign-up box is open, sets no advertising cookies, and we keep nothing from it beyond a pass or fail.
• Sentry — if a page goes wrong, a report of the error is sent to Sentry, stored in the EU, so we can fix it: the error message and the code it came from, the page address without anything you searched for, and your browser and device type. It does not include your account, what you did before the error, or your internet address, which Sentry is set not to keep. Reports are deleted after 30 days.
• Vercel — hosts the site and provides Vercel Web Analytics, a cookieless, aggregated page-view counter that does not track individual visitors across sites. It also provides the rough, town-level location described above.
• OpenStreetMap — the maps load their tiles from OpenStreetMap's servers, which will see your internet address like any map request. When you search for a town or postcode, or place a pin, the search or the pin's position is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service to find the place or its address. Our server also fetches map tiles to draw Crawl Cards.
• OpenFreeMap — the Wardery's map loads its tiles from OpenFreeMap's servers, which will see your internet address.
• Overpass (OpenStreetMap data) — to suggest nearby places when you add one, our server sends the position to an Overpass service. It comes from our server, not your device, and carries nothing that identifies you.
• postcodes.io — a postcode typed into the UK Directory's search is looked up there by our server.
• Open-Meteo — a free weather service, asked for the temperature at your position or your rough area (to decide whether to show the heatwave banner), and at a place's location (for a rating, or a Crawl's stops). The request carries only coordinates; no account is involved.
• Google Fonts, unpkg and jsDelivr — the site loads its fonts from Google Fonts and some of its code libraries (the maps, sign-in) from unpkg and jsDelivr. Like any website asset, these requests show those services your internet address.
• Push services — if you turn on alerts, they are delivered through your browser's or phone's own push service (for example Google's, Mozilla's or Apple's).
• Instagram (Meta) — only if you submit a Crawl Card to be featured and we post it.
• Apple Maps or Google Maps — "Directions" opens the place in your maps app, which then handles the route under its own privacy policy.

What we don't do

We don't sell your data, run third-party advertising, or use your data for anything beyond running the site's features described above.

How long we keep data

We keep account and contribution data, including recorded routes and Crawl Cards, for as long as your account is active, or until you delete them. Points already earned from a rating or submission are not retracted if you later delete that rating or place — this is a deliberate design choice, the same way most community platforms treat past contributions as having already happened.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from Profile (the last row, "Delete account"). It takes effect immediately and cannot be undone. Your login, email address, username, how you found us, saved places, notifications and alert settings, group memberships, points, badges, leaderboard place, recorded routes, Crawl Cards with their pictures, Wardery Realm, Titles and any Seat you hold are deleted. The places, photos, ratings, tags, amenity facts, Crawls, check-ins and Wardery honours you contributed stay on the site with your name removed, because other people rely on them; any comments and notes you wrote are removed. A Crawl Card we have already posted on Instagram stays there unless you ask us to take it down. Photo files stay in a folder named with your old account number, which no longer points to anyone once the account is gone.

If you signed in with Google or Apple, deleting your account stops that sign-in working for FindTheCool. For Apple, we also ask Apple to remove FindTheCool from your Apple ID's list of apps that use Sign in with Apple. FindTheCool may still appear in your Google account's list of connected apps until you remove it there.

Your rights

You can update your username and review your own submissions, photos and ratings any time from Profile, and delete your account there as described above. To request a copy of your data or a correction, email admin@findthecool.com — as a small, single-admin project, those two requests are handled manually.

Children

FindTheCool is not directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a meaningful way, we'll update the date at the top of this page.