Small World privacy policy

Effective from 18 October 2026. Small World is a friend location-sharing app. This policy explains, in plain language, what personal data we collect, why, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it.

Who we are

Small World is operated by FIKIR LIMITED, a company registered in England and Wales (Companies House no. 16810967). FIKIR LIMITED is the "controller" of your personal data under UK data protection law (UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018).

For anything about your data, contact us at devs@fikir.uk.

What we collect and why

Profile and account information

Your name, email address, optional phone number and profile photo. We use these to provide Small World's account and social features — including creating and running your account, letting you sign in, and showing you to your friends. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you.

Location

Small World collects your device's precise location, including in the background while the app is closed, to provide Small World's location and social features — including showing friends roughly where you are, telling you when you cross paths, and helping you arrange to meet. Sharing your location is necessary to use Small World: without it, friends cannot see you and crossed-paths detection will not work. Your location is shared with your friends via our server — but it is obfuscated before display: friends see a bubble covering a much wider area than you occupy, never your exact position. A bubble is designed to be vague, not to be a guarantee: sometimes the area we publish will not quite cover where you are. A bubble can also reveal some things whether you mean it to or not — a bubble that has not moved shows a friend that you have not gone far, and two people in the same place get similar bubbles. Your exact location is only ever shown when you yourself start a precise share, which is time-limited and stops automatically. You can turn location sharing off at any time in the app, and we turn it off for you if your phone stops sending us readings for a long time. Turning it off stops location updates on your device immediately. The server can disable sharing and delete your stored location only when it receives your request. If your device is offline or the service is unavailable, friends may still see your previous location until that request reaches the server. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you (location sharing is the core of the service); precise shares happen only when you initiate them. If you allow it, Small World also uses your phone's activity detection — whether you are still, walking, or moving more quickly, such as running, cycling or travelling in a vehicle — to decide how often to check your location. This is optional and never shown to friends. On Android 10 and later you can change it at any time in your phone's app permissions; on earlier versions it is granted automatically when the app is installed, and Small World only uses it while location sharing is on.

Messages, photos and stories you share

What you send and post in Small World — including chat messages and reactions, photos, the places and location shares you send in a chat, and stories (a photo, your bubble, or both, with a caption, shared with your friends and no longer visible after a set time). When you post a story you choose who can see it: all your friends, or the groups you pick, and we record which of them have viewed it so we can show you who has seen it. We also record when messages reached you and when you last opened a conversation, so the sender can see that. We collect this content so we can deliver and display it to the people you send it to. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you.

Your friends and how you use Small World

Your friend list (who you are connected to on Small World), how you group your friends, and a record of when and how often you have crossed paths with each friend. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you.

Your settings and choices

Your preferences in the app — such as your notification and appearance settings — who you have blocked, reports you make, and a record of which version of our terms you accepted and when. Legal basis: performance of our contract with you; for blocks and reports, also our legitimate interest in keeping Small World safe.

Your contacts

If you turn on Find friends from my contacts in Settings, we collect scrambled identifiers — cryptographic hashes — of the phone numbers in your contacts, and only after you agree and grant access. We never collect contact names, or the numbers themselves. We use these hashes to show you which of your contacts are already using Small World, and to tell you when one of them joins. A hash obscures a phone number, but it is not irreversible for someone who already holds a large list of numbers to hash and compare against it, so we treat these hashes as personal data, not as anonymous ones. The same setting also makes you discoverable to people who have your number saved as a contact and have turned it on themselves — it is off by default, so you are not discoverable this way until you turn it on. You can turn Find friends from my contacts off at any time in Settings, which deletes the hashes we derived from your contacts and stops you being discoverable this way — deleting your account deletes everything described here. If you appear in someone else's contacts, we hold the hash of your phone number that they submitted. Once that number is verified on an account — whether you verify it, or they next sync their contacts after you already have — we also record against their entry that it matched your account, and when, whether or not you are yourself discoverable by phone number. That record is used solely to show them the match once you are discoverable by phone number; it is never shown to them while you are not, and we remove it when you remove your number or delete your account. Legal basis: your consent (for uploading your own contacts and for making yourself discoverable); our legitimate interest in helping people find friends already using Small World (for matching against a hash someone else uploaded, where you are not yet a user or have not made yourself discoverable).

Device and technical information

A Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) token for each device you sign in on, together with an identifier for that device, so we can deliver message and proximity notifications to the right place and replace a device's token when it changes. We keep these until the token changes, another account signs in on that device, or you delete your account (legal basis: performance of our contract with you). The same device identifier also accompanies your location uploads and appears in our operational logs, so we can diagnose delivery problems (legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service reliable). Each location upload also carries a little technical information about how it was produced — for example whether the app was open, and roughly how far you moved since the previous reading — which appears only in those same operational logs and is never stored with your location (legal basis: the same legitimate interest). When your device contacts our servers, we use its IP address transiently for rate limiting and do not write it to our storage or logs (legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure). The app also obtains an attestation from Google's Play Integrity service that it is a genuine, unmodified copy of Small World, which we can use to protect sign-in (legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure).

Analytics and crash reporting (optional)

Google Analytics for Firebase and Firebase Crashlytics help us understand how the app is used and fix crashes. These only run if you agree when the app asks for your consent, and you can change your choice at any time in Settings. Legal basis: your consent.

Only if you explicitly accept our current optional analytics disclosure, usage reports also record interactions with team-selected places: opening an individual place on the map, successfully opening its detail from meet-up suggestions, successfully opening it in Maps, or successfully sending a selected suggestion in chat. A previous analytics choice alone does not authorise these place events. You can decline and keep using these features.

For these place events, Small World sends Google the action, the Google place ID and a random token for that action to remove duplicate deliveries. We do not include account, friend, conversation, message or recipient identifiers, message content, place names or addresses, URLs, or your device coordinates in these application parameters. Google also supplies installation identifiers and event metadata: these reports are pseudonymous personal data, not anonymous. A place interaction may reveal an interest in that place; it does not establish where you were or that you visited.

We use these place events only to understand feature use internally. Internal reports contain place IDs, actions and deduplicated action counts, including exact small counts; they do not count distinct people or prove visits. We do not provide these events or reports to the featured businesses, create an account-linked interaction history, or keep a permanent derived report store. This structured send-button event does not analyse your chat content or who you send to.

If you withdraw this optional consent in Settings, we stop collecting new place events. Withdrawal does not recall events already collected or buffered by Google's SDK. Place events and temporary internal report outputs remain subject to our existing telemetry ceiling of up to 90 days. For access or erasure requests about this installation-linked data, contact devs@fikir.uk; we use our existing manual rights process and do not promise that deleting an account immediately deletes historical installation-linked events.

Running, protecting and improving Small World

We also use the data described above to operate the service itself — including diagnosing faults, keeping Small World secure, preventing abuse and misuse, investigating reports and enforcing our terms, and understanding in aggregate how Small World is used so we can improve existing features and develop new ones. Where aggregated or anonymised data will answer the question, we use that instead of data that identifies you. The only computations we run on your exact location decide which area to publish as your bubble — the same published area used to detect when you and a friend have crossed paths — and, for meet-up suggestions, the single search point described below, checks against the same search range, the ordinary travel-balance order in other searches, and distance from that point for catalog groups and eligible team picks; we never use it to infer anything else about you. We also never analyse the content of your messages, photos or stories for these purposes — investigating a report is limited to what was reported and the accounts involved. Legal basis: our legitimate interests in providing, securing and improving a service people can rely on. You can object to this processing at any time — see Your rights below.

Small World picks are places selected by our team. For searches that support catalog recommendations, eligible places from our catalog appear first, followed by other results; places in each group are ordered by distance to the midpoint between you and your friend. For other searches, eligible team picks appear first in midpoint-distance order; other results retain their usual order, which aims to balance the distance each person travels. Results are subject to eligibility and candidate limits, so they are not an exhaustive list of nearby places. Small World picks reflect our team's independent preferences. Inclusion does not indicate a partnership with, or endorsement of Small World by, the featured business.

We use the search midpoint to order eligible Small World picks within your meet-up results. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing useful, editorially curated suggestions for places to meet. You can object to this processing at any time — see Your rights below.

We do not make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects. Optional place-interaction analytics can reveal place interests, as explained above; we do not use it to build an account-linked interest profile.

How long we keep your data

Where we give a period below, deletion is triggered automatically once that period is reached. Those periods are outside limits: each one already allows for the few days it can take for the data to finish leaving our systems.

Location: kept for up to 30 days, and deleted when the server receives your request to turn location sharing off.
Messages and chat photos: deleted around 6 months after sending. The most recent message in each conversation stays visible in your conversation list until it is replaced by a newer one or the conversation or account is deleted.
Stories: stop being visible when they expire — every story is given a fixed lifetime when you post it — and the photo is removed from our storage within 3 days of being uploaded.
Crossed-paths (proximity) sessions: the session itself is kept up to 24 hours after it ends. Each time you cross paths, one snapshot is saved into your chat with that friend — the two approximate areas you were each in at the moment you first overlapped. It appears in that chat and on that friend's profile, and is deleted along with those messages.
Precise-share grants: expire automatically at the end of the sharing period you started. If you end a share sooner, its grant is deleted when the server receives your revocation request. A pending request on your device does not confirm server deletion.
Contact hashes: kept until the contact is removed from the uploader's address book (which we pick up at the next sync), until Find friends from my contacts is turned off, or until account deletion — whichever happens first.
Operational and delivery telemetry: up to 90 days.
Server logs: kept for up to 30 days.
Reports you make or that are made about you: kept up to 13 months. This is not erased by account deletion, in either direction — a report survives even if the account that filed it, or the account it names, is later deleted — so we can act on a pattern of reports and, where needed, establish, exercise or defend a legal claim. A surviving report keeps the category and details you gave us, a snapshot of the reported content, the reported person's name as it was when reported, and both accounts' identifiers; it never keeps an email address or phone number.
Accounts you have blocked: kept until you unblock them or delete your account.
Everything else (your profile, avatar, friendships, settings): kept until you delete your account. Deleting your account immediately erases your account data from our live systems, including your sign-in identity and avatar photo — with one exception: reports (see above), which are kept even though the account they involve has been deleted. Two things outlive it briefly and then expire on their own: operational log entries, within 30 days, and any analytics or crash reports you consented to, within 90 days. Copies may also persist for a limited period in encrypted backups and in our service providers' systems before they are overwritten; we do not use those copies for any purpose other than restoring the service after a failure.

Who we share your data with

We use a small number of service providers ("processors") to run Small World. They process your data only on our instructions:

Cloud hosting and infrastructure providers — our databases and servers. Your data is stored in the United Kingdom.
Google / Firebase — sign-in (Firebase Authentication), push notification delivery (FCM), notification delivery telemetry, and the Play Integrity attestation. Firebase Authentication and Cloud Messaging are global Google services, so your sign-in identity and push tokens may be processed outside the UK. Analytics and Crashlytics run only if you agree when the app asks; when enabled, that data is transferred to the US.
Observability providers — server logs and metrics for keeping the service healthy.
Email delivery providers — deliver email when you contact devs@fikir.uk (processed in the United States).

Google Maps Platform is a separate controller, not our processor, for what it receives directly: your device's interactions with the map it renders (which reach Google directly, including your IP address), and, when it looks up places to meet, the point we send it. When you use the map, the Maps SDK also sends Google device and request information, a Maps-specific identifier, map interaction events and crash metrics. For meet-up suggestions we send Google a single point derived from where you and your friend both are — not either of your own positions, though when the two of you are close together that point is close to both. We may also ask Google for current details of public places in our catalog that its search did not return usefully; those additional requests send public place identifiers, not your coordinates or the search midpoint. On Android, public places in meet-up recommendation results and shared chat cards load automatically through Google's Places SDK when their rows or cards become visible. Your device sends Google the public place identifier, rather than your location or your friend's location. These SDK place requests do not include your Small World account, friend, conversation or message identifiers. Google also receives device and request information for these SDK place requests, including your IP address and an SDK identifier, and handles SDK diagnostics and widget interactions under its own privacy policy. This Places SDK processing is separate from Small World's optional analytics and crash reporting. Google ML Kit, which powers the QR code scanner when you add a friend, runs entirely on your device — it never sends the code you scan or the camera image to Google. The ML Kit library sends Google usage and device metrics about the library itself, including a per-installation identifier, performance timings, feature events and error codes. See Google's privacy policy for how Google handles what it receives directly.

Business listings on the map describe the business's location, independently of your location fix, whether you share your location, or whether you grant location permission. Only with your explicit current optional analytics consent, Small World records the team-selected place actions described above. Other business-pin taps, business-detail views and external Maps-link opens are not recorded by this application analytics feature. If you choose to open a business in Maps, Small World passes the business destination, not your own coordinates. This does not change the Maps SDK collection described above; Google handles what it receives independently under its own privacy policy.

Where a provider processes your data outside the UK, or an independent controller named above receives it there, we rely on safeguards recognised under UK data protection law — the UK's adequacy regulations, or standard contractual clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum. You can ask us for a copy of them by emailing devs@fikir.uk.

Apart from these providers, your data goes only to the people you direct it to: your friends, and — if you are discoverable by phone number — someone who already has your number saved as a contact and syncs it, as described in Your contacts above. There are two exceptions. We may disclose personal data to public authorities where we are required by law to do so — for example under a court order, or a valid request from the police. And if we become aware of child sexual abuse material on Small World, we report it, with the account details involved, to the National Crime Agency and the Internet Watch Foundation; we report other serious illegal content to the appropriate authority where the law requires or allows it. Section 10 of our terms explains both. Beyond those two cases we will not hand over your data, and where we are permitted to tell you about a request, we will.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

Access your personal data.
Rectify anything inaccurate.
Erase your data — delete your account in the app, or from our website at fikir.uk/small-world/delete-account. The website route is there whenever the in-app one is not open to you — for example if you have uninstalled Small World, or if we have asked you to accept updated terms and you would rather not.
Restrict how we process your data.
Port your data — email us and we will provide a copy in a common format.
Object to processing based on our legitimate interests.
Withdraw your consent to analytics and crash reporting at any time, in Settings. Withdrawing does not affect anything we did lawfully before you withdrew.

To exercise any of these rights, email devs@fikir.uk.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we handle your personal data, email us at devs@fikir.uk with "Data protection complaint" in the subject line. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and respond substantively as soon as we can, keeping you informed of progress. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at any time — you do not need to complain to us first: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or telephone 0303 123 1113.

Age

Small World is for adults. You must be 18 or over to use it — that is a condition of our terms of service, which is where the rule lives and what you agree to when you create an account.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will take reasonable steps to tell you before they take effect — in the app, or by email. The effective date is shown at the top of this page.

FIKIR LIMITED · Companies House no. 16810967 · devs@fikir.uk · Delete your account