Small World terms of service
Version 1.0 — in force from 3 September 2026. These terms govern your use of Small World, and you accept them by creating an account (section 2). Our privacy policy is a separate document that explains what we do with your personal data.
1. Who we are
Small World is operated by FIKIR LIMITED, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16810967). Our registered office is 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ. You can reach us at devs@fikir.uk.
2. These terms, and how you accept them
These terms are a contract between you and FIKIR LIMITED. They set out the rules for using Small World and what each of us can expect from the other.
You accept these terms by creating an account. If you do not agree to them, please do not create one.
Our privacy policy is a separate document. It explains what personal data we collect, why, how long we keep it and what rights you have over it. Where these terms and the privacy policy both touch on personal data, the privacy policy governs.
3. Who can use Small World
- You must be 18 or over. By accepting these terms you confirm that you are.
- You must be legally able to enter into a contract.
- Small World is available in the United Kingdom only at launch.
If we find out that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will close it.
4. Your account
You sign in using an external sign-in provider (currently Google). Please keep that account secure. We will treat activity on your account as yours, unless it happens after you have told us your account has been compromised, or the real cause is something we did wrong.
Use one account, and use a display name that is genuinely yours to use. You can manage your profile in the app.
5. What Small World is — and what it is not
Small World is a way to feel closer to friends you already know. It shows you roughly where they are, so you can bump into each other more often. Small World is free to use.
It is not a safety service, an emergency service, a tracking service, or a navigation service. Please do not rely on it as one.
What you see is approximate on purpose, and it can be out of date — which is ordinary, not a fault. A friend's bubble can stay exactly where it is for hours, and the time we show against it can be older than you expect. A friend's location may also be delayed or missing entirely — because they paused sharing, because sharing switched itself off, because their phone was offline, because the operating system stopped sending updates, or simply because we are not perfect. Never use Small World to decide whether someone is safe, and never use it instead of contacting them or the emergency services.
Small World includes Google Maps features. By using them you also agree to Google's Terms of Service and the Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms of Service, and Google's privacy policy applies to what Google collects through them.
6. Location sharing and bubbles
You choose whether to share your location, and you can pause or stop at any time. Sharing can also switch itself off if your phone stops sending us readings for a long time; you can turn it back on in the app.
When you share, friends do not see a pin showing exactly where you are. They see a bubble — a wide area covering roughly where you are. It is not drawn around your exact position, and we never tell your friends where inside it you are. The bubble is approximate by design, not by accident.
A bubble is deliberately vague, not a guarantee, and it can still tell your friends some things whether you mean it to or not. Our privacy policy explains what a bubble can and cannot reveal about you, what we do with your location data, and how long we keep it.
If you choose to share your precise location with a friend, that sharing always ends on its own, and you can end it sooner at any time. For both controls, see the privacy policy's delivery limitation: stopping on your device does not confirm that the server has stopped sharing or deleted the data.
Stories are broader than you might expect. When you post a story, it can be seen by your friends generally — all of them, or the groups you choose — not only by a friend you happen to be near at the time. That is deliberate, and it is worth knowing before you post.
7. Acceptable use
Small World only works if people can trust it. You must not:
- use Small World to stalk, harass, monitor, intimidate or control anyone;
- share another person's location, messages, photos or stories without their consent;
- share an intimate image of someone without their consent, or threaten to;
- post content that is unlawful, abusive, hateful, or sexually exploitative, or that involves anyone under 18;
- pretend to be someone else, or misrepresent who you are;
- access Small World by automated means, scrape it, or try to see information about people who have not accepted you as a friend;
- try to pinpoint where someone actually is from the bubbles we show, or defeat the way we make locations approximate.
If you break these rules we may act under section 11.
8. Your content
Your messages, photos, stories, display name and profile photo stay yours. We do not claim ownership of them.
To run Small World we need your permission to store your content and show it to the people you sent it to — so you give us a licence to host, store, transmit and display it for that purpose only. We will not use your content to advertise, and we will not license it to anyone else for their own purposes.
That permission ends when you delete the content or your account. Our privacy policy explains what deletion erases and how quickly.
9. Other people, and what they do with what you share
Messages, photos and stories are created by users, and we do not review them before they appear. Small World also provides business listings and recommendations selected by our team. 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.
Once you share something with a friend, they can screenshot it, save it, or tell someone else about it. No app can prevent that, and Small World does not try to. Share accordingly.
10. Reporting problems and abuse
If someone is behaving badly on Small World, or you see content that breaks section 7, report them in the app — from a person's profile, or from a message or story — or email us at devs@fikir.uk. You can also block someone, which stops them contacting you or seeing your bubble.
We will acknowledge your report, look into it, and take action under section 11 where it is warranted. When we investigate, we look at the content that was reported and the accounts involved — nothing wider. We do not review anyone's location data as part of an investigation.
Illegal content
We do not review content before it appears (section 9). But when a report, or anything else, makes us aware of content that is illegal under UK law — including child sexual abuse material, terrorism content, and intimate images shared without consent — we will remove it and act on the account under section 11 as quickly as we can, normally within 48 hours for intimate-image reports. Where the law requires or allows it, we report illegal content to the authorities — for child sexual abuse material, to the National Crime Agency and the Internet Watch Foundation. We keep a record of what we removed and why: see our privacy policy for how long we keep reports. This is a manual process run by a small team, not an automated one. You can report illegal content in the app, or by emailing devs@fikir.uk.
Child safety
Small World is for adults (section 3). We prohibit child sexual abuse and exploitation on Small World in any form, including grooming, sextortion, trafficking, the sexualisation of minors, and child sexual abuse material. Report a child safety concern in the app using the "Child safety" category, or by emailing devs@fikir.uk, which is our named point of contact for child safety. We treat a child safety report as the highest priority: where it is well-founded, we remove the content, close the account, and report it to the National Crime Agency and the Internet Watch Foundation. We comply with UK child safety law.
11. Suspending or ending your account
You can delete your account at any time in the app. You can also request deletion through our website — for example if you have uninstalled Small World, or if we have asked you to accept updated terms. Our privacy policy explains what deletion erases.
We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect other people using Small World. Where we can, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.
If we suspend or close your account, or remove something you posted, and you think we got it wrong, email us at devs@fikir.uk and we will review the decision and tell you the outcome.
When we act on illegal content, we tell the person whose content was removed why, unless doing so would be unlawful or would tip off a criminal investigation, and they can appeal by the route above.
12. Changes to Small World
Small World is a young product and it will keep changing. We may add, change or remove features, and we may stop offering it altogether. If we are making a change that materially affects you, we will give you reasonable notice, unless we have to act immediately (for example for security or legal reasons).
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms — for example when we add a feature or when the law changes.
If a change is material, we will tell you in the app or by email, and we will ask you to accept the new terms before you carry on using Small World. For smaller changes, continuing to use Small World after we publish them means you accept them. Each version of these terms is numbered, so you can always see which one applies. If you do not agree with a change, you can stop using Small World and delete your account at any time (section 11).
14. Availability
We would like Small World to work all the time, but we cannot promise it will. It may be unavailable while we fix or improve it, and it depends on things outside our control — your phone, your network, your operating system's power-saving behaviour, and services we rely on.
15. Our responsibility for loss or damage
We do not exclude our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. That includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, and liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
Beyond that:
- We are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss or damage that was not foreseeable.
- Small World is for personal use. We are not liable for business losses — for example lost profits, lost business, or loss of business opportunity.
- We are not responsible for what other people do on Small World, or for what they do with something you shared with them — unless the real cause of the loss is us breaking these terms.
- As explained in section 5, Small World is not a safety, emergency, tracking or navigation service, and we are not liable for loss or damage caused by relying on it as one.
Nothing in this section affects your legal rights as a consumer.
16. Your rights as a consumer
You have legal rights as a consumer that these terms cannot take away. If anything here conflicts with those rights, your legal rights win. For more information, contact your local Citizens Advice or Trading Standards office.
17. Other important terms
If a court decides that part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
If we do not insist that you do something straight away, or delay taking action about something you have done wrong, that does not mean we have given up the right to do so later.
We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will tell you if that happens, and it will not affect your rights. You may not transfer yours without our agreement.
18. Governing law
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring legal proceedings in the courts of England and Wales, and if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you can also bring them in your local courts.
19. Contact us
FIKIR LIMITED
71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ
Company number 16810967
devs@fikir.uk
20. Version
Version 1.0 — in force from 3 September 2026.
FIKIR LIMITED · Companies House no. 16810967 · 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ ·devs@fikir.uk