The short version
LOQAH is a fun travel keepsake: a passport of stamps for the places you have been. To do that, it needs your email address, the places you collect, and where you are at the moment you collect a stamp.
That is nearly all of it. In particular:
- We do not sell your data. We never will.
- There are no adverts in LOQAH.
- Your location is read once, when you collect a stamp, to check you are at the place. Your coordinates are then thrown away. We never track you in the background.
- The photographs and voice notes you keep with your stamps are private. Only you can see or hear them.
- We do not ask for your date of birth, your gender, your phone number or your address.
- We count how the app is used, without your name or email, so we can make it better. One switch in the app turns that off.
The rest of this page explains each of those properly.
What LOQAH is, and is not
LOQAH is a fun keepsake made by a private company, and has nothing to do with any government or authority. The passport, the passport number, the ranks and every stamp in it are created by LOQAH. LOQAH is not a travel document, is not issued or endorsed by any government, and cannot be used as identification or to cross a border. "Republic of Wanderers" is the name of a game, not of a country.
A stamp means only that LOQAH's app saw you at a place, or that you added the trip yourself. It is not a permit, a ticket or proof of entry anywhere.
Who we are
LOQAH is made and run by a private company based in Bengaluru, India. If you have a question or a complaint about your data, write to admin@loqah.com and you will get an answer.
What we collect, and why
Your email address, and how you sign in
LOQAH has no passwords. There are three ways in, and you choose:
- Email. You type your email, we send you a six digit code, and that code opens your passport.
- Sign in with Apple. Apple tells us an account identifier and an email address. If you hide your email, Apple gives us a private relay address and we never learn the real one. Apple may pass on your name the first time, which we use only to fill in the name on your passport.
- Sign in with Google. Google tells us an account identifier, your email address and your name, used in the same way.
We never see your Apple or Google password, and we ask neither of them for anything else. We use your email for sign in codes and for replies to messages you send us. We do not send marketing email.
Your passport
Your name on the passport (optional, and yours to change), your portrait if you add one, your cover colour, the date you joined, and a passport number LOQAH gives you. Your home country is set from your phone's own time zone and region settings, never from your location, and you can change it in Profile settings.
Your stamps
For each stamp we keep the place, the date, and how it was collected:
- Confirmed on site: collected at the place itself.
- Confirmed from travel records: matched from a Google Timeline file you chose to import.
- Self-confirmed: a trip you added and vouched for.
- Past trip: a trip you added from memory.
We also keep the order and volume a stamp sits in, whether you have hidden it from friends, and, for an on-site stamp, the moment it was collected (which is what draws its sky). You can add a note and a ten second voice note to any stamp.
The places you mark Plan to go here are stored so they follow you to a new phone, and are seen by nobody but you.
Your location
This is the part people care about most, so here it is in detail.
- Collecting a stamp. The app reads your position once, at that moment, and sends it to our server, which works out how far you are from the place and whether the stamp is confirmed on site. The coordinates are then thrown away: they are never written to the database. What is kept is the answer, how far you were from the place, and how accurate your phone said its reading was.
- Checks against fake locations. With each stamp the app also sends what your phone itself says about that reading: whether it was produced by a location faking app, its accuracy, altitude and age, and whether the phone is rooted or jailbroken. These are kept with the stamp so that stamps stay meaningful for everyone. They never include your coordinates.
- Near me. Sorting places by distance happens on your phone. Your position is not sent to us for it.
- See why. While open, it shows how far you are from a place, worked out on your phone.
LOQAH never reads your location in the background and keeps no record of your movements. If you turn location off, you can still add trips, but no stamp can be confirmed on site.
Google Timeline import
If you choose to import your Google Timeline, the file is read on your phone and never uploaded. The app matches it to places in LOQAH and shows you the matches. Only the trips you keep are sent to us: for each, the place, the day, and the point in your file that matched it, which our server checks is near the place. Nothing else from the file leaves your phone, and the matched points are not stored.
Photographs and voice notes
Photographs you add to a stamp and your voice notes are stored in private storage that only your account can open, so they follow you to a new phone. Your friends cannot see your stamp photographs or hear your voice notes. Your portrait is the exception: it is on your passport's identity page, so friends you have connected with can see it. You can replace or remove any of these at any time.
Friends
When you connect with a friend, by invitation link or passport number, we store the link between your accounts. Friends can open your passport and see your stamps, except the ones you have hidden. When you collect a stamp at the place itself, your friends get a notice of it; other stamps you add go into one daily summary instead. An invitation link carries a random token, not your email or your name. If you install LOQAH from an invitation, the app looks once for the invitation that brought you, and reads nothing else.
Search
When a search in the app finds nothing, we keep the words searched for, so we know which places to add next.
Messages to LOQAH
If you write to us from the app, we keep your message, our replies, the version of the app and your device model. If you report a place's location from See why, the message is filled in with your position at that moment so we can check the map; you can read and change it, and nothing is sent unless you send it.
Notifications
If you turn on notifications, your phone gives us a token to reach that device. We store it and whether it is an iPhone or an Android phone. Turning notifications off removes it.
How the app is used
To make LOQAH better, the app counts which screens are opened and which features are used: a name for each screen and action, with a few plain details such as which tab or how many results. These are linked to an anonymous account number, never your name or email, and never include anything you write, your searches, your location or your photographs. Screen recording is off and internet addresses are discarded. The service we use, PostHog, keeps the data in the European Union. You can turn this off at any time with Share usage data in the app's settings.
Crash reports
When LOQAH crashes, it sends a report so we can fix the fault: the technical details, your device model and system version, and an anonymous account number. It never contains your email, your name, your photographs or your coordinates. The crash reporting service works out an approximate city from the internet address the report arrives from, as any website can.
Advertising
There are no adverts in LOQAH. We do advertise LOQAH on Facebook and Instagram, and so that Meta can tell whether those ads lead to installs, the app tells Meta when it is installed and opened, with basic technical details such as the app version, phone model, system and internet address. It never sends your name, email, stamps, places, location or photographs, and it never reads your phone's advertising ID: on iPhone we do not ask to track you, and on Android the advertising ID permission is removed from the app. Meta may use what it receives to measure our ads, under its own privacy policy.
What the app keeps on your phone
So your passport opens without a signal, LOQAH keeps a copy of your stamps, your profile and the catalogue of places on your device. Only LOQAH can read it, and it is wiped when you sign out.
What we do not collect
- Date of birth, gender, phone number or postal address
- Contacts, calendar, or any photographs beyond the ones you pick
- Any record of your movements over time
- Your phone's advertising ID, or permission to track you across other apps
Who else handles your data
A small number of companies help run LOQAH. They handle only what they need to and, apart from Meta (see Advertising), may not use it for their own purposes.
| Who | What they handle |
|---|---|
| Supabase | The database, sign in, and private storage for portraits, stamp photographs and voice notes. Hosted in Tokyo, Japan. |
| Resend | Sends your sign in code by email. |
| PostHog | Counts how the app is used, if Share usage data is on. Hosted in the European Union. |
| Sentry | Crash reports. Hosted in the United States. |
| Google (Firebase) | Delivers notifications, if you turn them on. |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, if you use it, and the App Store. |
| Sign in with Google, if you use it, and Google Play. | |
| Meta | Learns that the app was installed and opened, to measure our ads. See Advertising. |
| Cloudflare | Serves this website. |
Some of these are outside India, so your data may be handled abroad. Beyond them, we will only hand over data where the law requires it. This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics.
How long we keep things
We keep your passport for as long as you have an account. If you delete your account, from Profile settings, everything belonging to you is removed: your stamps, notes, voice notes, photographs, portrait, profile, plans, friends, invitation link and messages. If you signed in with Apple, we also tell Apple to disconnect LOQAH from your Apple account. This cannot be undone. You can also ask for deletion at loqah.com/delete-account.
Encrypted backups exist so a fault on our side cannot lose everyone's passports; a deleted account drops out of them within 31 days. Usage counts and crash reports are deleted automatically after their services' retention periods.
Your choices
- See what we hold. Your passport, in the app, is nearly all of it. Ask us for the rest and we will send it.
- Correct it. Your name, portrait, cover and home country are in Profile settings; a stamp's date, where it can change, from the stamp.
- Hide a stamp from friends, from its page.
- Turn off usage counts with Share usage data in the app's settings.
- Turn off location or notifications in your phone's settings.
- Delete it. Profile settings, then delete account. It is immediate and complete.
- Complain. Write to admin@loqah.com. If you are in India and not satisfied with our answer, you may take it to the Data Protection Board of India.
Children
LOQAH is meant to be enjoyed by families travelling together, and a child can stand at a fort and watch the stamp land. The account itself should belong to an adult. Under Indian law anyone under 18 is a child, and LOQAH does not yet support verified permission from a parent or guardian, so if you are under 18, please use a parent's or guardian's passport. If you believe a child has opened an account without permission, write to admin@loqah.com and it will be removed.
Changes to this policy
When LOQAH changes what it collects, this page changes first, with a new date at the top. Anything that collects more will be said plainly in the app before it starts.