YouPlanetYouPlanet shows you a neighbourhood, not an address. This document says exactly how — and which features we deliberately never built, because a few measurements of them would give away where somebody lives.
- Document version
- 1.0
- In effect since
- 2026-08-25
There are three locations, not one
**Device location** — what your phone knows. It never leaves the phone except after rounding.
**Working location** — the rounded version of it, which YouPlanet uses to answer “who is near me”.
**Display location** — what appears on your profile. This can be a city you chose yourself and are not in.
These three are stored separately, too. Collapsing them into one is exactly the mistake this document exists to prevent.
The 700-metre grid
Before your position is stored or sent anywhere, it is rounded onto a fixed grid of roughly 700 metres. Everyone inside one cell of that grid publishes the exact same point.
Why a fixed grid rather than a random offset? Because a random offset averages out over repeated samples and reveals the true centre. A fixed grid makes that impossible: however many samples you take, you get the same point.
Pins that sit slightly apart on the map are spread only so they do not overlap. That spread carries no information about a real position and is never applied to the data.
Distance is a band, not a number
YouPlanet never says “1.2 km” or “437 m”. There are four states and no more: under 1 km, 1–3, 3–5, over 5.
The reason is arithmetic, not taste: three precise distances from three chosen points locate a person to within metres. That bug really happened in several large apps in this category. A decimal distance is never produced in YouPlanet at all.
The permission we ask for
Coarse only. Precise location is never requested.
Only when you choose “around me”. The app does not ask for it on the first screen.
Never in the background. When the app is not open, YouPlanet does not know where you are.
Refusing it closes nothing except “around me”. You can pick a city by hand, or show no place at all.
A chosen location
Choosing a city you are not in is fine — there are good reasons to do it. It is labelled as chosen by you, because another user making a decision on the strength of it deserves to know.
How long it is kept
Working (rounded) location: while your account is active and “around me” is on. Turning it off erases it.
Precise coordinates: never stored. Not in the profile, not in logs, not in backups.
Movement history: does not exist. YouPlanet does not keep a trail of where you have been.
Red lines
These will not be built, even where they would sell:
Showing any user’s coordinates or exact address.
A distance precise enough to allow triangulation.
Selling location, precise or approximate, to advertisers.
Background location without a real product need.
Forcing GPS on in order to pick a display city.