Marco.ai privacy policy

Last updated 31 October 2026. Marco.ai is a travel diary. The Marco.ai app on your iPhone records where you have been, and shows you the countries, states and cities you have visited. The Marco.ai website (app.marco.ai) lets you sign in and see the same travels on a bigger screen. This page says what is collected, why, where it goes, and what you can do about it.

Who is responsible for your data

Marco.ai is run by Ned Brody, who decides how your data is used (the "controller" in data protection law). Contact: me@ned.me.

What is collected, and from where

What	How
Your email address, and for email accounts a scrambled (hashed) password	When you create an account or sign in with Apple, Google or email. From Apple or Google we receive only your email address.
Your location: the exact coordinates and time of each reading, and your phone's time zone	Only by the iPhone app. It takes a reading when you open it and, if you choose "Always Allow", every so often while it is closed. The website never reads your location.
Where and when photos were taken (optional)	Only if you choose "Fill in earlier visits". The app reads the place and date stored in your photos on your phone, shows you suggested visits, and sends only the coordinates and dates of the visits you confirm. Your photos never leave your phone.
Places you add by hand (optional)	If you use "Add places I've been", the countries, US states and cities you tick. They are stored with no dates, marked as added by you.
Your phone's push token	So the server can ask your phone for a reading when it has been quiet.
A sign-in token	Kept in your phone, or in your browser's storage on the website, so you stay signed in. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.

Why, and the legal basis

Only to run the app for you: to work out which countries, states and cities you have been to, and to show your dashboard, timeline and maps. We do not sell your data, show advertising, or track you across other companies' apps or websites, and we do not build profiles. Where the law asks for a basis: your consent covers location and photo locations (you can withdraw it at any time, see below); the account itself is needed to provide the service you asked for.

The person who runs Marco.ai can see how many accounts there are and, for each, the time of the last reading and the state or country it was in. They do not look at exact coordinates.

How it is protected

Everything travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Stored coordinates are encrypted in the database, and the server's disk is encrypted. Email sign-in codes expire after 15 minutes, and passwords are stored only as salted hashes.

Where it is kept, and who else handles it

Amazon Web Services hosts the server in the United States (Ohio, region us-east-2). If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, your data is therefore transferred to the US; AWS provides its standard contractual protections for this.
SMTP2GO delivers the confirmation and password-reset emails (it sees your email address and the message).
LocationIQ turns a place into a town name. When you spend four hours or more somewhere that is not in Marco.ai's list of cities, the server sends LocationIQ only that point, rounded to about a kilometre, and receives the name of the town (for example "Easton, MD"). No account, email, time or other reading is sent, and the name is then saved and reused for everyone within about 4 km, so each town is looked up once.
Apple and Google provide sign-in, and Apple delivers the location requests to your phone. They do not receive your location history from us.

How long it is kept

Your data is kept until you delete your account. We do not delete it automatically. Deleting your account removes your account and every location stored for you from the live database straight away. Encrypted backups of the database are kept for up to 30 days, so deleted data disappears from them within 30 days. Backups can only be read with a key held by the person who runs Marco.ai.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct, move or erase your data, to restrict or object to its use, and to withdraw consent. Here is how:

Download everything: sign in at app.marco.ai, open Settings, and choose "Download my data". You get a file of every location stored for you.
Delete everything: Settings, "Delete my account", in the app or on the website. It is permanent.
Stop recording: turn off Location (or set it to "Never") for Marco.ai in iOS Settings, or delete the app. Withdrawing consent does not affect what was recorded before; delete your account to remove that.
Anything else, or if you cannot use the above: write to me@ned.me. I will reply within 30 days.

If you are in the UK or EEA you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Age

Marco.ai is for people aged 16 and over.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the app will ask you to accept the new version before it records anything further.