Privacy
Effective date: September 17, 2026
Aroundabout is made by Metatractor Media, LLC. This policy explains what the app stores, where it goes, and how to get rid of it.
The short version: the app knows almost nothing about you. It never asks for your name, your email address, or your phone number, and it has no way to read your contacts.
What we collect, and why
When you first open the app it signs you in anonymously. That creates a random account identifier. It is a random string, and it is the only identifier the app uses. The app never asks for your name, your email address, or your phone number, and it does not use your device’s advertising identifier.
Alongside it, the app stores only what it needs to work:
- Links. Which accounts are connected to each other, and the invite code the connection came from.
- Lamps. When you light one: the time it started and how long it lasts, stored once for each person you chose to show it to. Nothing else.
- Waves. That you waved at someone, and when. A wave has no message attached to it.
- Names you choose. The name you give another person is stored against your own account. Each side names the other separately, and neither can see what the other chose.
- Invites. The code, who made it, when it expires, and who used it.
- Your settings for each connection. Whether you have paused it, and your notification preference.
- A code for your phone, if you allow notifications. The registration code the messaging service issues for this installation of the app, and when it was last updated. It is what an alert would be addressed to. It identifies a phone, not a person: no name, no number, no contact detail, and nobody but you can read it. It is deleted when you sign out, when you delete your account, when the code stops working, and after sixty unused days.
The app does not store messages, calls, your location, your photos, your contacts, a “last seen” time, read receipts, or any record of who looked at whom. There is no feed and no history.
Google also processes technical data needed to deliver the service, including your IP address and connection information. That happens automatically whenever an app talks to a server. We do not see it, we cannot query it, and we do not use it for anything.
Contacts stay on your phone
You can connect someone in the app to one of the contacts on your phone, so that Message, Call and FaceTime open straight to them. When you do, the app saves the one phone number or email address you picked, and that contact’s name, in a file on your device.
That information is never uploaded. It is not sent to us, not stored on any server, and not written to any log. It is excluded from your device’s backups. It stays on this phone. Restoring a new phone from a backup does not carry it across. It does not sync between your devices, and it does not survive reinstalling the app. It is deleted when you remove that person or disconnect the contact.
The app never asks for permission to read your contacts, and it cannot read them. Choosing a contact uses Apple’s own picker, which runs outside the app and hands back only the single detail you tap.
Your choice of who can see your lamp is saved on your phone. We never receive it, and it is not stored on any server. Unlike the contact details above, it is included in your device’s backups.
Groups are saved on your phone, with the names you give them. They are not uploaded.
The Home Screen widget
The widget reads a small file the app keeps on your phone, in storage the app and the widget share. It holds, for each person who is around right now, the name you gave them and the time they are around until. Nobody who is not around appears in it, and it is never sent anywhere.
Because it puts those names on your Home Screen, where anyone can read over your shoulder, each widget has a setting to hide them. Names are shown unless you turn that off. The file is cleared when you sign out and when you delete your account.
What we do not do
- No analytics, and no crash reporting.
- No advertising, and no advertising identifier.
- No tracking, and no sharing of anything with data brokers.
- No third-party SDKs other than Google Firebase, described below.
Where it is stored
The app uses Google Firebase. It uses Firebase Authentication for the anonymous sign-in, and Cloud Firestore for the data listed above. Google stores it on their infrastructure and processes it on our behalf. We do not run any server of our own.
The data is stored in the United States.
Data travels to and from Google over encrypted connections (HTTPS), using the standard protections built into Firebase. We do not add any further encryption of our own, and the app does not use end-to-end encryption.
If you are outside the United States
Using the app means your information is sent to and stored in the United States, which may have different data protection laws from your own country. If you are in the UK or the EU, that is a transfer outside your jurisdiction.
The safeguards for that transfer come through Google’s Firebase terms, which Metatractor Media accepted when the project was created. Those terms include the Firebase Data Processing and Security Terms, which incorporate the European Commission’s model contract clauses. We rely on those; we do not operate a transfer mechanism of our own.
There is not a great deal to transfer. What crosses the border is a random account identifier, who is connected to whom, when someone lit a lamp and for how long, and any name you have typed for another person. Not your name, your email address, your phone number, or your location.
Who it is shared with
We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising.
Only two things ever see it:
- Google, as the provider of Firebase, acting on our instructions.
- The people you connect with. Someone you are linked with can see whether your lamp is lit and until when, if you chose to show it to them, and can see that you waved at them. They cannot see the name you chose for them, your settings, or anything about anyone else you are connected to.
We may disclose information if the law requires it. Nothing else.
How long it is kept
- Lamps expire on their own, and the app deletes the expired ones the next time you open it.
- Waves are deleted as soon as either person clears them.
- Links, your names for people, and your settings are kept until you remove that person, or until your account is deleted.
- Invite codes stop working after seven days. The record of an invite remains until it is deleted.
When you remove someone, the app deletes the connection along with your lamp, your waves and your settings for it. Two things on their side stay: the name they chose for you, and their own lamp for that connection. Those belong to their account. Their app clears them within a day of the next time they open it.
Deleting your data
You can delete your account and its data from inside the app. Open the Lamp tab, tap Account at the bottom, then tap Delete account. If you have not connected with anyone yet, Account is at the bottom of the first screen.
This deletes your links, your lamp, your waves in both directions, your settings and names for people, the invite codes you created, and your account itself. Any contacts you connected are removed from your phone. It cannot be undone. The app then starts again with a new, empty account.
If deletion cannot finish, the app says so, and trying again removes the rest.
Email is still available if you prefer it, or if something goes wrong. Write to privacy@metatractormedia.com and include your Account ID, which is on the same Account screen with a Copy button. It is a random string and the only thing that identifies your account, so we need it to find yours.
You can also, from inside the app:
- Remove a person, which deletes that connection and your data for it.
- Put out your lamp at any time.
- Clear a wave.
- Disconnect a contact, which deletes the saved number from your phone.
What we cannot delete
We would rather say this than leave it out:
- If you accepted someone’s invite, your account identifier stays recorded on that invite. Only the person who created it can remove it.
- The name someone else chose for you, and their own lamp for your connection, belong to their account. Their app deletes them within a day of the next time they open it. If they never open it again, those records stay.
- Google keeps its own operational records as part of running Firebase. Google’s terms govern those, not ours.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights over your information. We extend the following to everyone, regardless of where they are:
- To know what we hold. This page lists all of it. Nothing is held back.
- To get a copy of it.
- To correct it.
- To delete it.
- Not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these.
If you are in the UK or the EU, the UK GDPR and the GDPR give you these rights, along with the right to object to processing, to ask us to restrict it, and to complain to your data protection authority. Our lawful basis for the handful of things we store is that they are necessary to provide a service you asked for.
If you are in California or another US state with a privacy law, you have equivalent rights. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, under any definition of those terms.
To exercise any of this, email privacy@metatractormedia.com. We do not charge for it, and we will not ask you for more information than we need to find your account.
This website
This site sets no cookies. It runs no analytics. There is nothing on it that tracks you, and no third-party scripts of any kind.
Cloudflare hosts it. To serve a page, Cloudflare processes connection data such as your IP address, and keeps its own operational and security logs. We do not add anything to that, and we do not use it. If you open an invite link, the code in the address is handled by this site to show you the page. Nothing is looked up, stored, or recorded.
Children
Aroundabout is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. The app does not ask anyone’s age. If you believe a child has used it, email us and we will delete the account.
Changes
If this policy changes we will update this page and change the effective date at the top. If a change is significant we will say so in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
Metatractor Media, LLC
13501 Ranch Road 12, Suite 103
Wimberley, TX 78676-5328
United States