Terms of service

1. About us and these terms

Map My Friends (“we”, “us”) is a private, friends-only photo map run from the UK at mapmyfriends.co.uk. By creating an account you agree to these terms, our community guidelines and our complaints and reporting procedure, which form part of them. Our privacy notice explains how we use your data. Contact: hello@mapmyfriends.co.uk.

2. Who can use Map My Friends

• You must be 18 or over. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and refuse anyone who tells us they’re under 18. A date of birth is self-declared, so if we have reason to think a user is under 18 we will close the account; please report anyone you think is a child.
• You need a UK mobile number that you control, and you may have only one account.
• You must not use the service if we have banned you.

3. Your account

You sign in with a one-time code sent to your number. Keep your phone secure and never share a code. You can see and sign out your devices, change your name and username, download your data and delete your account at any time in the app.

4. Your posts

• You keep ownership of your photos. You give us permission to store them, make resized copies and show them to the friends you’ve chosen, only for as long as the post lasts (24 hours, or 7 days if you choose), and for longer only where these terms say so (for example, while a report is reviewed or as required by law).
• Only post photos you have the right to share, and follow the community guidelines.
• You choose whether each post has an approximate, exact or no location. Friends can screenshot anything they can see, so share thoughtfully.

5. How we protect users from illegal content

These are our policies for dealing with illegal content, as required by the Online Safety Act 2023:

• Terrorism content: it’s banned. Any reported post is reviewed as a priority; terrorist content is removed as soon as we become aware of it, the account is banned and we may report it to the police (you can also report terrorist material on GOV.UK).
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) content: it’s banned and reports are handled first. We remove it as soon as we become aware of it, ban the account and report it to the National Crime Agency as the law requires, keeping what the law requires us to keep for that report.
• Other illegal content (including threats, harassment and stalking, intimate image abuse, hate offences, fraud and the sale of illegal items): it’s banned. We review reports, usually within 48 hours, and remove illegal content swiftly once we’re aware of it.
• Keeping it up for as short a time as possible: posts are only visible to the poster’s accepted friends and disappear automatically after 24 hours (or 7 days). There’s no public feed, search, sharing or messaging that could spread content further.
• Intimate images: if the person shown (or someone acting for them) reports an intimate image shared without consent, the post is hidden immediately and we aim to take it down — along with any copies we find — within 48 hours. See section 3 of our reporting procedure.
• Proactive technology: we don’t use automated tools to detect or judge content. Removing hidden data (such as GPS) from photos is a privacy feature, not content checking. If that ever changes we will update these terms first.

We apply these terms consistently to everyone.

6. Moderation, suspensions and bans

If you break these terms or the guidelines, we may remove a post, send you a warning, suspend your account for 1 to 30 days, or ban it permanently. A ban deletes the account and its posts; we keep only a scrambled (hashed) copy of the number so it can’t sign up again. You can appeal any decision — even if you’re banned — by email.

7. Complaints

How to complain about content, about us or about a decision, how long it takes and how appeals work is set out in our complaints and reporting procedure.

8. Your right to bring a claim

If we remove or restrict your content, or suspend or ban your account, in breach of these terms, you have the right to bring a claim against us for breach of contract.

9. The service

• Map My Friends is free. We may change, pause or stop features, or the whole service, and will give notice in the app where we reasonably can. If we close the service we’ll delete posts and accounts.
• Sign-in codes are sent by a third-party provider (text message or, where offered, the Telegram app); we can’t guarantee every code arrives.
• Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. The map is for fun, not navigation, and approximate locations are deliberately imprecise.

10. Leaving

You can delete your account at any time from Me → Delete my account. It happens straight away.

11. Our liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability we can’t legally limit, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or fraud. Otherwise we provide the service with reasonable care and skill, but we’re not responsible for what other users post or do, or for losses we couldn’t reasonably foresee. Your legal rights as a consumer are not affected.

12. Changes and law

We may update these terms; if a change is significant we’ll tell you in the app before it applies. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and you can bring proceedings in the courts of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, depending on where you live.