Privacy policy
Last updated: 11 November 2026
This policy covers the website hippomaps.ch and the HippoMaps app for Android. It follows the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
1. Controller
Chavdar Dutsov, Spycherweg 3, 5223 Riniken, Switzerland, info@overpass.ch
2. No account, no tracking
HippoMaps has no accounts and shows no advertising. It sets no cookies and uses no analytics service. The app contains no third-party code that collects data.
3. Data sent to our servers
To show the map and answer what you ask, your device sends requests to hippomaps.ch. Each request carries the IP address of your device and what the request needs:
- Map: the part of the map on the screen (map tiles).
- Search: the words you type and the part of the map on the screen.
- Directions: the points of the route (start, stops, destination) and the means of travel. If you choose your location as start, or navigation computes a new route on the way, your position is one of these points.
- Navigation: the sentences the app speaks (street names and distances), when the voice is on.
- Places: the identifiers of a place, to fetch its picture.
When the page loads, our server looks up the approximate place of your IP address (usually the town) in a database on the server (IP Geolocation by DB-IP), and the map opens there until your device tells where you are. The address is not sent to anyone for this.
We use these data only to answer the request and do not store them. Your location never leaves the device for anything else, and the app does not record where you have been. To limit the use of the service, our server counts the requests of each IP address in memory for ten minutes.
Technical logs: error messages of our servers can contain the IP address, the time and the address requested. They are deleted automatically by log rotation, generally within 30 days. Purpose: operating and securing the service (legitimate interest).
4. Data on your device
The app and the website keep your settings (language, map style, layers), your recent searches, your saved places and the last map view in the storage of your browser or of the app, with a copy of the page so that it opens without a connection. When you start navigation they also keep the map along the route, until three days after your last navigation; "Autosave route for offline navigation" in the menu turns this off. They do not leave the device. "Forget recent searches" in the menu deletes the searches; clearing the site data of your browser, or the storage of the app, deletes everything. On Android these data are part of your device backup if you have turned it on.
5. Location permission
The app asks for your location to show where you are, to search near you and for navigation. During navigation it keeps receiving your location in the background, with a notification on screen, until navigation ends. You can refuse the permission; the map, search and directions between places work without it.
6. Donations
On the website you can donate. You pay on a page of Stripe, which receives your payment details there. We receive from Stripe your name, e-mail address and the amount, and keep them for 10 years, as Swiss law requires for accounting records. Purpose: accepting the donation and bookkeeping (legal obligation). The app for Android offers no donations.
7. Service providers
- Hetzner Online GmbH, Germany: server hosting (servers in Germany and Finland).
- Stripe Payments Europe Ltd., Ireland (with group companies in the USA): payment of donations. Transfers to the USA are covered by the EU-US / Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
- overpass.ch (the same controller): map tiles, place search and heights. Its privacy policy applies to these requests.
Pictures of places come from Wikimedia Commons through our server: your device does not contact Wikimedia. Links to OpenStreetMap open in your browser. We do not sell personal data and do not share it with anyone else unless the law requires it.
8. Your rights
You can request access to your data, its correction or deletion, and object to processing based on legitimate interest. Write to us at info@overpass.ch. You may also lodge a complaint with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or, in the EU, with your local supervisory authority.
9. Security
All connections are encrypted (HTTPS). Access to the servers is restricted and protected by key-based authentication.
10. Changes
We update this policy when our processing changes. The current version is always on this page.