A GOOD NEIGHBOR RESPECTS YOUR PRIVACY

Local, not personal.

AskALocal uses the information you share to find one useful recommendation. This page describes the current MVP.

Your location

We ask before using device location. Coordinates are rounded to roughly neighborhood precision; you can enter a town instead. Your chosen location is saved on this device and with your conversations. We do not track you in the background.

Your conversations

An essential cookie links your anonymous conversations to this browser. If you create an account, we associate those conversations with it. Conversation records are retained until deleted by the operator. This MVP does not yet have automatic retention limits or a self-service deletion screen.

AI and place providers

Questions, recent conversation context, and relevant recommendation evidence are sent to OpenAI to interpret your request. We ask OpenAI not to store Responses API output; its own service retention policies still apply. Exact device coordinates, account emails, and contributor identities are not included in model prompts. Place and location searches may be sent to Google Places (when configured) or OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim service. Directions opens Google Maps.

Contributions

Contributions are stored privately and checked before they become recommendation evidence. Public answers summarize relevant knowledge without publishing contributor identities or raw submissions. Fictional demonstration content is labeled separately.

Recommendation feedback

Thumbs feedback helps improve future recommendations. We store your current choice and a history of changes, including withdrawals, linked to the recommendation and your anonymous session or account. Only your latest feedback for a place and matching request context contributes to scoring; older feedback carries less weight. Feedback is private and does not verify a visit. Contribution revisions are also retained for review. Deleting a conversation removes its linked feedback history; deleting a contribution removes its revision history.

Accounts and analytics

Passwords are stored as salted hashes. We record basic product events such as recommendations returned and directions opened, without advertising trackers. Security limits use hashed request identifiers. We do not sell personal data or build advertising profiles.