imagineWiki privacy policy

Applies to the imagineWiki website and the Android and iOS apps. Last updated 2 October 2026.

imagineWiki has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no server of its own that receives your data. It does not collect, store, share or sell personal information. Your location is used only on your device.

Your location

The location button is optional. When you tap it, the app asks for permission to use your location, then uses it on your device to place a dot on the map, centre the map there and work out which city in the atlas you are in. Your location is not sent to imagineWiki or to anyone else, and it is not stored. Tapping the button again stops it.

As with any online map, centring the map on where you are downloads the map images for that area from the map services listed below, so those services can see which area is shown, just as when you move the map by hand.

You can withdraw location permission at any time in your device's settings. Everything else works without it.

What is kept on your device

• The lists of photographs, maps and landmarks loaded from Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikimaps Warper, reused for up to a day so the atlas opens faster. Refresh data clears them.
• Your layer order, visibility and opacity for each city.

This stays in the app's (or browser's) local storage and is removed when you clear the app's or site's data or uninstall the app.

Services the atlas loads from

Everything on the map comes from open projects, and your device connects to them directly. Like any website they receive your IP address and ordinary request details such as your browser or device type, and handle them under their own privacy policies. Some of them load only when you switch on the matching layer.

• Wikimedia Foundation: Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikimaps Warper on Wikimedia Cloud Services
• OpenHistoricalMap: the historical base map
• Google Fonts: the typeface
• GeoSampa (Prefeitura de São Paulo): historical maps and aerial photographs
• Pauliceia 2.0 (UNIFESP): historical maps of São Paulo
• DataGEO (Governo do Estado de São Paulo): aerial photographs
• Pedal Hidrográfico and Ecotono: map layers of São Paulo
• OpenStreetMap Foundation: the present-day street map layer
• Esri: the satellite imagery layer

The website is hosted on GitHub Pages, which may log visits for security. The apps carry the website's files with them and don't load it from GitHub.

Contributing to Wikimedia

Links such as Edit on Commons or Georeference on Warper open those sites in your browser. imagineWiki sends nothing on your behalf; anything you edit there is public and covered by the Wikimedia privacy policy.

Children

imagineWiki collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes and contact

Changes to this policy will be posted on this page with a new date. Questions can be raised on the project's issue tracker.