Privacy

Needlestone has no database. Your location is sent with each search, used to answer it, and then forgotten: it is not stored and not logged. For shops and services, available to invited accounts only, that one search also goes to Google. Toilet searches stay on our server. What you look for stays in this browser. We count page views and errors, never where you are.

To point at the nearest thing you are looking for, Needlestone sends your location to its server with each search. The server uses it to find the answer and keeps nothing: no database, no file, no log line. A few seekers (coffee, bakeries, pharmacies, groceries, cash) find places through Google, so for those the server passes your location for that one search to Google. They are only open to signed-in, invited Lotl accounts, and Needlestone stores nothing about your account. Your choices of what to look for and your theme are stored in this browser only. Page views (as a route, not a full address) and errors go to Lotl Observe, which we operate. Toilets come from the National Public Toilet Map, a government dataset the server downloads and searches itself, so a toilet search goes nowhere else. Drinking water and libraries come from OpenStreetMap and heritage places from the Victorian Heritage Database, both searched on our server; a heritage photo loads straight from the Heritage Council's website.

What we collect

Here is everything that leaves your browser, and what stays in it:

Your location, per search: Your latitude and longitude, sent with each search so the server can find the nearest place of the kind you picked. Used for that one answer, then discarded, and never attached to telemetry. Nothing is sent until you start a search. For shops and services found through Google, see "Nearby shops and services" below.Stored on our server. Held briefly during the request and discarded. never written to a database, a file or a log. Legal basis: legitimate interests. Not individually deletable.
Nearby shops and services (via Google): Only for signed-in invited accounts. When you look for coffee, a bakery, a pharmacy, groceries or cash, the server sends your latitude and longitude for that one search to Google (the Places API) to find places near you. Your location is not stored or logged; Google handles the request under its own privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy). To avoid asking Google again, the server keeps the list of places it found for up to 30 days (the longest Google allows), filed under the kind of place and a square about 1 km across, and saves that list to its disk so a restart does not lose it. The list holds the names, positions and opening hours of those places. It records when the search was made and which 1 km square it covered, but not who asked or your exact location.Stored on our server. Held briefly during the request and discarded. your location is not stored or logged; the places found are cached for up to 30 days per ~1 km square, not tied to you. Legal basis: legitimate interests. Not individually deletable. Shared with: Google APIs.
Your Lotl account (optional): Signing in is optional and only needed for the invited-only seekers. Needlestone checks your sign-in token on each paid search to see whether your account is invited, and stores nothing about your account. To enforce an hourly limit, the server counts each account's paid searches in memory for one hour (the account id and the times of the searches, never where you were); a restart clears it. Your sign-in identity is managed by Lotl Auth, our authentication service (auth.lotlsoft.com). Lotl Auth stores your email, your name if you provided one, and a hash of your password (argon2id). Sign-in issues a short-lived JWT access token (15 minutes) and a refresh token (30 days). Email verification and password resets go through transactional email (Resend).Stored on our server. Held briefly during the request and discarded. nothing stored by Needlestone; paid-search counts per account are held in memory for one hour. Legal basis: legitimate interests. Not individually deletable. Shared with: Lotl Auth.
Your preferences: Which things you want the needle to point at (needlestone.seekers) and light or dark mode if you chose one (needlestone.theme), stored in localStorage in this browser. Never sent to us. Clearing your browsing data deletes them. A tab-only flag in sessionStorage (needlestone.reloaded) also remembers that the page already reloaded once after an update.Stored in your browser (localStorage). Kept until you delete it. Legal basis: legitimate interests. Removable on request.
Usage telemetry: Page views, reported as the route (such as /about) rather than the full address, and errors the app throws, sent to Lotl Observe. Never your location and never what the needle found.Stored on our server. Kept permanently. as daily counts; the raw events are deleted after 90 days. Legal basis: legitimate interests. Not individually deletable. Shared with: Lotl Observe.

Third parties

These external services receive some of your data:

Australian government open data (Toilet Map, Victorian Heritage Database) — Toilet locations (data.gov.au) and heritage places (Heritage Council of Victoria), downloaded by the server: nothing about you is sent. Heritage photos load from the Heritage Council's site when you look at one, so that site sees your device's address like any website would.
DigitalOcean — hosting for Needlestone
Google APIs — Places API nearby search for the invited-only seekers (receives your location for that one search)
OpenStreetMap — Map data for drinking water and public libraries, extracted into the app (ODbL, credited on screen). 'Open in OpenStreetMap' links open the OSM site only when tapped.

Where your data is stored

Needlestone's server keeps nothing about you beyond what this page lists. Searches for shops and services are answered by Google's Places API, which processes the location for that search on Google's infrastructure, which may be outside Australia.

Your rights

Needlestone stores nothing about you, so there is nothing to export or request here. Your preferences live in this browser: clearing its site data removes them. Your location is never kept, so there is nothing of it to delete. To stop sending it, do not start a search, or turn off location for this site in your browser settings. If you signed in, your Lotl account is held by Lotl Auth (auth.lotlsoft.com), where you can delete it; Google's handling of the searches sent to it is covered by Google's privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy).

Last updated: 2026-10-05.