Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Baladi Map is an independent, free civic platform for reporting local problems that Lebanon's municipalities are responsible for. It is not a government service and is not affiliated with any government body, municipality, or political party. We show no ads, we sell no data, and we make no money from users. This policy explains, in plain language, what data we collect, why we collect it, and what happens to it.

Information We Collect

We collect only what the platform needs to work:

• Account details: your email address and, optionally, a display name and username. You can browse, report, and vote without an account.
• Report content: the title, description, category, and severity you write, and any photo you choose to attach.
• Website form — Location: the spot you place on the map for a report. Sharing your device's GPS location is optional. You can always place the pin manually or simply pick your municipality from a list. If a photo you choose has coordinates saved by the camera, your device reads them and offers them as the report's location. They are used only if you accept, and a photo's own metadata is removed before anything is uploaded.
• Your activity: the reports you file, comments you post, "I'm affected" votes you cast, and issues you follow.
• Municipality claims: if you submit the claim form as a town official, the name, role, email address, and optional phone number you provide.
• Anonymous participation: if you use the platform without an account, a random token stored in a browser cookie lets you report and vote without telling us who you are.
• Technical data: anonymous usage analytics, page-performance measurements, and error diagnostics.
• Repair reports: if you say a problem is fixed and attach a photo, we store that photo and your note. The photo stays private until a person at Baladi Map has reviewed it and published a blurred copy; if it is refused or withdrawn, it is deleted.
• Website added photos: the person who filed a report, or someone who said it affects them, can add a photo to it later. It is handled like a repair photo: private until a person at Baladi Map has reviewed it and published a blurred copy, and deleted if refused.
• Municipal desks: for a council that holds a desk, the sign-in identifier we issued, the email address the council gave for alerts, its actions on reports, and when the desk was last opened. Officials prove their role before a desk is opened, and that proof is kept only as long as needed to check it.
• Telegram reporting: if you report through our Telegram bot, we store a pseudonymous identifier derived from your Telegram account so your reports can be grouped and rate-limited. Your Telegram name is never stored with a report or published.

How We Use Your Information

We use this data to:

• publish approved civic reports on the public map and issue pages
• show how many people each problem affects and build the municipality scoreboard statistics
• send you notifications about issues you reported or follow
• review reports before publication and keep the platform safe (moderation, rate limits, abuse prevention)
• diagnose errors and improve how the platform works
• tell a municipality, at the address it gave, when a report is published in its area and how its reports stand each week
• help our moderators draft replies to comments and flags (a person reads and sends every reply; see AI Processing)

We never use your data for advertising, and we never sell it to anyone.

What Is Public

Baladi Map is a public accountability platform, so parts of it are public by design. Once a report is approved, its title, description, category, photo (with faces and license plates blurred), map location, and the reporter's display name are visible to everyone on the internet. Your email address and phone number are never shown publicly. If you would rather not be named, you can report without an account, or choose a display name that does not identify you. What a municipality does on a report is public too: its acknowledgement, its public replies, a photo of the repair once published, and any referral to another body with the reason it gave. A council's sign-in identifier and alert email address are never shown.

For WhatsApp submissions, we do not display your WhatsApp contact name or phone number as the reporter. See WhatsApp Reporting below.

Service Providers We Work With

We use service providers for hosting, messaging and other functions:

• Hosting and storage providers. Store account data, reports, photos, votes, comments, follows, municipal desk data and repair photos, as well as WhatsApp contacts, conversation records, drafts and private submission links.
• Website delivery and analytics providers. Receive standard technical logs, such as IP addresses, and collect anonymous, aggregated visit and page-speed statistics.
• Diagnostic providers. Receive crash and error reports when diagnostics are enabled. These can include device and browser details and what the app was doing when the error happened.
• Google. If you choose "Sign in with Google", Google confirms your email address to us. This is optional; email sign-in works without it.
• AI processing providers. Process photos for privacy protection, assist with report descriptions and moderation, generate report illustrations, and interpret conversation context and photos for automated replies. The AI Processing and WhatsApp Reporting sections explain the data involved.
• Email delivery providers. Send sign-in codes, moderation notices and municipality alerts, receiving the recipient's address and message.
• Messaging providers. Deliver and store messages and media and provide available voice-note transcripts. If you contact us through WhatsApp or Telegram, those platforms also handle the conversation under their own privacy policies.

Providers process data under their applicable terms, privacy policies and account settings. These may include security, legal-retention and AI-improvement uses; we do not make a blanket promise that providers never retain data or use it for model improvement.

AI Processing

We use AI for photo processing, reporting assistance, moderation assistance and automated WhatsApp conversations. Human review is required for publication, but WhatsApp replies are generated and sent automatically. First, to protect privacy: every photo attached to a report, and every photo sent as proof of a repair, is automatically processed to blur faces and vehicle license plates before it is published. A photo added later to a published report is checked by a person at Baladi Map, who may publish it without this step when no face or plate is visible in it. Second, to help you report: if you press Write with AI on the report form, the words you typed and the place of your pin are sent to draft a title and description that you can use, change or ignore, and Baladi Map keeps none of it unless you send the report; while you type, an AI model may also suggest a category or a similar report nearby. Third, to help our moderators: the text of reports, comments and flags is read by an AI model that suggests a category, possible duplicates, and whether private details such as a phone number appear, and when moderators reply to a comment or a flag, an AI model may draft the reply, which a person reads, edits and sends. No AI decides whether a report is published, fixed, referred, or removed; those are decisions people make.

WhatsApp Reporting

Our WhatsApp assistant uses AI and sends automated replies; it is not a person or a municipal service. You can use it without a Baladi Map website account.

• We store your WhatsApp phone number, the contact name supplied with messages, messages, available voice-note transcripts, shared locations, photo references, conversation language and draft details. We also keep delivery records and private links between your number and submitted reports or additions, so we can continue the conversation and show you your own reports.
• Messaging providers handle messages and media, hosting providers store conversation records and submitted photos, and an AI service processes recent conversation context, your supplied contact name, draft and location details, message text or available transcripts, and photos when needed to interpret your request. AI can misunderstand you: check the summary before pressing Send, and ask for a person if you need help.
• Sending a message is not the same as publishing a report. The bot asks you to confirm a report or an addition before submission. Staff review it before new content becomes public. We do not publish your WhatsApp contact name or phone number as the reporter's identity. Details you put in report text or photos could still identify you, so avoid unnecessary personal information.
• Photos submitted through WhatsApp are first stored privately and may still contain camera metadata at that stage. The publication pipeline re-encodes photos to remove metadata and processes faces and vehicle plates for blurring before public display. This differs from the website form, which removes metadata before upload.
• A daily cleanup removes our stored WhatsApp event and delivery-queue records older than 90 days. This does not erase contact records, drafts, report links or submitted additions, which currently have no scheduled automatic deletion. Cancelling a draft or deleting a chat on your phone does not erase our stored records or providers' copies.
• For access, correction or deletion requests, email admin@baladimap.com and identify the WhatsApp number concerned. We may need to verify that the number belongs to you. Website account deletion does not automatically delete WhatsApp records. Public reports and photos are reviewed separately when removal is requested.

Do not send passwords, identity documents or sensitive personal information. Provider retention and data use also depend on their terms and account settings; we do not promise zero retention or that every provider excludes model training.

Voting and Anonymous Participation

When you press "I'm affected too" on an issue, we store which issue was voted on, when, and either your account ID (if you are signed in) or your anonymous browser token (if you are not). This is what limits everyone to one vote per issue. We use these votes to show how many people each problem affects and to build aggregate statistics for the municipality scoreboard.

Individual votes are never shown publicly, only totals, such as "47 people affected".

Innovators programme sign-ups

If you sign up to the Project 1062 innovators programme on our /innovators page, we store the details you enter (full name, phone number, university, specialty and email address), the language you used and when you signed up. We use them only to send you the programme's challenges and invitations, and we share them with the Project 1062 programme team for that purpose.

These details are never shown publicly. Write to admin@baladimap.com to have them removed.

Sharing What You Are Proud Of

You can share something good in your town, such as a park, a mural or a well-paved road. We store what you write (a title, a text and the kind of thing it is), the place you choose and its municipality, and the language you wrote in. On the website, if you are signed in, we also store your photos and link the post to your account; without an account you cannot add photos, and the same random browser token used for anonymous reports is stored instead. A person at Baladi Map reads every post before it is published, and a declined post is never shown. Once published, a post's title, text, photos, place, municipality and date are public. Posts are not signed: your name, email address and account are never shown, and the municipality is not told who wrote it. Faces and license plates in photos are blurred before anyone sees them, the same way as report photos (see AI Processing), and the original is deleted once the blurred copy is made. If you have an account, we email you when your post is published or declined, and when the municipality thanks you; the app may also notify you. If you delete your account, your posts stay published but are no longer linked to you.

Municipal Councils on the Platform

Municipalities can hold a desk on Baladi Map to see and respond to reports in their area. A desk is opened after an official has proved their role to us. For a desk we hold the sign-in identifier we issued (it is not a mailbox and receives nothing), the email address the council chose for alerts, when the desk was last opened, and everything the council does on reports. Council actions are part of the public record and are shown on the report, credited to the municipality by name and never to the individual official. Alert emails go only to the address the council entered, and only for three things: a report published in its area, a weekly summary, and a post a resident shared about something good in its town. A council can change or remove that address on its desk at any time, and can ask us to close the desk.

Cookies and Analytics

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in, plus the cookie that holds the anonymous participation token described above. Our analytics are anonymous and aggregated, and do not track you across other websites. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

How Long We Keep Data

Published reports, their photos, comments, and what municipalities did on them remain on the platform as part of the public record, until they are deleted or anonymized. Repair photos that are refused or withdrawn are deleted at once; published ones stay with the report. Account data is kept for as long as your account exists, and a council's desk data for as long as its desk is open. Error and analytics data is kept only for our providers' standard, limited retention periods. If you want something specific removed, contact us at admin@baladimap.com.

WhatsApp message records, contacts and drafts follow the separate rules in WhatsApp Reporting above.

Deleting Your Account and Data

You can delete your account inside the app (Dashboard → Settings), or request deletion at any time through the request page at baladimap.com/account/delete. No app required. When your account is deleted, your private data (email address, name, phone number, watchlist, notifications) is deleted. Published civic reports and comments are anonymized rather than erased: they remain on the map as part of the public record, but your name is removed and they can no longer be linked to you. If you also want specific reports or photos taken down, email admin@baladimap.com and we will review the request. A municipality can ask us to close its desk: access is revoked and the alert address is deleted, while the council's public actions stay on the record, attributed to the municipality.

For WhatsApp records, use the email request process in WhatsApp Reporting above, even if you do not have a website account.

Your Rights and Controls

You stay in control of your data. You can:

• browse, report, and vote without creating an account
• report without attaching a photo and without sharing your GPS location
• view and edit your display name in your dashboard settings
• unfollow issues and stop notifications at any time
• delete your account and request removal of your data (see the section above)
• ask us what data we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, at admin@baladimap.com

Data Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our hosting providers. Access to private data is restricted by database-level security rules, and moderation actions are limited to authorized administrators. No online service can promise perfect security, but we deliberately keep the amount of personal data we hold small.

International Data Transfers

Our service providers (listed above) store and process data on servers outside Lebanon, mainly in the United States and the European Union. By using Baladi Map, you understand that your data is transferred to and processed in those countries, where data-protection laws may differ from those of Lebanon.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as the platform evolves. The date at the top always shows the current version. For significant changes we will post a notice on the platform and, where appropriate, email registered users.

Contact Us

Baladi Map is run as a public-good project. For any privacy question, request, or complaint, email us at admin@baladimap.com and we will respond as soon as we can.