Your saved places tell your life story better than any other kind of data: where you eat, where you sleep, who you spend time with, where you go at the weekend.
Before trusting an app with your address book, four questions are enough to know who you're dealing with. This article walks through them — and they'll serve you whichever tool you end up choosing.
Why places are data of a different kind
A saved address is never an isolated piece of data. Crossed with time, frequency and the other places on your map, it makes it possible to infer where you live, where you work, your habits, sometimes your family situation or your beliefs. That's why the GDPR treats location data with particular care, and that's why the business model of a place-saving app deserves a close look before you hand it years of addresses.
Question 1 — How does the app make its living?
This is the question that drives all the others. Three models exist:
- Advertising. If the app is free and funded by ads, your places are valuable to advertisers: they enable very fine-grained targeting. That's not a scandal in itself, but it's a trade you should accept with your eyes open.
- Subscription. You pay, so the service has no need to monetise your data. It's the most transparent model: the economic incentive is aligned with your interest. SPOTSMINDER made this choice (€20/year after a free phase for early users), precisely to have no reason whatsoever to exploit the data.
- Free with no clear model. The most uncomfortable one: if you can't see how the service pays for itself, the answer may come later, at acquisition or pivot time.
The practical test: look for the pricing page. If it doesn't exist and there are no visible ads, ask yourself the question.
Question 2 — Where is the data hosted, and under which law?
Hosting determines which laws apply to your data. Hosting in the European Union places it under the GDPR. Switzerland offers a comparable framework with its Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP, revised in 2023), recognised as adequate by the EU. Hosting in the United States, on the other hand, puts the data under US law, including its provisions on access by the authorities.
This information normally sits in the privacy policy. SPOTSMINDER, for example, hosts its data with Infomaniak, in Switzerland, and says so on its homepage. If you have to dig for twenty minutes to find out where your data lives, that's already a signal.
Question 3 — What is public by default?
Some place-saving apps have a social dimension: your maps or your saved places may be visible to your contacts, or beyond, depending on the settings. That's only a problem if you don't know about it.
The right reflex: check what happens without touching any setting. The most protective standard is private by default — nothing is visible until you've explicitly chosen to share, and you can change your mind. That's how SPOTSMINDER works: photos, notes and addresses stay inside your account, and a place only joins the community's public map if you decide it does, without ever showing the exact address.
Question 4 — Can you leave cleanly?
The last test is the exit: can you delete your account easily, and does deletion actually erase your data? The GDPR (and the Swiss nFADP) gives you a right to erasure, but exercising it ranges from "a button in the settings" to "an email to support that never gets answered". An app that makes deletion easy is telling you something about its overall philosophy.
The checklist at a glance
| What to check | Good sign | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | Subscription displayed, clear pricing | Free with no explanation |
| Ad trackers | Verifiable "zero trackers" | Multiple advertising SDKs |
| Hosting | EU or Switzerland, host named | Not specified |
| Default visibility | Private by default | Sharing switched on out of the box |
| Account deletion | One button, full erasure | Opaque procedure |
In short
A place-saving app handles intimate data — your movements and your habits. Before choosing, look at the business model, where the data is hosted, the default settings and how easy deletion is. Tools that tick all four boxes exist; SPOTSMINDER was built around these four answers, but the checklist applies to any service.