Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 4, 2026

1. Our Philosophy: Openness and Public Good

LOKA is owned and operated by the Socratus Collective Wisdom Corporation. It has been developed as a public good — a shared platform designed to support local knowledge and community awareness.

User Ownership: The data you contribute — whether tags, notes, or observations — remains yours. We respect user ownership and believe that you should have control over what you contribute.

Transparency & Reinvestment: Socratus Collective Wisdom Corporation is committed to transparency. Any revenue generated by LOKA will be used exclusively to improve the platform or support projects with a social or public interest focus.

2. Information We Collect

To power the LOKA ecosystem, we collect information you voluntarily provide and data required for technical functionality:

• Precise Location Data: We collect your GPS coordinates to allow you to discover nearby knowledge markers and to accurately geo-tag the information you contribute. The location you choose for a marker is published with it, at full precision and alongside a street-level address and the date — visible to the same people who can see the marker itself. You place this pin yourself and can move it before publishing, so you decide how precise it is.
• User-Generated Content: The photos you upload to a marker, the description you write, and any comments you leave.
• Account Information: If you create an account, we store your provided identifiers (such as email or phone number) to manage your contributions.
• Your Display Name: The username you choose is shown next to every marker and comment you create, and is visible to anyone who can see them — including through a shared link.
• Invitations by Phone Number: A space administrator can invite a contributor by mobile number. If that number does not yet have a LOKA account, we store the number until the person first signs in, at which point they are added to the space. An administrator can see the mobile numbers of their own space's members; ordinary members cannot see each other's.

3. How We Use Your Data

Your data is used solely to provide and enhance the LOKA experience:

• To identify your current community and display relevant geo-tagged markers.
• To allow you to document and share local wisdom with other users.
• To maintain, troubleshoot, and improve the platform's features.

We do not sell your personal data or use it for third-party advertising.

4. Data Sharing & Public Display

LOKA is a "Knowledge Commons," and most of what is contributed is meant to be seen. How widely a particular marker is seen depends on the space it belongs to — a space is a collection of markers, and there are three kinds:

• Public: anyone can see the markers, including people who have never signed in to LOKA. Anyone can add to it.
• Public Read: anyone can see the markers. Only contributors chosen by the space's administrator can add to it. Being invited to contribute does not make the contents private — a Public Read space is readable by anyone.
• Private: only people the administrator has added can see the markers. They do not appear on the public map, in public feeds, or through a shared link.

A marker that is not in any space is public. Every marker is public at the moment it is created, and becomes restricted only once it has been added to a Private or Public Read space. If you skip that step, your marker stays on the public map.

LOKA staff can view content in any space, including Private ones, in order to operate and moderate the platform.

We may share anonymized, aggregated data with research partners to support public good initiatives, but we do not share personally identifiable information with third parties for commercial purposes.

5. Services We Rely On

Running LOKA means some information passes through other companies' systems. We do not sell data to any of them, and each receives only what its job requires:

• Automatic labelling and search: a marker's photos and description are sent to a third-party AI service for automatic categorisation and labelling, and text you type into search is sent so we can find relevant markers.
• Sign-in and app security: your mobile number is sent to a messaging service to deliver your sign-in code, together with a security check that confirms the app is genuine.
• Maps and addresses: a marker's coordinates are sent to mapping and geocoding services to turn them into a readable address, and requests for map tiles indicate the area you are viewing.
• Email delivery: your email address is sent to an email-delivery service to send sign-in codes for the administration dashboard.
• Websites linked in a marker: if a contributor includes a web link in a description, your device fetches a preview from that site, which reveals your IP address to it.
• Website analytics: we use an analytics service to measure visits to this website, including this page.

6. Your Rights: Access & Deletion

In alignment with our belief in user ownership and Apple's App Store guidelines:

• Permissions: You can revoke access to your location, photos, or microphone at any time through your device settings.
• Account & Data Deletion: You have the right to delete your account and all associated personal data at any time. To request deletion, email us at mithun@loka.place from, or including, the phone number registered to your account so we can verify the request. We will delete your account and associated personal data within 7 business days. In-app account deletion is a planned addition. See our Support page for details.

7. Security

We take reasonable measures, including encryption of data in transit, to protect your information from unauthorized access.

On retention: when you delete a marker, it is genuinely deleted, along with its photos, comments and likes — it is not merely hidden. Our servers keep technical request logs which include IP addresses and, for requests that fetch nearby markers, the coordinates used to do so. Where a contribution has been flagged for safety review, we keep a copy of it, including its text and image, so that the decision can be reviewed.

8. Contact Information

Socratus Collective Wisdom Corporation
No 36, 1st Floor, NGEF Lane, Indiranagar 1st Stage
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India — 560038

Email: info@loka.place