Privacy policy

Last updated 14 October 2026

Who we are

City Below (below.city) is run by Ortomate Limited, a company registered in New Zealand (company number 9320670, NZBN 9429052636967). Our registered office is c/o Darvill Mellors & Co Limited, 12 Jessie Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand.

Ortomate is responsible for your personal information on this site: we are its “controller” under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the agency that holds it under New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020. For anything about privacy, email privacy@below.city.

What we collect, why, and our legal basis

When you visit the site

Our hosting provider records each request: your IP address, browser, the page requested and the time. We use these logs to keep the site running and secure, including limiting repeated requests from one address.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in operating a secure website.

When you search for an address

What you type into the address search, and the location of a property you open, goes to our server, which looks it up in Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) address and property data hosted on Esri’s ArcGIS Online. Our hosting provider caches the results for up to an hour so repeat searches are fast. You don’t need an account, and we don’t link searches to you.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing the search you asked for.

When you sign in

You can sign in with Google or with a link sent to your email address. Sign-in is provided by Neon Auth, which keeps your email address, your name and profile photo if you use Google, which sign-in method you used, and your sign-in sessions, including the IP address and browser for each session. We never see your Google password. Sign-in emails are sent through Resend from signin@below.city. Our own database stores only an account ID, which marks which maps are yours.

Legal basis: performing our agreement with you to provide an account.

When you use private maps

Your maps hold whatever you add: map and place names, points and areas, addresses, and the values you enter in your own fields. When you add a property by its address we also store public property details from LINZ (such as the certificate of title number, legal description and valuation reference), and when you build a 3D model of a place we store the model data we generate from public elevation, building and land-cover data. Only you can open your maps. Please don’t put sensitive information about other people in them.

When you add photos, to one of your places or publicly, we keep each photo as you uploaded it, with what its file records (usually where and when it was taken, which way the camera faced, and the camera and lens), in our private file storage at Vercel. We use that to place the photo, and keep the original so we can improve the 3D models from it later. Only you can see the photos you add to your places, and we show them to you as copies with all of that information removed.

When you share a photo publicly, anyone can see a copy of it, where it was taken and which way the camera faced, the day it was taken, the camera and lens, and the credit name you give, under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Nobody else sees your account, your email address or your maps. We keep the time you agreed to share it, and remember your credit name to offer it next time. You can delete a photo at any time, or make it private again if one of your places holds it and we have not taken it down. Either takes it off the site within a minute for new visits; someone with the page open sees it until they reload, and anyone who saved a copy may keep using it under the licence.

When you report someone else’s photo, we keep your reason, any note you add, when you sent it and your account, so each person reports a photo once. We read reports to decide whether a photo should come down. The photo’s uploader never sees who reported it; if we take it down, they see the reason we give.

Legal basis: performing our agreement with you to provide the service.

When you report a bug

A bug report contains what you write, the page you were on, your browser’s user-agent string, your view of the 3D scene (camera position, settings and the last street you pointed at) and, if you add one, a screenshot. It is filed as an issue in our private GitHub repository, and screenshots are saved in that repository. We don’t attach your account or email address. Review your screenshot before sending it, and don’t include personal details you don’t want us to keep.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in finding and fixing problems.

Weather

The 3D scenes show live weather. Your browser asks Open-Meteo for the weather at the area you’re viewing; for one of your private places the location is first rounded to about a kilometre. Like any website your browser contacts, Open-Meteo receives your IP address.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in showing current conditions.

Cookies and storage on your device

below.city does not set cookies, and we use no analytics, advertising or tracking. What is stored is needed for the features you use, so we don’t ask for consent:

• Sign-in: Neon Auth keeps your session in a cookie on its own domain, and your browser keeps a copy of your sign-in details (including your name and email address) in local storage so open tabs stay signed in together. Signing out clears it.
• Preferences: local storage remembers your display settings (look, quality, birds and shadows).
• Map data: your browser keeps the 3D map tiles it has built, up to 256 MB, so the map opens faster next time. They are public map data, the same for everyone, and contain nothing about you. The least recently used go first, a new version of the site replaces them, and clearing this site’s data in your browser deletes them.
• This visit: session storage keeps camera positions and a download-speed measurement, and is cleared when you close the tab.
• Building photos: the photo capture tool on the buildings page keeps your photos, notes and, if you allow it, your location in your browser. They stay on your device.

Who processes it, and where

These providers process personal information for us, under their data processing terms:

Vercel

Hosts the site and its servers (which run in Sydney, Australia), serves pages through its global network, stores the photos you add (to your places or publicly), and keeps request logs. Privacy policy

Neon (part of Databricks)

Our database and sign-in service, on Amazon Web Services in Sydney, Australia. Privacy notice

Resend

Sends sign-in emails. Resend is based in the United States and sends our emails from Amazon Web Services in Tokyo, Japan. Privacy policy

GitHub

Stores bug reports in our private repository. Privacy statement

These services receive information when you use the related feature:

Google

Only if you choose to sign in with Google. Google’s own privacy policy applies to your Google account.

Esri ArcGIS Online (LINZ data)

Receives address searches and property locations from our server, not from your browser, so it doesn’t see your IP address. Privacy statement

Open-Meteo

OpenMeteo GmbH in Switzerland receives weather requests from your browser. It says it keeps IP addresses only for running its service and preventing misuse, and deletes its server logs after 90 days. Terms and privacy

International transfers

We are in New Zealand, which the European Commission recognises as giving personal information an adequate level of protection. Our data is stored in Australia, and some of our providers are in the United States or process data in Japan. For those transfers we rely on our providers’ data processing terms, which include the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, and, for providers certified under it, the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension. Under New Zealand’s Privacy Act, we only use providers that are bound to protect information in a way comparable to New Zealand law.

How long we keep it

• Your account and maps: until you delete them. Deleting a map deletes its places and fields, and Delete account in the account menu deletes all your maps, your photos and your sign-in account at once.
• Your photos: until you delete them, their place or map, or your account (a public photo not on a place: until you delete it or your account).
• Reports of photos: until the photo is deleted, or the person who made the report deletes their account.
• Sign-in sessions: until they expire or you sign out.
• Request logs: Vercel keeps them for a short time, at most 30 days.
• Sign-in emails: Resend keeps a record of each email, including your address, for 30 days.
• Bug reports: as long as they help us fix and understand problems. Ask us and we’ll remove yours.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct it. If the GDPR applies to you, you can also ask us to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to give it to you in a portable format. When you’re signed in, the account menu does two of these for you. Download my data saves your account details, every map with its fields and places, your photos and the reports you made as one JSON file. For each photo it has what the photo recorded (where, when and with what it was taken), its file’s type, size and fingerprint, its place and where it is placed, whether it is public, its credit and licence, when you agreed to share it, when it was hidden or taken down and the reason given, and when you added and last changed it. For each report it has the photo, your reason and note, when you sent it and when it was dismissed. 3D models are left out, because they are built from public data and you can build them again, and so are the photo files themselves: ask us for copies. Delete account deletes all your photos, all your maps and your sign-in account straight away. You can also delete individual photos, maps and places at any time. For anything else, or if either control doesn’t work for you, email privacy@below.city from the address you sign in with and we’ll do it for you.

We’ll reply within 20 working days. Under the GDPR we may extend that by up to two more months for complex requests, and we’ll tell you within the first month if we need to.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in New Zealand, to the data protection authority where you live or work in the European Economic Area, or to the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK.

Security

Everything travels over HTTPS. Sign-in tokens last 15 minutes and are checked on every request for a private map, and each map can only be opened by its owner. Access to our hosting, database and email accounts is limited to the people who run the site.

Other things you should know

• City Below isn’t aimed at children under 16, and we don’t knowingly collect their information.
• We don’t make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
• We don’t sell personal information or use it for advertising.

Changes to this policy

When we change how we handle personal information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects information you’ve already given us, we’ll say so on the site before it takes effect.