Privacy Policy
Last updated 2 September 2026
The short version. There is no account to create, so we never ask for your name, your email or a password. We do not know who you are.
Your location is used to put a balloon into the sky and to check you are close enough to catch one. The place a balloon is let go from is rounded to about a kilometre before anyone else can see it, and where you were standing when you caught one is never stored at all.
Who we are
Balloon Journeys is a game operated by ERV Teknoloji A.Ş., based in Istanbul, Türkiye. It is available as a mobile app and as the live map at balloonjourneys.com. This policy covers both.
Your account
The app signs you in anonymously the first time you open it. That gives you an account identifier and nothing else — no name, no email address, no password, no profile. We use the identifier to enforce the daily balloon limit, to show you your own balloons, and to deliver a reply to the person who sent the message.
The account lives on your device. If you delete the app you lose access to it, and with it your balloon history. We cannot restore it, because we have no way to recognise you.
Location
This is the part worth reading carefully, because the two cases are different.
When you release a balloon
Your coordinates are sent to us so the balloon has somewhere to start. We keep the precise point privately, and separately a version rounded to roughly 1.1 km. Only the rounded point is ever shown to anyone else — on the map, in a balloon's public journey, and in the feed of what is happening around the world.
When you catch a balloon
Your coordinates are used to check that you are within catching range, and then discarded. They are not written down. What we record is where the balloon was at that moment, which is public information already.
Place names
A journey card says a balloon was let go from, say, "Istanbul, Turkey". That name is looked up from the rounded point, never from your precise one — a town or province name is less exact than the coordinates the map already publishes, so it tells nobody anything new about where you were.
What else we store
- The message you write. It travels with the balloon and is revealed to whoever catches it. Until then nobody but you can read it.
- The balloon's journey — where it has been, how far it has gone, when it was found, and by how many people. This is public game data and carries no identity.
- A reply, if the finder writes one, so it can be shown to the sender.
- Notification settings. If you turn notifications on, we store a push token for your device and which of the two kinds you want. Turning them off removes the token.
- Reports. If you report a message, we store the message you reported and the reason you gave, so we can act on it.
- Anything you send us through the contact form — what you wrote, any reply address you chose to give, and your app version and platform, so we can make sense of a bug report.
What other people can see
Balloons are public objects. Anyone can see where a balloon is now, the rounded place it started from, how far it has travelled, how long it has been flying and whether it has been found. Nobody can see your account identifier, your exact position, or a message that is still in the air.
Who else is involved
- Supabase hosts the database, the anonymous sign-in and the server code.
- weatherapi.com provides the wind that moves the balloons, and the place names described above. It receives grid squares and rounded points — never your precise location, and never anything identifying you.
- Google Maps serves the map on the website and in the app, under Google's own privacy policy.
- Apple and Google deliver push notifications, if you have turned them on.
- Google Analytics measures visits to the website — pages viewed, roughly where from, and what device — so we can tell whether anyone is using it. It does not run in the app, and it never receives your account identifier or anything about your balloons.
We do not sell your data, and there is no advertising in the app or on the website.
How long we keep things
A balloon drifts until somebody finds it, or until it has travelled 10,000 km, at which point it pops on its own — a paid balloon can go up to 40,000 km, roughly a full trip around the world. Its journey stays on the public map for as long as it does. Messages and replies are kept as part of that journey. Reports and contact messages are kept until they have been dealt with, and for a reasonable period afterwards so that a repeated problem can be recognised.
Deleting your data
Use Contact the team in the app's settings and say that you want your data deleted. That form carries your account identifier automatically, which is the only way we can tell which data is yours — a message sent any other way is one we have no means of matching to an account.
Balloons already released and caught by other people may remain on the public map as part of their journey, with the message removed.
Children
Balloon Journeys is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. Because we ask for no personal details, we have no way to verify age.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and say so in the app.
Contact
Use Contact the team in the app's settings. It reaches us directly, and because it carries your account identifier we can actually act on requests about your data.
This policy is governed by the law of Türkiye.