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Giggora Privacy Policy

Your privacy, in plain terms. Giggora is a map of what is happening near you. That only works if we handle location carefully — so this page says exactly what we collect, what we never collect, and what you control.

Last updated 7 November 2026 · The same policy is in the app under Profile → Privacy & Location.
The short version
Who we are

Giggora is a hyperlocal community platform operating in Naga City, Philippines. In the language of the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173), we are the personal information controller for the data described here.

Questions, requests, or complaints: support@giggora.com

What we collect
To give you an account
When you put something on the map
When you use the app
What we work out automatically

Two checks run on what you post publicly. Both are plain automated rules — no profiling, no advertising, no machine learning on your content, and neither one touches your private messages.

Neither is used to build a picture of you, and no decision either makes is final — a person reviews anything that gets held, and you can edit or delete the post yourself at any time.

When you claim a place, or ask for one to be taken down
When you use Rider
What we never collect: your contacts list, your photo gallery, your other apps, your browsing outside Giggora, or your location while you are not using Giggora.
Location — how it actually works

This is the part worth reading properly, because it is the part people assume the worst about.

We do not track you in the background

Giggora reads your location only while the app is open: while you are using the map and, if you use Rider, while you have the Rider page open. There is no background tracking, and closing the app ends it.

Browsing never shows you to anyone

If you are only looking at the map, no other user can see you and nothing about you appears on the map. You are invisible until you deliberately post something.

We do remember your most recent position

While the app is open with location on, we keep one point — your latest position — against your account. This is what makes a proximity alert honest: to tell you a tricycle is within 300 metres of you, we have to know roughly where you are. Without it we would either alert you about things across the city or not at all.

The trade-off is simple and worth stating plainly: no stored position means no proximity alerts. If you would rather we did not keep it, turn location off — everything else in Giggora still works.

Riders on a job: the one time your position is shown

Everything on this page about your position never being shown has one deliberate exception. When you ride for someone through Rider, the customer of that job sees where you are on a small map, so they know when their things will arrive and can tell if something has gone wrong.

Posting is what publishes a location

Remembering where you are is not the same as showing it. When you post a signal, you are deliberately telling your neighbours where to find you — that is the entire point. That location is stored with the signal and shown on the map until you shelve or delete it, subject to the precision setting below.

Rider works the same way. A request for a rider is a post, placed where you are when you send it. Going live as a rider is a post too: your rider pin follows you while you have Rider open, and comes off the map when you go offline, or after four hours.

Your pin can be seen from anywhere — contact is local

This changed on 27 August 2026, and it is worth reading even if you skip the rest. The map used to show you only what was near you, and the distance you set when posting decided who could see your pin at all. Now anyone can pan the map anywhere in the country and see every signal and place on it, including yours.

The distance you set has not stopped mattering — it moved. It now decides who is allowed to message or call you. Somebody outside it can look at your pin, read your description and get directions, but the app will not let them open a conversation with you, and the server refuses it rather than merely hiding the button. If you set 2 km because you only serve your own barangay, that is still exactly what it does.

What did not change: the precision setting below still decides how exact the published location is, and the blur still applies before anyone sees it. Browsing still puts nothing about you on the map. If you would rather not be visible at a distance at all, shelve or delete the signal — that removes the pin everywhere.

You choose how precise that is

Change this any time in Settings → Location & Privacy. It applies to everything you post from then on.

To be clear about how this fits with the point above: this setting decides what other people see. The single position we remember for your alerts is not shown to anyone, so the blur does not apply to it — except on Area, where we simply do not keep one.

Photos do not leak your location

Phone cameras quietly write GPS coordinates into photo files. When you upload a picture, we re-encode it and that hidden data is discarded — we never store your original file. A photo you post cannot give away where it was taken.

Find Nearest and directions

To find the nearest ATM or pharmacy, the app sends our server your current position — or the middle of the map, if location is off — and what you searched for. We use them to answer, and do not save them to your account. Your last few searches are kept on your phone only.

To draw a route — for Find Nearest or Get Directions — your phone asks an outside routing service, OSRM, for the road between two points: your current position and the destination. That is all it is sent. It is not told who you are, though like any website it sees your connection's IP address.

Place alerts are checked on your phone

An alert for a place, or for words like "gas" or "Jollibee", is matched on your phone. Our server tells it which places the words mean around the point you are passing — without keeping that point — and your phone works out the distance itself.

When an alert goes off, your phone tells us, and we add it to your notifications: which place you came near and roughly how close, so it is there if you missed the banner. That note says you were near a particular place at a particular time, so we treat it as personal data — only you can see it, and it is erased when your account is erased.

If you turn location off, Giggora still works — you can browse, search and message. The map simply cannot centre on you, and you will see it sitting far away from Naga. That is the app telling you location is off, not a bug.
Messages
Rider — who sees what on a job

With Rider you can ask a motorcycle rider near you to buy, fetch or deliver something, or apply to be one. A job puts two people who have never met in touch with each other's errand, so this section says exactly what each of them sees.

When you ask a rider
When you ride
During and after a job
Circle — sharing with people you trust

Circle is a separate, private layer from the public map. The public map is about strangers and vendors nearby; Circle is about the specific people you have added and who have accepted — family, close friends, a regular driver. Nothing in Circle is ever public, and no stranger on the map can see any of it.

It is opt-in — you turn it on deliberately

Being someone's Circle contact does not by itself let them see you. You become visible only when you start a sharing session yourself, and each time you choose:

You choose how much they see

The detail a contact sees is set by the session you started (and, for a group, by that group's setting). A contact never sees more than the level you chose to broadcast to them, and a status-only session shares no coordinates whatsoever.

While you are sharing
You are always in control
Groups and invitations
None of Circle is public. Your contacts, your groups, your presence and any location you share here are visible only to the specific people you approved, at the detail you set — never to strangers on the map, and never used by us for anything other than delivering it to them. It is all erased when your account is erased.
Broadcasts — how we decide who gets one

A Broadcast is a public notice from a verified local organisation — a flood warning, a road closure, a vaccination schedule. When one is posted, we work out who is nearby and notify them. This section says exactly what that uses.

It uses the one position we already keep

We compare the broadcast's location against your latest position — the single point described above, the same one proximity alerts use. Nothing new is collected for this, and no new permission is asked for.

What we record about a delivery

So that a broadcast can be shown as read or unread, and so we can answer "was this actually delivered?" after an incident, we keep one row per recipient per channel: which broadcast, which channel, how far away you were, when it was sent, and whether you have opened it.

That record says you were in a particular area at a particular time, so we treat it as personal data. It is never shown to the sender or to any other user, it is deleted about six months after the broadcast ends, and erased entirely when your account is erased.
SMS, and how to stop it
Notices about a named person

Some categories — a missing person, for instance — would publish details about somebody who has not consented, and possibly their photograph. These are switched off by default. Where they are ever enabled, they are restricted to police or an official spokesperson, must carry a case or blotter reference, expire quickly, can be taken down in one step, and any photograph is deleted from our storage when the notice ends — not merely hidden.

Giggora is not an emergency service. Broadcasts are community information and may not arrive at all. In a real emergency, call 911 — see the Terms for the full statement.
Who can see what
Public — anyone using the map, including guests
Only the person you are talking to
Only riders near your request, until you choose one
Only the other person on a rider job
Only you
Nobody, ever
Only your Circle — and only while you are sharing
If your business is on Giggora and you did not add it

There are two ways that happens.

From OpenStreetMap

Many shops, offices and landmarks on Giggora come from OpenStreetMap, the free map of the world that volunteers build. We copied what it already published: the name, the kind of place, where it is, its opening hours, and — where OpenStreetMap listed one — a mobile number. These went on the map without being reviewed one by one.

A number that came from OpenStreetMap is treated like any other listing's: never shown to anyone, and used only to check who is claiming the place or asking for it to be taken down.

From a Giggora encoder

An encoder may have put a vendor or a place on the map on someone's behalf — that is how we get a neighbourhood started before everyone has the app. Those listings were made with the vendor's consent, recorded at the time.

Either way
Taking a place down

Open the place on the map and tap Take Down. You give a reason and the contact number for that place. Proving it is yours takes two steps, because simply knowing a shop's number is not the same as owning it — that number is often on the signboard.

What we keep, and why:

Sponsor banners

Giggora shows banners from businesses that sponsor it, in the Nearby and Trending lists. Each sponsor chooses who sees its banner: the whole country, or only its region, province, city, or a few kilometres around its place. So the banners you see depend on roughly where you are, and on nothing else — not your profile, not what you do in the app — and sponsors never receive your data.

Who else touches your data

We do not sell your personal data to anyone. We do not share it for advertising. A small number of services make the app work:

We will also disclose data where the law genuinely requires it — a valid court order or lawful request.

How long we keep things
Deleting your account: Settings → Delete account. We deactivate it immediately — you can no longer sign in, and your signals come off the map — but that does not erase your data by itself. To have it erased, email support@giggora.com and we will erase it, keeping only what the law requires us to. If you deleted by mistake, email us and we can restore the account.
Your rights under RA 10173

Philippine data privacy law gives you the right to:

Email support@giggora.com and we will respond. If we do not resolve it, you may complain to the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph).

Keeping it safe

No service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects you, we will tell you and the National Privacy Commission as the law requires.

Children

Giggora is not intended for children under 13. If we learn that we hold a child's data without proper consent, we will delete it. If you believe a child has signed up, tell us at support@giggora.com.

Changes to this page

Giggora is young and still changing. When we change how data is handled, we will update this page and the date below. If a change is significant — new data collected, or a new purpose — we will tell you in the app rather than quietly editing this page.

See also the Terms & Conditions and Help & FAQ.

Last updated: 7 November 2026
What changed: a section on Rider — who sees your request, what a rider's pin shows, and the one exception to your position never being shown: while a rider does a job, its customer sees where the rider is, until the job ends. On 27 September: sponsor banners can be local, so the app uses your approximate location, and nothing else, to pick them. On 25 September: Find Nearest and directions, place alerts, places from OpenStreetMap, the services we use, and what deleting an account actually does.
Giggora · Naga City, Philippines · support@giggora.com