Effective date: September 2, 2026
Spacemates is designed to help roommates coordinate around presence, shared expenses, and communication. This policy explains what information the app collects, how it's used, and the choices you have.
Information We Collect
Account Information
Spacemates uses anonymous authentication. We do not collect your name, email address, or password to create an account. You do choose a display name and, optionally, a profile photo or emoji, which are visible to your roommates within your Space.
Location Information
Location is central to how Spacemates works, and we collect several distinct types:
- Home address: the address you provide for your Space, used to automatically detect whether you're home or away. This is stored in a protected part of our database, separate from general Space information.
- Home/Away status: whether you're currently near your home address, shared with your roommates.
- Named places: locations you optionally save and label (like "Gym" or "Library"). If you grant a roommate access to this level, they can see when you're at one of these named places.
- Live location: your precise, continuously updating location. This is only shared with a roommate if you've explicitly granted them "Full location" access, and only while your app is open — or, if you've separately enabled "Update status when the app is closed," it also updates in the background at infrequent intervals (roughly every 60 meters of movement or every 15 minutes), not continuously.
- Background location: if you enable the "Update status when the app is closed" setting, the app uses your location in the background, even when the app isn't open, to keep the above information current. This requires "Always" location permission from your device, which you can revoke at any time in your device settings.
You control exactly what location information each individual roommate can see, using the per-roommate sharing settings, and you can change or revoke this at any time.
Photos
- Profile photos: an optional photo you choose to represent yourself.
- Chat photos: images you choose to send in group or 1:1 messages.
- Receipt photos: images you optionally attach to an expense as proof of purchase.
Messages and Financial Information
- Group and 1:1 chat messages you send within the app.
- Shopping/expense items you post, including item names, amounts, and who they're split with.