A fog-of-war world map, revealed by the photos you already took.
Effective 17 September 2026 · Last updated 25 October 2026
Fogged never sends your photos or places anywhere. Fogged has no server and no account. Your photos, their locations, your trips and your map are read, processed and stored on your iPhone or iPad. We — the developer — never receive them. They leave your device only inside a share card you choose to share yourself. The only things Fogged sends over the network are anonymous usage statistics, purchase records, map tile requests and — only if you turn notifications on — what our notification service needs to reach your device, described below.
Fogged is an iOS app developed by Artem Aleksandrov ("we", "us"). This policy explains what the app accesses on your device, what it stores, and exactly what is sent anywhere, to whom, and why.
| Data | Why | Leaves the device? |
|---|---|---|
| Photo location (GPS), creation date and favourite flag from your photo library metadata | To work out where and when you travelled, and reveal those places on the map | No |
| Photo thumbnails | Shown on the map, in your timeline, and in share cards you create | No — only inside a share card you choose to share |
| Place names (country, city) | Worked out on your device from a map database built into the app | No |
| Purchase and subscription status | To unlock Fogged Pro | Yes — Apple and RevenueCat (see below) |
| Whether you installed Fogged from an Apple Ads search ad | To see which of our App Store search ads lead to installs and purchases | Yes — Apple and RevenueCat (see below) |
| Your Year in Review and memories of past trips, as notifications | Worked out and scheduled on your device, only if you turn notifications on | No — shown by iOS on your device |
| Apple's push token and notification preferences | To send occasional news and offers, only if you turn notifications on | Yes — our own notification service, PushCenter (see below) |
| Anonymous usage events | To understand which features work and where the app fails | Yes — TelemetryDeck, with subscription events from RevenueCat (see below) |
Fogged asks for photo library access during onboarding and explains why before the system dialog appears. You can grant full access, limited access to photos you select, or refuse. Fogged requests read and write access: read to scan location metadata, and write only to save a share card you create to your library when you ask it to. Fogged never modifies or deletes your existing photos.
If you later limit or revoke access in iOS Settings, Fogged asks you once what to do with the photos it can no longer see: keep what they revealed on your map (nothing is scanned again when you allow access), or delete their data from Fogged. Nothing is deleted unless you choose to. Photos you delete from your library are removed from your map, and your statistics recalculated, the next time Fogged opens.
Without library access you can still add photos one pick at a time, through the iOS photo picker. The picker runs outside Fogged and gives it only the photos you select. Fogged reads their location and date, and keeps a resized copy of each, without its metadata, in its private storage on your device, so it can show them on your map, in your trips and on share cards. These copies never leave your device. Removing a photo in Fogged deletes its copy, and so does "Reset App Data" or deleting the app. Your photo library itself is not touched.
Everything Fogged builds — processed photo records, trips, revealed map areas, your home area, statistics, and copies of photos you picked without giving library access — is stored in the app's private sandbox, in a local database protected by iOS data protection. It is not synced to iCloud and not shared with other apps; like all app data, it is included in your device's own backup if you back up your iPhone or iPad. Deleting the app deletes all of it, and you can clear it at any time from Settings inside the app.
The map itself is Apple Maps, drawn with MapKit. To draw the map — and the map in a share card, when it shows a smaller area such as a trip — your device downloads map tiles for that area from Apple, as any app with a map does. Because the map follows your photos, those are areas you have been; but the requests carry no photos, no list of locations and nothing that identifies you. Apple handles them under Apple's privacy policy.
Fogged uses TelemetryDeck, a privacy-focused analytics service, to learn how the app is used and where it breaks. It receives:
It never receives a photo, a location, a place name, a trip, a date you travelled, or anything you typed. TelemetryDeck does not use IP addresses or advertising identifiers; the anonymous identifier it uses is derived on your device and hashed twice, so it cannot be traced back to you. No consent prompt is needed because no personal data is processed.
Fogged asks whether you want notifications during onboarding, in the "What's New" screen of an update, or in Settings, and never shows the iOS permission dialog until you agree on its own screen. If you never turn them on, nothing below happens.
Your Year in Review and memories ("a year ago this week") are local notifications: Fogged works them out from your trips on your device and asks iOS to show them at the right time. They contain your own figures and trip names, which is why they are never sent anywhere — they exist only on your device, and iOS shows them on your lock screen like any other notification (you can hide previews in iOS Settings).
News and offers — for example a new feature, a seasonal moment, or a discount on Fogged Pro — come from PushCenter, a notification service we run ourselves (hosted by Railway). Only once you turn notifications on, Fogged registers your device with it, sending: a random installation identifier created on your device, the push token Apple issues for it, your language, region and time zone, app version, iOS version and device model, whether you accept news and offers, and when you open one of our notifications. PushCenter never receives your photos, locations, place names, trips, purchases or anything that identifies you, and Fogged never tells it who you are. You can stop news and offers with the switch in Fogged's Settings, turn notifications off in iOS Settings, and "Reset App Data" in Fogged's Settings deletes your device's record from PushCenter.
Fogged Pro is sold through the App Store. Payment is handled entirely by Apple; we never see your payment details. To keep track of which plan you own across renewals, restores and devices, Fogged uses RevenueCat. RevenueCat receives the App Store transaction records for Fogged purchases and an anonymous identifier it generates, along with basic technical context such as app version, device model and country. It does not receive your name, email, photos or locations. We see the resulting anonymous purchase records (for example "a yearly plan was bought in Germany") in RevenueCat's and Apple's reports.
Fogged also gives RevenueCat the anonymous TelemetryDeck identifier described above, so that RevenueCat can report subscription events to TelemetryDeck under it: a trial starting, a renewal, a cancellation or a refund, with the plan and price. That lets us see how use of the app and subscriptions relate — for example, how many people who finished onboarding went on to subscribe. The identifier is hashed on your device, and neither service learns who you are.
We advertise Fogged with Apple Ads, the search ads inside the App Store. To learn which ads work, Fogged installed from the App Store asks iOS for an attribution token using Apple's AdServices framework and passes it to RevenueCat, which exchanges it with Apple. Apple answers only whether the install came from an Apple Ads search ad and, if it did, which campaign, ad group and keyword. That answer is stored with the anonymous purchase records above, so we can see, for example, that "a yearly plan was bought after a search ad for travel map". It uses no advertising identifier, links nothing across other apps or websites, and contains no photos, locations or anything that identifies you. Apple handles its part under Apple's privacy policy for Apple Ads.
Fogged is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone.
If this policy changes materially, the updated version will be published here with a new "Last updated" date before the app version it describes is released.
Questions about privacy in Fogged: support@fogged.app