SpinMap is a free map of public tennis courts in the Lower Mainland, run by one person in British Columbia. There are no accounts, no ads and no tracking cookies, and nothing about you is sold or shared for marketing. This page says what the site does handle, why, and for how long.
What you send
Check-ins
When you check in, your device's position is sent once, only to confirm you're at the court. It is checked and thrown away, never stored. What's kept is the court, how busy you said it was, the time, and two codes for that day: one made from a random number your browser keeps for SpinMap, and one from your IP address, each mixed with a secret so it can't be turned back. They let SpinMap count each phone once and keep one person from counting many times. Each day gives new codes, so your check-ins on different days can't be linked. A check-in shows to everyone for 90 minutes and says nothing about who sent it.
Surface ratings
The court, your rating and the time. Ratings show for 18 months, with no name attached.
Reports and notes
What you write and the court it's about. An automatic check, run by Cloudflare's AI service, decides whether a note is about the court and leaves people out. Notes that pass are shown publicly, without your name, for a year, and may go into a short summary of the court. SpinMap's owner keeps a copy of every report, published or not, to look after the site. Leave out names and contact details.
Feedback to SpinMap
What you write, the topic you pick, the court you have open and SpinMap's version. It goes to the owner by email and is kept in SpinMap's database for a year. It's never shown to other players.
Photos
The photo and, if you give one, the name to credit. Before upload, your browser redraws the photo, which removes its location and camera details. An automatic check looks for a court and for people, licence plates or personal details. Photos that pass show right away, and the rest wait for the owner to look at them. Approved photos show with your credit under the CC BY 4.0 licence you agreed to, until they're removed.
Email to an @spinmap.ca address
Each message is checked automatically for spam and phishing, then forwarded to the owner's inbox or held. A record of every message (sender, recipient, subject) is kept for 30 days, along with the text of held messages. Forwarded messages stay in the owner's inbox like any other email.
What the site handles on its own
Your IP address
Used to stop one place from using the site or posting too often. For posting limits it's stored only after being mixed with a secret into a code that can't be turned back into the address. There's a new code each day, and old codes are deleted the next day.
Which courts are opened
A daily count per court, and whether it was opened from the map or the list. Nothing about who opened it. Kept for about 13 months.
Your location
SpinMap uses your location only if you allow it in your browser. “Courts near me” works it out on your device, and it stays there. If you've checked in before, SpinMap also looks on your device each time you open it, to see whether you're at a court and offer to ask how busy it is. Your position leaves your device only when you check in, as above.
Settings on your device
Your browser keeps a few things for next time, such as the map view, the courts you checked in at recently, the courts you said “Not now” to, and the random number used for check-ins. They stay on your device, and SpinMap's server never reads them, except the random number, which is sent with each check-in as described above.
Visit counts
Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views without cookies and without following you to other sites.
Technical logs
Cloudflare, which hosts SpinMap, keeps logs of requests to the site for 3 days, to find faults and stop abuse.
Who else is involved
These services see your IP address when the page loads or when you post, as any website you load does:
- Cloudflare hosts the site and its database, runs the automatic checks and counts visits. It also runs Turnstile, which looks at your IP address and browser details to check that a post comes from a person and not a script (Cloudflare's privacy policy).
- Google Fonts serves the typeface.
- OpenFreeMap serves the street map.
- jsDelivr serves the code that draws the map.
The Directions button opens Google Maps, and photo links open Wikimedia Commons. What happens there is up to those sites.
Some of these companies store or process data outside Canada, mostly in the United States, where other laws apply.
How long things are kept
- Your position at check-in
- Not kept
- Check-ins
- Shown for 90 minutes
- Surface ratings
- Shown for 18 months
- Published notes
- Shown for a year
- The owner's copy of reports
- Until the owner deletes it
- Feedback to SpinMap
- A year (the emailed copy stays in the owner's inbox)
- Photos
- Until removed
- Email records and held email
- 30 days
- Rate-limit codes from your IP
- Until the next day
- Cloudflare's request logs
- 3 days
- Court opening counts
- About 13 months
Your choices
You can ask what SpinMap holds about you, ask for a correction, or ask for your photo or note to be taken down. Most of what SpinMap holds isn't tied to a person, so say which court, and roughly when, so it can be found. Write to hello@spinmap.ca. SpinMap's owner is responsible for privacy here, and answers within 30 business days, the time BC's privacy law allows.
If you're not satisfied with the answer, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.
Changes
When this page changes, the date at the top changes with it.