Privacy policy

placetogoto helps you find places to go in Nigeria. This page explains, in plain language, what we collect when you use the site, why we collect it, who helps us run things, and what you can do about it.

If you have a question or want to use any of your rights below, email hello@placetogoto.com.

If you just browse

You can explore places, read guides and search without an account. When you do:

• Searches. What you type into search is saved with the number of results and the city, so we can see what people look for and what’s missing. It isn’t linked to you or your account; we only note whether the person searching was signed in.
• Visit statistics. We use a privacy-friendly analytics tool to count page views and see which pages are popular. It doesn’t use cookies and doesn’t identify you personally.
• Your browser. We keep two small notes in your browser: how many place pages you’ve looked at in this visit, and whether you closed our sign-up reminder, so we don’t show it again too soon. They never leave your device. A cookie also remembers the state and city you last picked on Explore, so it opens there next time.

If you create an account

We collect:

• Your email address, to sign you in with a one-time code.
• If you sign in with Google, your name, email and profile photo from Google, and a record linking your Google account to ours. We never get your Google password.
• Your profile: name, username, photo, a short bio and home city. These show on your public profile.
• Your birth date, if you give it. It’s optional, used only to skip places that aren’t for your age, and never shown to anyone.
• What you do on the site: places you save, places you mark as been to, checklists, and your reviews, including star ratings, comments and answers to follow-up questions.
• Sign-in records: while you’re signed in, we keep the session with the IP address and browser it came from, to keep your account secure.

Why we use it

• To run your account and sign you in (needed to provide the service you asked for).
• To show your reviews, profile and been-to count to others, which is the point of reviews (you choose what you post).
• To improve the site: answers to review questions are added up into summaries like “most people spend ₦5k to ₦15k”, and search logs show us which places to add (our legitimate interest in running a useful service).
• To keep the site safe and stop abuse.

We don’t sell your data, and we don’t show third-party ads based on it.

What others can see

Your public profile (at /u/your-username) shows your name, username, photo, bio, home city, when you joined, how many places you’ve been to, and your reviews. Your email, birth date, saved places and searches are never public.

Who helps us run placetogoto

We use trusted service providers to host the site and database, store photos, send sign-in emails, count visits and handle Google sign-in. They only process data on our behalf. Some of them store data outside Nigeria, including in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States, and we choose providers with strong security and data protection commitments.

How long we keep it

• Your account data, until you delete your account.
• Sign-in sessions expire after 60 days of not being used.
• One-time sign-in codes expire after 10 minutes.
• Search logs aren’t linked to anyone, and we keep them to understand what people look for.

Your rights

Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 you can:

• See and correct your data. Most of it is on your profile settings page, where you can change it yourself.
• Delete your account. Use “Delete your account” in profile settings. This removes your profile, reviews, saved places, visits and checklists straight away.
• Ask for a copy of your data, or object to how we use it, by emailing us.
• Complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission if you think we’ve handled your data badly. We’d appreciate the chance to fix it first.

Cookies

We use two cookies: one keeps you signed in, and one remembers the state and city you last picked on Explore. Neither tracks you, so there’s nothing to accept. We don’t use advertising or tracking cookies.

Children

placetogoto is for people aged 13 and over. If you think a child has given us personal data, email us and we’ll delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. For big changes, we’ll tell signed-in users on the site.