MLINO Privacy Policy

Last updated: 1 October 2026 · Demo version

MLINO (app.mlino.site) connects people with businesses and activities near them. This page explains what data is collected, why, and what control you have. We aim to collect the minimum needed.

1. Without signing in

• You do not need an account to look at businesses, the map or search.
• Your location stays on your phone. Distances are computed on your device; your exact position is not sent to us or to any business.
• On the entry page, if you choose “My city”, only the city identifier is sent to fetch the weather — not coordinates.
• To guess a starting language, the country of your IP address is looked up on our own server, not sent elsewhere, and not stored.

2. Signing in

• With a mobile number: the number is used to send you a verification code and is kept in our database only as a one-way hash, not as the number itself.
• With Google: Google gives us an identifier and your email to verify who you are. We keep only a one-way hash of the identifier and a masked form of the email (like a•••@gmail.com); we do not store the full email. We do not access your contacts, files or any other Google account data.
• A session cookie keeps you signed in.

3. What you create

Chat messages with businesses, ratings, meetups and challenges, and stay requests are stored on our server so that they work. Only the parties to a conversation or request can see them; anything you publish publicly is shown under the display name you chose. Do not write phone numbers or personal details in public fields.

4. The smart assistant

The smart search and the Melino chat on the entry page are optional. When you send a sentence, only the text of that sentence (without location or identity) is sent to our assistant service and an AI model to produce a reply. In the app we ask for consent before anything goes to an outside service, and you can choose on-device analysis only.

5. Who we share with

We do not sell your data or use it for advertising. Only these services take part so that MLINO works: server hosting, Google sign-in, a map provider, an AI model provider (sentence text only), a weather service (MET Norway; only the centre of the city you chose) and, once enabled, an SMS provider. Businesses see only what you send them (such as a message or a request).

6. Deleting your data

You can delete your account from the app. Deleting it removes your chats, ratings, meetups, stay requests and the Google sign-in link. If you still have a meetup or stay booking in progress, deletion is refused until it ends, so nobody is left uninformed. For help, write to us through the contact page.

7. Security and children

Connections to MLINO are encrypted (HTTPS) and access to data is limited. MLINO is not intended for children under 13.

8. Changes and contact

If this text changes, the date above changes. Questions: mlino.site/contact. This is a demo version; the businesses inside it are fictional.