This policy covers Cartema: the website at cartema.app, the web application at cartema.mdvia.am and the Cartema app for iPhone. It says what personal data we handle, why, who else is involved, how long it is kept and what you can ask of us. We have kept it short and specific: everything below is what Cartema actually does.
Who is responsible
Cartema is operated by “M.D.V.I.A.” LLC (“MDVIA”, “we”), 47/1 Khanjyan Street, building 2, Kentron, Yerevan 0001, Republic of Armenia, registration number 273.110.1353425, tax ID 02901114. For anything about privacy, write to info@mdvia.am.
Cartema is used by people on personal plans and by organisations (our clients) who invite their people into a workspace. That gives two roles:
- For your account and for how you use Cartema (sign-in, settings, usage records, your plan), we decide what is collected and why: we are the controller.
- For the data put into a workspace (its maps, layers, imagery, attributes and drawings), the workspace's owner decides: you, on a personal plan, or your organisation. We store and process it on the owner's behalf and on its instructions only: we are its processor. If an organisation's data contains personal information (for example owners' names in a land register), questions about it go first to that organisation, and we help it answer them.
What we collect, and why
| Data | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account: your name, email address, a password stored only as a salted scrypt hash, your role in each workspace, your language | To let you sign in and give you the access you have | Performance of the contract (with you, or with your organisation); our legitimate interest in running the service securely |
| Sessions: a session token, and the IP address and browser or device type it was opened from | To keep you signed in and to recognise misuse of an account | Legitimate interest in security |
| Your plan: on a personal plan, which plan you have, its status and renewal date, and the email address and country Paddle gives us for the subscription. Never your card details | To give you the plan you paid for | Performance of the contract |
| Your settings and saved views: which layers were on, the map view, bookmarks, the last workspace you used | So that Cartema opens where you left it | Performance of the contract |
| Your drawings (including paths you record on the iPhone and choose to save) and whom you shared them with | Because you made them | Performance of the contract |
| Edit history: for every change to a feature, what it was before and after, who changed it and when | So the workspace can see who changed its data, and undo mistakes | The workspace owner's legitimate interest in the integrity of its data |
| Usage records: which apps you opened and for how long, which layers you switched on, that you clicked the map (not where), that you printed (and in what format) | So the workspace's owner can see how its apps are used and we can improve them. No positions, no IP addresses, no feature identifiers are recorded | Legitimate interest of the workspace's owner and ours |
| Cartema open: that a tab of yours has Cartema in view and which app, noted about once a minute. Only the latest is kept, with no history. | So MDVIA's administrators can see who is online. Nobody in your workspace reads it. | Legitimate interest of ours |
| Emails about your workspace: the addresses we sent access and billing notices to | To keep a record of what was sent to whom | Performance of the contract |
We do not collect more than this. There is no advertising, no tracking across sites, no analytics service and no profiling. We do not sell personal data, and we do not use your data or your organisation's data to train AI models.
Who inside a workspace sees what. A workspace's owners and administrators can see who is a member, what role they have, each member's usage records, and the edit history of the data. Drawings you keep private are visible to you only; the ones you share are visible to the people you shared them with.
Who at MDVIA sees what. Our staff who run Cartema can see accounts, usage records and workspace content when this is needed to operate, support or secure the service, or when a workspace's owner asks us to work on its data. Access is limited to the people who do that work.
This website
cartema.app sets no cookies, has no analytics and loads nothing from other websites: its fonts, pictures and videos come from cartema.app itself. It is hosted by Vercel Inc. (United States), whose servers receive your IP address and the address of the page you ask for, and keep them in their logs for a short time to deliver and protect the site. The “Sign in” and “Start free” buttons take you to the application at cartema.mdvia.am.
Cookies and storage in your browser
The application uses only what it needs to work. None of it is used for advertising or analytics, so there is nothing to consent to and no cookie banner.
| Name | What it is for | How long |
|---|---|---|
better-auth.session_token |
Keeps you signed in (secure, not readable by scripts) | 14 days after your last visit |
better-auth.session_data |
A short-lived copy of your session, so every page does not ask the database | 5 minutes |
cartema-tenant |
Remembers the workspace you last worked in | 1 year |
cartema-locale |
Remembers the language you chose | 1 year |
cartema-theme (local storage) |
Light, dark or automatic appearance | Until you clear it |
cartema.buddy.chat.… (local storage) |
Your conversation with Buddy, in this browser only | Up to 90 days, or until you start a new conversation |
cartema:…:state (local storage) |
For visitors to a public app who are not signed in: the map view and layers they had on | Until you clear it |
The map's “my location” button uses your device's position only on your screen, to show where you are; it is never sent to us.
The Cartema app for iPhone
- Location is used only while the app is open and you are using it: to show your position on the map and, when you tap record, to record the path you walk. While following or recording, iPhone shows the blue location indicator. A recorded path stays on your phone until you save it as a drawing; only then is it sent to Cartema.
- The app does not use your camera, photos, microphone or contacts, and sends no push notifications.
- On the phone it keeps your session, your settings, the list of your apps, a cache of the map tiles you have viewed, and drawings saved without a network until they can be sent. Signing out removes the session; Settings → Storage → Clear empties the map cache.
- The app talks only to cartema.mdvia.am, and to the map services listed below for the basemap.
Services your browser uses directly
To draw the map, your browser (or the iPhone app) fetches some public data straight from these providers. They receive your IP address and the map area being drawn, and nothing else from Cartema:
| Provider | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| OpenFreeMap (openfreemap.org) | Street and light basemaps (OpenStreetMap data) | As published by the provider |
| Esri (ArcGIS Online) | Satellite imagery basemap | United States and worldwide |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS Terrain Tiles) | The approximate height of the ground under the pointer, where the app has no terrain model of its own | United States |
An app may also use a basemap its workspace chose; it is named in the map's attribution.
Where the data is kept, and who helps us
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner Online GmbH | The server Cartema runs on (Falkenstein, Germany), and the storage of its backups | European Union |
| Anthropic PBC | AI processing for Buddy: the questions, the page context and what it looks up, described under “Buddy (AI assistant)”, and for Buddy Pro the values it reads, to produce the answers | United States |
| Paddle.com Market Ltd | Sells the personal plans as Merchant of Record: takes the payment, your billing details and the sales tax, under its own privacy notice. We never see your card details | United Kingdom and worldwide |
| Vercel Inc. | Hosts this website, cartema.app (not the application or your data) | United States and worldwide |
| Google (Google Workspace) | Will send Cartema's emails (notices about access to a workspace and about payment, to its owners) once they are switched on; Cartema sends no email today | Worldwide (Google's data centres) |
All of the application (the database, the files and the maps you or your organisation upload) runs on our own server in Falkenstein, Germany. Nothing is copied to other services, except the questions put to Buddy (see “Buddy (AI assistant)” below) and what Paddle needs to take a payment. The people who operate Cartema, our staff and those of partners who provide Cartema to their own clients, work from Armenia, Angola and Israel, and reach the server only over encrypted connections. Where a provider is outside the European Union and your law requires it, the transfer is covered by the provider's standard contractual clauses.
Buddy (AI assistant)
Buddy is Cartema's in-app guide. It shows you where things are and walks you through tasks; it never changes anything for you. Buddy is in beta: its answers may sometimes be wrong.
- What is sent, and to whom. When Buddy cannot answer a question by itself, your question, the last lines of the conversation and the page's context (its address, the name of the app open on your map and the names of the layers its list shows you) are sent to an AI service provider, Anthropic PBC (United States), which processes them only to produce the answer, under a data processing agreement. The provider does not use them to train its models.
- What Buddy looks up. To answer some questions, Buddy looks things up in your workspace, only as you may see it yourself: the names of your apps, their layers and their fields, how many features a layer has and, for one field, its most common values (at most 20). These are sent to the same provider, under the same agreement. Buddy never reads a layer marked “Not for AI”, nor a field kept to your workspace's own team or one that names a person.
- Your acceptance first. Before your first question, Buddy shows these facts and asks you to accept them. Cartema records that you accepted and which version of the notice; when the notice changes, Buddy asks again. Without your acceptance no question is sent. The legal basis is your consent; to withdraw it, write to us.
- What is kept, and who reads it. For each question Buddy's server answers, Cartema keeps who asked, in which workspace, when, the page and its context as above, the question, the answer and how it was answered (a scripted answer or the AI). Only MDVIA's staff can read these records, to improve Buddy; your workspace's owners and administrators cannot. Nothing is kept for a person who has not accepted the notice.
- How long. Conversations are kept for up to 90 days: the records above are deleted automatically after 90 days, and the copy in your browser drops lines older than 90 days (New conversation clears it at once).
- Your workspace decides. Its owners and administrators can switch Buddy off for everyone in the workspace.
- Buddy Pro (reports from your data). Where a workspace has Buddy Pro, its owners and administrators can ask it about the workspace's data. To write the answer, Buddy Pro sends the values it reads (counts, totals and at most 20 rows a question) to the same provider, under the same agreement. It reads only what the person asking may see, never a layer marked “Not for AI”, and never a field kept to the workspace's own team or one that names a person (such as a customer's name or phone number). Before the first question it shows these facts and asks for acceptance. The questions and answers are not kept; which layers were read is kept, with who asked and when. When Buddy Pro carries out a task the person confirmed (such as inviting people), the task's details (for example the e-mail addresses and names of the people invited) are kept for 30 days, for undo and the record, then deleted.
What we commit to organisations
- A data processing agreement is available to every client organisation on request, covering the data we process on its behalf.
- If a security incident affects personal data, we inform the affected workspace owners without undue delay, with what we know and what we are doing about it, so that they can meet their own obligations.
- The providers listed above change only with notice: we tell client organisations before adding or replacing one that handles their data.
How we protect it
- Every connection is encrypted (HTTPS with HSTS); passwords are stored only as salted scrypt hashes.
- Each workspace's data is separated in the database itself (row-level security), not only by the application: a request for one workspace cannot read another's.
- Map tiles are served only with a signed, short-lived key bound to the one layer it opens.
- Roles decide who may view, edit or manage; editing an app's data must be switched on for that app.
- The whole system is backed up every night to a separate storage location; backups are encrypted in transit, and the off-site copy is encrypted at rest.
How long we keep it
- Your account is kept while you are a member of a workspace. When a workspace's owner removes you, you lose access at once; ask us and we delete the account itself.
- Sessions end after 14 days without use, or when you sign out or change your password.
- Usage records and edit history are kept for as long as the workspace exists, because they are part of its record.
- Cartema open is one line for each person and workspace, replaced each time, and kept until your account or the workspace is deleted.
- When you close a personal workspace, or when an organisation's agreement ends, we hand its data back on request in open formats and then delete the workspace, including the records above.
- Your plan's records are kept for as long as accounting law requires.
- Buddy's conversations are kept for up to 90 days (see “Buddy (AI assistant)”).
- Backups are kept for 14 days on the server and for 30 days in the encrypted off-site copy, then deleted, so deleted data disappears from them within 30 days.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your personal data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable format. Write to info@mdvia.am; we answer within 30 days. For data in an organisation's workspace, we will involve the organisation, which decides about that data.
You can also complain to a data-protection authority: in Armenia, the Personal Data Protection Agency of the Ministry of Justice; in the European Union, the authority where you live or work; in Israel, the Privacy Protection Authority; in Angola, the Agência de Protecção de Dados.
Children
Cartema is a professional tool and is not meant for children.
Changes
When we change this policy, the date at the top changes. If a change affects what we do with your data, we tell you (or your organisation) before it takes effect.