Last updated: 4 August 2026
PICK exists to make small acts of neighbourhood cleanup visible. Doing that honestly means telling you exactly what the app records, what other people can see, and what stays yours. A record of where someone walks is a record of where they live, so the walking part is the part we're most careful with.
An email address and a display name are required to create an account. You may also set a handle, a profile photo, a neighbourhood, a team name, and personal goals and unit preferences.
When you run a cleanup, PICK records the start and end location, the route you walked as a series of coordinates, motion data from your phone's sensors, the duration, the number of bags or items collected, and the city and neighbourhood.
This is the most sensitive data PICK holds, and it is readable only by you. This is enforced at the database level, not merely by app behaviour — other users cannot request it, and it never appears in any public figure except as an anonymous contribution to a total.
PICK asks for background ("Always") location access so that tracking continues with your phone in your pocket and the screen off during a cleanup.
Location is only collected while a cleanup is actively running. Tracking starts when you tap start and stops when you tap stop. If you force-quit PICK, tracking stops. The app does not wake itself up to check your location when you aren't using it.
You can grant "While Using" instead of "Always". Cleanups still work, but tracking may pause when your screen locks.
Cleanup photos and profile pictures you upload are stored by PICK and are visible to any signed-in PICK user.
Photos are uploaded as your phone provides them. PICK does not currently remove embedded metadata, which on many phones includes the GPS coordinates where the photo was taken. If you'd rather not share that, turn off location access for your camera in your phone's settings, or use a photo taken without it. We're working on stripping this automatically.
Posts you publish, accounts you follow, posts you like, teams you join, challenges you enter, and badges you earn. Streets you adopt are stored with their exact coordinates so PICK can remind you about them; adopted streets are private to you.
While a cleanup is running, PICK publishes that you are currently out picking, along with your display name and neighbourhood, so others can see live activity. No coordinates are included, and the record expires within a few minutes of you stopping.
If you send feedback, PICK stores your message, your email, your display name, and the app version. If you report a post, PICK stores your account identifier, the post's author, and your reason.
| Data | Visible to |
|---|---|
| Cleanup routes, exact coordinates, motion data | You only |
| Adopted streets | You only |
| Feedback and reports you send | PICK only |
| Display name, handle, profile photo, neighbourhood | Any signed-in PICK user |
| Posts, photos, captions, likes, follows | Any signed-in PICK user |
| Whether you're currently out picking | Any signed-in PICK user |
| Your name on a leaderboard | Any signed-in PICK user — only if you opt in |
| Blurred cleaned zones, totals, counts | Anyone, including non-users |
"Any signed-in PICK user" means anyone who has created a PICK account. Please treat it as public.
PICK lets someone find your account if they already know your exact email address, so friends can connect without swapping usernames. Your email is stored in a form that allows this exact-match lookup.
The list of email addresses cannot be browsed or downloaded, so nobody can harvest addresses from PICK in bulk. It does mean that someone who already knows your email address can determine that you use PICK and view your public profile. If you'd rather not be findable this way, email us and we'll remove your entry.
PICK contains no advertising SDKs and no analytics services. Your personal information is never sold, rented, or shared with data brokers.
In the app: You → Settings → Account → Delete or reset account → Delete account, then confirm.
This removes your posts and their photos, your likes on other people's posts, your cleanups and routes, your badges, your leaderboard statistics, your account record, and your sign-in credentials.
Some things are not yet removed automatically, and we'd rather tell you than let you assume otherwise:
Email hello@pickglobal.org and we'll delete these by hand. We're working on making in-app deletion cover everything.
Figures already counted into public totals can't be individually withdrawn, because they're no longer connected to you.
Settings also offers Clear all data, which is a different thing: it erases your cleanups and statistics but keeps your account. Use Delete account if you want to leave.
PICK is for people aged 13 and over. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13, and accounts found to belong to someone under 13 will be deleted.
Picking with children is very much encouraged — it just happens under your account rather than theirs. Nothing about a child accompanying you is recorded beyond a headcount, if you choose to enter one.
If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email hello@pickglobal.org and we'll remove it.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete the personal information PICK holds about you, to object to certain processing, and to complain to a data protection authority. To exercise any of these, email hello@pickglobal.org.
We won't discriminate against you for exercising these rights. PICK is free and has no paid tier, so there's nothing to withhold.
If this policy changes in a way that meaningfully affects what PICK collects or who can see it, the date at the top will change and you'll be told in the app before it takes effect.
PICK is an independent project, not a company. Questions, concerns, and deletion requests: hello@pickglobal.org