Privacy: no exact location. Ever.
Anihood is built around where people are, which is exactly why it is careful about it. Here is precisely what we store, who can see it, and what search engines see.
Location, in three sizes
When you share your area, your browser or phone reads a location and Anihood immediately reduces it to geohash cells: a fixed grid of areas that everyone in the same area shares.
| Cell | Size | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Level 5 | ~4.9 × 4.9 km | Your neighbourhood: the default ~10 km view |
| Level 4 | ~39 × 20 km | City-wide discovery and the 25 km view |
| Level 3 | ~156 × 156 km | The 50 km fallback when an area is quiet |
- Your public profile holds only these cell ids, the centre of your level-5 cell, and a city or neighbourhood label. Two people in the same block publish the same point.
- If a precise coordinate is kept at all, it is stored in a private record that only you can read. No other member, and no public page, can access it.
- When you search for a city by name instead, we store that place's public centre, not your position.
- Place names are looked up from the cell centre, so the lookup service never receives your real location.
- If you're browsing without an account, your location never leaves your browser at all. Only the 5-character cell id is sent to load the map.
What the map shows
The map never draws a person. It draws counts: how many people in an area have an anime in their portfolio. Zoomed out, you see one number per area; zoomed in, you see anime artwork placed around cell centres and spread apart so no marker points at a building. Distances between members are always estimates between cell centres, shown with a tilde (~4 km), and are never more precise than that.
When an area is quiet, discovery widens on its own: from about 10 km to 25 km to 50 km, and the map says so.
Age and birthday
Anihood is for people aged 13 and older. Your birthday is used only to check that requirement. It is stored in your private record and is never shown on your profile or to other members.
Gender
Gender is optional. It is never used for discovery, ranking or your anime match.
What other members can see
- Your name, photo, bio, city or neighbourhood, and an approximate distance.
- Your anime portfolio, top three favorites, favorite character, genres and anime habits.
- Your anime match with them.
Members must be signed in to see any of this.
What search engines see
Public pages (city pages, anime pages, public group pages and pages like this one) contain aggregate counts only, such as “65 active fans in Sofia”. Profiles, chats, friends and settings are never public and are excluded from search indexing.
Messages
Direct messages are visible only to the two friends in the conversation. Anime rooms and local groups are public to signed-in members. Reported messages may be reviewed by our safety team.
Your controls
- Update or remove your area at any time in Settings.
- Block anyone. They disappear from your lists, and you from theirs.
- Delete your account by contacting hello@anihood.app. Your profile, portfolio and private record are removed.
Services we use
Accounts, data and images are stored with Google Firebase. Anime metadata comes from AniList. Maps use OpenFreeMap tiles built from OpenStreetMap data. Place search uses Photon (OpenStreetMap).
Last updated September 24, 2026.