Trust
Safety & privacy
You are sharing where you live with people nearby. Here is exactly what we do with that.
When you press Find address, our server sends the complete address to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, with Geoapify as a fallback if the lookup fails or finds no suitable result. Your browser shows the standardized result for you to review and confirm. Saving the confirmed location stores its address and coordinates for community placement.
Discovery uses a published location: the center of the map cell containing your home, or your neighborhood's center if you choose that option. It shows that area and broad distance ranges rather than your saved home coordinates. Take care with addresses or other identifying details you choose to put in profile text, photos, posts or messages.
The map uses a fixed grid of cells. Within the current grid, saving the same address assigns it to the same cell. The Where you are control on your profile lets you choose your neighborhood's center instead when a neighborhood is available.
Discovery measures to the other maker's published area and returns a broad range such as “Within 5 mi”. That range describes the area, not a route or precise distance to their home.
Every Neighbor picks one of three tiers, any time, from their privacy settings:
- Discoverable — a public profile plus an approximate pin on the map, visible to anyone.
- Limited — an anonymous pin with no public profile. The map shows only non-identifying info, like "MakerNeighbor nearby · CNC · Woodworking".
- Hidden — no public map or profile presence at all.
Messaging is separate from visibility: it needs an account and the other person's say-so, no matter which tier they have chosen.
You can leave at any time. Deleting your profile removes your posts, events, photos and messages along with it.
Most of what happens here ends with someone walking to someone else's garage. A few habits worth keeping: meet in the workshop or driveway rather than inside the house the first time, tell someone where you are going, and trust your read on a conversation. You are never obliged to explain why you would rather not.
If something feels wrong, report it. Reports are read by a person.