Cookie Policy
This policy explains what PowerMaps stores on your device, why, and how to change it. It supplements our Privacy Policy.
1. What Cookies Are
A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to keep and send back on your next visit. Related technologies — local storage and session storage — keep data in your browser without sending it back automatically. This policy covers all of them, and uses "cookies" as shorthand throughout.
They are not inherently a privacy problem. What matters is what a site stores and who it tells.
2. Our Approach
PowerMaps is a tool organisations use to collect field data. It is not funded by advertising, and it has no commercial reason to know what else you do online. That shapes what you will find here:
- We use no advertising or marketing cookies, and we operate no advertising relationships.
- We currently run no analytics or measurement product.
- We do not sell or share personal information, as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act.
- Nothing optional is set unless you say yes first. Refusing costs you no functionality.
- We never place cookies for anyone else's purposes.
If that changes, this notice changes with it, its version number is raised, and you are asked again. A choice you made about the old notice is not treated as covering something new.
3. Categories We Use
Your choices are grouped as follows. You can change them at any time — see Section 7.
Strictly necessary (always active)
Keeps you signed in, protects forms against abuse, and remembers this cookie choice. Without these the Platform cannot function, so they are exempt from consent and cannot be turned off. They are never used to profile you or shared for advertising.
Preferences
Stores small settings in your browser — such as dismissing the "get the Android app" prompt, or the last view you were using — so the site behaves consistently on your next visit. Turning this off costs you nothing except being asked those things again.
Analytics
PowerMaps currently runs no analytics product and sets no cookie in this category. The control is offered in advance so that any measurement introduced later is switched off by default and cannot start without being asked first. If that changes, this notice and its version number change with it, and you will be asked again.
Strictly necessary cookies are exempt from consent under the ePrivacy Directive and equivalent rules, because the service you asked for cannot be delivered without them. That exemption is narrow, and we have not stretched it: nothing is filed under "necessary" that exists for our convenience rather than yours.
4. Cookies in Detail
Everything PowerMaps stores on your device, in full.
Strictly necessary
| Name | Set by | Type | Expires | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
PHPSESSID |
PowerMaps (first party) | Cookie | When you close your browser | Keeps you signed in as you move between pages. Without it you would be signed out on every click. |
pm_consent |
PowerMaps (first party) | Cookie | 6 months | Remembers this cookie choice so you are not asked on every page. Stores only which categories you allowed, when, and which version of this notice you saw. |
_GRECAPTCHA |
Google (third party) | Cookie | 6 months | Set by Google reCAPTCHA to tell people from automated scripts when a public form is submitted. It is loaded only once you start filling in a form — never on page load — so simply reading the site does not involve Google. |
Preferences
| Name | Set by | Type | Expires | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
powermaps_android_prompt_dismissed |
PowerMaps (first party) | Local storage | Until you clear site data | Remembers that you closed the "get the Android app" prompt, so it does not reappear on every visit. |
user |
PowerMaps (first party) | Local storage | Until you sign out or clear site data | Caches your display name and role after sign-in so the page can render its header without waiting for a request. Signed-in users only. |
Analytics
Nothing is currently stored in this category. The control is offered in advance so that anything introduced later starts switched off and cannot run without being asked for first.
We also keep a record of the choice you make here — the categories you allowed, the time, the version of this notice, and a network address with its final portion removed so it cannot identify you. We keep it because data protection law requires us to be able to demonstrate that consent was actually given, and a cookie in your own browser cannot prove that on its own.
5. reCAPTCHA
Our public contact and sign-up forms are protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which tells real people apart from automated scripts. Without it these forms are abused within days.
It does not load when you open a page. It is fetched only at the moment you start interacting with a form. If you read the site and never use a form, no request is made to Google and no reCAPTCHA cookie is set.
When it does load, Google receives your IP address, information about your browser, and how you interacted with the page, and may set the _GRECAPTCHA cookie. That processing is governed by Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
We treat this as strictly necessary, because it runs only in the course of a form you chose to submit and exists solely to protect that submission. If you would rather not use it, contact us by email or telephone instead — the addresses in Section 13 reach the same place as the form.
6. Other Third Parties
Some of the page is delivered from third-party networks. These set no cookies, but loading a file from another company's server does reveal your IP address to it, so we list them for completeness:
- Google Fonts (
fonts.googleapis.com) — the Inter typeface used across the site. - jsDelivr (
cdn.jsdelivr.net) — the Bootstrap layout framework. - unpkg (
unpkg.com) — the Feather icon set. - OpenStreetMap — map tiles, on pages that show a map.
- Google Play (
play.google.com) — the "Get it on Google Play" badge image, where shown.
None of these receive an identifier for you, and none are used to build a profile.
7. Managing Your Choices
Your choice can be changed or withdrawn at any moment, and doing so takes exactly as few clicks as giving it did:
The same link sits in the footer of every page. Withdrawing consent stops the relevant cookies being used from that point on; anything already stored can be cleared using your browser's controls, described next.
Your recorded choice lasts 6 months, after which we ask again. We also ask again if this policy changes materially, because a choice made about an earlier version cannot cover something it never described.
8. Browser & Device Controls
Your browser can block or delete cookies independently of anything on this site. The relevant settings are usually under Privacy or Site Settings; the vendors document them directly:
Blocking strictly necessary cookies will sign you out and keep you from signing back in. That is a limitation of how sessions work on the web, not a choice we have made.
9. Global Privacy Control
If your browser or an extension sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a refusal of every optional category, apply it immediately, and do not show you the banner. You have already answered the question, and asking again would be the nagging that signal exists to prevent.
You can still opt in afterwards through the cookie settings link if you want to.
10. Legal Basis
This policy is written to satisfy Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843), and to meet the standards set by the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC), the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, and the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA.
Strictly necessary cookies are used on the basis of our legitimate interest in delivering a working, secure service, and fall within the ePrivacy exemption for storage that is strictly necessary to provide a service the user has explicitly requested. Every other category is used on the basis of your consent, and on nothing else.
We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is no "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" process to offer. Should that ever change, we would publish it here first.
11. Your Rights
You may withdraw consent at any time; ask what we hold about you and get a copy; have inaccurate data corrected; ask for data to be deleted; object to particular processing; and complain to a supervisory authority — in Ghana, the Data Protection Commission. Section 9 of our Privacy Policy sets these out in full, along with how to exercise them.
12. Changes to This Policy
We update this policy when what we set changes. Where a change is material — a new cookie, a new recipient, a new purpose — we raise the version of the consent notice, which asks everyone again rather than assuming a previous answer still applies. The "Last updated" date above reflects the most recent revision.
13. Contact Us
Questions about this policy, or about anything we store on your device:
- Email: support@powermaps.app
- Telephone: +233 (0) 53 335 1060