1. Why location privacy matters
Historic underground mines can be fragile, hazardous, culturally sensitive, or located on private or restricted land. Publishing exact pins to every visitor increases casual visitation, vandalism risk, and unsafe exploration pressure. UndergroundMines therefore treats exact location disclosure as an access-controlled feature — not as default public data.
Location privacy rules are enforced server-side. CSS blur, UI hiding, or client-side filters are never a substitute for withholding unauthorized coordinates from page source, scripts, and API payloads.
2. What guests see
- Interactive map tiles and live map APIs require sign-in.
- Logged-out visitors see a sign-in gate instead of detailed maps on the homepage, main map page, and individual mine location cards.
- Exact gated coordinates are not included in guest-facing page source, scripts, or map API responses.
3. Catalog mines (government / source-backed records)
For catalog mines derived from source datasets (for example USGS/MRDS-backed records and related enrichment):
- Guests and free members receive generalized approximate map positions. Exact coordinates are withheld from unauthorized payloads.
- Explorer Pro (and staff) may receive exact coordinates for eligible catalog records that are not marked sensitive/restricted.
- Sensitive / force-protected records remain generalized or restricted even for paid members when Site policy requires it.
- Administrators may see internal authoritative coordinates for operational moderation and must treat them as restricted data.
Generalized positions are intentionally imprecise. They support regional research without exposing a surveyed pin.
4. Community-submitted mines
Community underground-mine submissions have stricter defaults:
- Exact coordinates default to private to the uploader (and staff for moderation).
- Public and free-member maps may show an Approximate Area marker that is intentionally displaced from the true location (privacy-offset / decoy point). That marker is not the real coordinate and is not a surveyed pin.
- Contributors may opt in to share exact location with Explorer Pro members after approval — unless administrators restrict disclosure.
- If approximate mapping is disabled or map visibility is hidden, unauthorized viewers may see no map location at all.
- Some community locations remain hidden regardless of membership.
Exact community views may be logged for abuse monitoring when the Site records such access.
5. Map labels you may see
- Exact — authorized exact pin for the current viewer (eligible Pro/staff/owner cases).
- Approximate Area — generalized or privacy-offset marker; not the true surveyed coordinate.
- Location protected / No location — no authorized map point is available to the current viewer.
Tooltips and notices on map cards explain when a marker is intentionally approximate.
6. Public trips, explorer profiles, and visit reports
Public community sharing is designed to be location-safe:
- Public trip pages do not include stored mine coordinates, map pins, roads, or directions from private planning data.
- Public explorer profiles do not publish GPS maps of a member’s private mine database.
- Public visit reports support anonymous or custom display names so contributors can avoid revealing a place by its canonical name.
- Private trip planning notes, route notes, meeting notes, checklists, and private mine coordinates stay private to the account (except as needed for Site operation, moderation, or legal compliance).
Members remain responsible for not typing identifying coordinates, turn-by-turn directions, or other sensitive location details into public stories, captions, or comments. Privacy scanning may warn before publish when risky text patterns are detected; acknowledgment may be required.
7. Photos and GPS metadata
- Member-uploaded photographs intended for public derivatives are re-encoded so GPS/EXIF location metadata is stripped from public files.
- Private originals are stored outside public web paths with access controls.
- Moderation-only photo evidence remains out of the public gallery until/unless approved under Site rules.
8. Personal maps and private mines
- Signed-in members may use personal organization tools (saved mines, visits, collections, trips).
- Private mine databases and enhanced private-map tools are Explorer Pro features where configured.
- Private mine coordinates never appear on public trip pages; public shares use anonymous or custom nicknames unless the member deliberately chooses otherwise under Site rules.
9. What membership does — and does not — unlock
- Explorer Pro can unlock exact coordinates on eligible records. It does not unlock every mine.
- Contributor opt-in and admin restrictions still apply to community exact sharing.
- Exact access never authorizes entry, overrides land-manager rules, or converts Approximate Area markers into surveyed truth.
See Membership and the Access Disclaimer.
10. APIs, share URLs, and scraping
- Map APIs return only coordinates authorized for the current session/tier.
- Shareable map URLs may include filters (state, commodity, verification) — never protected exact coordinates.
- Harvesting or bulk-exporting protected exact coordinates or private member location data violates the Terms of Use.
11. Your controls
- Choose whether a community submission shares exact location with Explorer Pro.
- Choose whether an Approximate Area appears on public/free maps.
- Keep trips private/draft, or publish location-safe public versions.
- Choose public mine display names carefully (anonymous/custom vs canonical).
- Control explorer profile visibility and which contribution stats appear publicly.
12. Related pages
Access Disclaimer · Mine Safety Notice · Privacy Policy · Methodology · Membership · Contact
Last updated: August 10, 2026