the boring cockroach

last updated: 31 may 2026

· short version

the boring cockroach is the world's emotional weather, hourly. you drop a feeling on the map. that drop is anonymous, snapped to a ~5km cell, and never linked to your account. once a night, at 9pm india time, there is one shared question; what you write in that room is deleted by 10:01pm. we don't sell your data. we don't track you across other apps. there are no ads. if you delete your account, everything you wrote is gone.

the app is built and operated from india. all data is stored on google firebase servers in asia-south1 (mumbai), regardless of where you live, because that's where the operator is. this is written under indian law.

· what we store

• your google sign-in — to know it's you next time. we never see your password.
• your chosen handle and city — what you set in the app. the city is the one you pick, or the place that mapbox resolves your jittered coordinate to (e.g. a neighborhood or a town). it is not your real-time location.
• two simple counters on your profile — how many feelings you've shared, and how many nights you showed up to the 9pm question room. just numbers, for your own profile.
• your push token — so we can send the one nightly 9pm question notification. you can mute it in profile → notifications.
• your feeling drops on the map — when you drop a feeling, your phone takes your approximate location, adds ±500m of jitter on the device first, then submits only:
  • which of the listed feelings you chose;
  • the ~5km grid cell that contains the jittered point;
  • an optional single sentence (max ~10 words) if you typed one.
  this submission is not linked to your account. the server does not store which cell came from which user.
• tonight's question — your one answer — when you write an answer in the 9pm room, it is stored anonymously for that night only. it is shown to other cockroaches who also answered, without your handle. at 10:01pm ist every night, the entire answer collection is hard-deleted by a scheduled function. only the count of "how many cockroaches answered tonight" survives, used for the share card.

your real google name is never stored in our database — only the handle you pick. (your name does exist inside google's auth record that we use to sign you in; we never read it or copy it into our data.)

· what we do NOT store

• your phone number.
• your contacts.
• your photos or files.
• your precise gps — we ask for "approximate" location only, and we add ±500m of jitter on your device before anything leaves it.
• your other apps, your browsing history, anything outside this app.

· who can see what

• your handle and city are visible inside the app — that's what other cockroaches see when the map shows aggregate weather for an area.
• map drops are aggregated counts per ~5km cell — no one can see who dropped what. the map shows the last 4 hours of activity in a rolling window.
• tonight's answers are visible to other people who also answered tonight, with no handle attached. by 10:01pm ist they no longer exist anywhere.
• your google email and your push token are owner-only. no other user, no admin, ever sees them.

· third parties we use

• google firebase — authentication, database, scheduled functions, push notifications, and hosting. servers in asia-south1 (mumbai), regardless of where you live.
• mapbox — we use mapbox for two things:
  • to render the map basemap (mapbox light style — see borders, below, for what gets drawn);
  • to resolve a jittered coordinate to a nearby place name (e.g. "kurnool", "indiranagar", or whatever locality you're in) so the share card can say where the weather is.
  mapbox receives only approximate coordinates. it never receives your identity, your handle, your feelings, or your sentences.
• google play integrity — to confirm the app you're running is the real one, not a script. it returns yes/no, no personal data.

we do not use ad networks. there are no ads. we do not embed third-party analytics. we do not have a "share with partners" toggle, because we never had partners.

· borders shown on the map

we render the map using mapbox's worldview=in setting, which means disputed regions — most visibly kashmir, aksai chin, and arunachal pradesh — are shown as part of india with solid border lines, per india's official position. we use this view because the app is built and operated in india. it does not change anything about your data or how the app behaves for you; it only affects how those specific borders are drawn on the basemap. if this is a concern, please reach out at the contact email below.

· retention

your handle, city, and the two profile counters stay until you delete your account. map drops are kept as anonymous aggregate numbers; the "live" map shows the last 4 hours in a rolling window. older aggregates may be retained as anonymous totals (no identity attached).

tonight's question answers are an exception: they exist for at most one hour and one minute (9:00pm india time submit, 10:01pm india time hard-delete). nothing you write in the 9pm room is retained past that night, anywhere — not in backups, not in logs, not in an "anonymized archive." if you live outside india, the window may land at an unusual local hour; it is the same single window for everyone in the world.

· deletion

profile → delete account. one tap. the function deletes, in order: your handle, city, the two counters, your push token, your owner-only private records, and finally your firebase auth account. no backups are retained. we do not store a hash of your google account to track you across deletes — you can sign back in with the same google account later, completely fresh, with a new handle.

map drops are already anonymous at the moment they are submitted, so there is nothing to delete that is tied to you. tonight's answers self-delete at 10:01pm india time regardless.

· children

this app is for users 18 and older. we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. if you believe a younger user is on the app, email us and we'll remove the account. see also our child safety standards.

· changes

if this policy changes materially, the in-app banner will tell you, and the next time you open the app you will be asked to accept the updated terms again. the "last updated" date at the top is the authoritative date.

· contact

questions, deletion requests, abuse: bedduworkable@gmail.com

· the boring cockroach · not affiliated with the cockroach janta party ·