Terms of use

Use of the map and upload area is free and does not require a user account.

There is no entitlement to publication of a submitted photo. There is also no entitlement to permanent availability of the service.

What you confirm when uploading:

• You took the photo yourself or have the necessary rights to it.
• If a sticker was applied: the sticker was placed on property you own or with the owner's consent.
• The photo does not infringe third-party rights, in particular personality, copyright, or trademark rights.

Grant of rights: You retain the rights to your photo. You only grant us a simple, worldwide, revocable at any time right to make the photo publicly accessible on hier-fehlt.de. Any use beyond that — such as in advertising, in print products, or sharing with third parties — does not take place. Photos are not sold and are not used to train AI models.

Revocation: You can revoke the grant of rights at any time by requesting removal via the “Report or delete photo” form. With your image ID, this happens without further review.

We generally publish all submitted photos that fit the project's theme. There is no selection based on image quality, design, or taste.

We do not publish a photo if any of the following applies. This list is exhaustive:

Image content

• nudity, sexual or suggestive depictions
• racist, antisemitic, sexist, or otherwise hateful content, as well as anti-constitutional symbols
• depictions of violence, weapons, disturbing motifs
• insults, humiliation, or content directed against specific people
• advertising, political messages, or third-party brands as the subject of the image
• recognisable minors

Place and surface

• traffic signs, traffic lights, and signal installations
• rail infrastructure, signals, and public transport vehicles
• escape routes, emergency call points, fire service access routes
• monuments, memorials, artworks, sacred buildings
• graves and cemeteries
• government buildings, police, courts, hospitals
• places where applying a sticker clearly creates a hazard or causes damage

Other

• no recognisable sticker in the image
• the photo was obviously not taken at the stated location
• identical duplicate uploads
• find location or image content was blocked after a justified report
• recognisably missing rights to the image

Every review is done by a human. No automated content detection, face recognition, or AI-supported decision-making is used. No automated decision within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR takes place.

Before publication we look at every photo and blur by hand:

• faces and other features by which people could be recognised
• vehicle registration plates
• name, doorbell, and house signs
• screens, documents, and ID cards

If that is not enough to publish the photo, we reject it.

Automated pre-check — what actually happens: We technically compare location and image content against block lists. A match never leads to automatic rejection, but only means the photo is held for separate human review.

Location processing: If the photo contains GPS data, we read it in your browser. The map pin is then offset by 100 to 250 metres before it is stored. We do not store exact coordinates.

Processing time: usually under 24 hours.

Notification of the decision: Because we deliberately do not collect contact details for uploads, we cannot notify you actively. We record the outcome and reasoning for your image ID; you can retrieve it at any time via the status page. This fulfils our obligation to provide reasons under Art. 17 DSA within the information available to us.

Logging: Every decision is recorded with timestamp and reason in a tamper-proof log.