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TypVault

Location: the crime's address, not yours

The location question asks for the address of the crime: not your home, and not wherever you happen to be right now. It’s a question about the place, never about you.

What to enter

Section titled “What to enter”

If you know the address, say so, then give the street address and the city or area. If you don’t know it, you can describe the location instead: a landmark, an intersection, or a business name is enough.

Either way works. More detail on where something happened helps your program act on it faster, but a rough description is still useful.

Why this doesn’t point back to you

Section titled “Why this doesn’t point back to you”

It’s easy to worry that any address you type could give you away. It can’t, on its own. The address field only records where the crime happened. Your own address, your current location, and any device details are not part of this question and are not stored through it.

The only way this field could identify you is if you chose to write your own address into it. If the crime happened somewhere connected to you, you can still describe it in general terms — a cross street or a landmark nearby — instead of an exact address.

What happens to the address you send

Section titled “What happens to the address you send”

The address travels locked inside your tip, the same way as everything else you write. Only the agency that can act on your tip can open it and see the address, unless the tip is referred to another program, whose investigators can then read it too.

When that address is used to plot a map location, the platform looks it up from its own servers, after that opening is recorded. Your device or connection is never part of that lookup. So no outside mapping service ever learns who you are, what you’re using, or that you reported anything at all.

Section titled “Related”

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911 directly.