Location

TypVault asks for the address of the crime, not your home. The location step is about the place where something happened or is happening. It is never a question about you.

What this protects

The address you give travels locked inside your encrypted tip. Only the program you send it to can open it, along with any program your tip is later referred to.

To show the address on a map, the platform first has to unlock it. Each unlock is written to the audit record, along with the reason for it.

The map lookup itself runs on the platform’s own servers, after that recorded unlock. Your phone or computer never contacts a map service. So no outside map service ever learns anything about you: not your device, not your connection, not the fact that you reported anything.

The honest limit

Turning a written address into a map pin uses an outside lookup service. The platform’s servers send that service the address of the crime. The service never receives your tip, your identity, or anything about your device or connection, and the services used are chosen for how they handle what they are sent.

If the service cannot match the address with confidence, the tip shows no map pin at all. That is deliberate. A wrong pin is worse than no pin, so the platform prefers no match over a guess.

The map images an investigator sees are fetched as numbered map squares. Those requests carry map coordinates only, never anything you wrote.

Related

• Anonymity covers what the system knows about you and what it cannot know.
• Encryption explains how your tip is sealed so only your program can open it.
• Operator accountability explains how every read of a tip is recorded.

If this page does not answer your question, the program you report to can help.