Zones, not dots: how Waylo handles location
Waylo needs to know you’re in the same place as someone else. It never needs to know exactly where you’re standing. Here’s the difference.
To show you who’s waiting with you, Waylo has to know you’re at the same place. That’s it. It doesn’t need, and doesn’t share, where exactly you’re standing.
What other people see
Other people see a zone: a short, human label for the part of the place you’re in.
- At an airport: Concourse B or Gate B12
- At a station: Platform 5 or Coach 3
- At a library: Floor 3
- At a café: Upstairs
- At a venue: Section 104
Never a pin on a map, never a distance in metres, never a trail of where you’ve been. And if you’d rather not show even the zone, you can turn it off in Privacy & safety.
How Waylo knows where you are
When you open the app, it asks your phone for one location fix and suggests the place you’re most likely at: “You’re at Café Rumi”. You confirm it, or search for somewhere else.
To show you’re really there, you can verify your check-in by scanning a table code, an event ticket or your boarding pass. Verified people get a small badge, and some rooms (like the Delay Squad for your flight) are only open to them. We read the flight, train or venue from what you scan; we don’t keep a picture of it.
When you open the app again clearly outside the place, Waylo starts your last call, just as if you’d tapped Leave.
Who decides who sees you
You do. Visibility is set by the person being seen, not the person looking:
- Everyone checked in here (the default)
- Women only
- Only people on my trip: the same flight, train, course or section
Other people’s filters can only narrow what they see, never widen it.
Waiting rooms are anonymous
Some places call for more privacy than others. In clinics and government offices, you appear as an alias like Quiet Owl or Silver Heron, with no name and no photo. You can still play a word duel with the person across the room. If you get called in, the game pauses and they’re told you had to go. Never why.
