Last updated 18 September 2026.
These are the terms on which you use locates.me. They are meant to be read, so they are written plainly. locates.me is run by Michael Stannard; "we" and "us" below mean him.
You choose a handle. You tell us the coordinates it points at, and you may
add a label, a postal address and a what3words address as well. We publish
all of that at locates.me/your.handle, so that anyone you give
the link to is taken to the place. You can change where a handle points
whenever you like.
What it is not. The location on a handle is the one its owner typed in. We do not check it, and we cannot know whether it is right. locates.me is not a navigation service, not a surveying service and not an emergency service. Do not rely on it for anything where arriving at the wrong place matters - and never give it to the emergency services in place of an address.
You need to be able to receive email at the address you sign up with, and you are responsible for what happens under your account, so keep the password to yourself. One person or organisation, one account.
Everything you put on a handle is published. Do not put anything on one that you would not put on a public web page - your own or anyone else's.
Three to sixty-four characters: words made of letters or numbers in any
language, joined by full stops or hyphens. Capitals and underscores are
treated as the same as lower case and full stops, so
Michael_Stannard and michael.stannard are one
handle, not two.
Some names are reserved - ones that would look official, ones that clash with parts of the site, and a few that read badly in a web address.
Handles are first come, first served. We may remove a handle, without a refund, if it is used to point people somewhere dangerous, to impersonate somebody, to harass anybody, or for anything unlawful. We will tell you why.
A handle is £24 a year, including any tax.
Because you are buying this online, you have a legal right to change your mind within 14 days of taking out a subscription, and to have your money back.
Your handle starts working as soon as you subscribe, which is the point of subscribing, and by subscribing you are asking us to start straight away. In the ordinary way that would mean giving up the right to cancel once the service had been provided. We do not take that position. If you change your mind within 14 days of a payment - the first one or any renewal - email hello@locates.me and we will refund it in full, whether or not you have used the handle.
You can cancel at any time from your account page, in the same few clicks it took to subscribe. Your handle then keeps working until the end of the year you have already paid for, and is not charged again. We do not refund part of a year outside the 14 days above.
Deleting your account cancels any subscription at once and no refund is given for the rest of the year, unless you are inside the 14 days. Your handles stop working immediately. The handle names are held back for 90 days and then anyone may register them.
Your card issuer is asked again a few times over about three weeks. If it still will not go through, the subscription ends and the handle stops working. We leave a little time after a failed payment before a handle stops resolving, so that an expired card does not take your link down the same afternoon.
We try to keep locates.me working all the time and we watch it, but we do not promise it will never be down, and we do not offer credits or compensation for time it is unavailable.
What you put on a handle stays yours. You give us permission to publish it, which is what you are asking us to do. The site itself, its name and its design are ours.
what3words is a separate service with no connection to locates.me. If you add a what3words address to a handle we publish it as a link to their site and nothing more.
Nothing in these terms limits anything that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or your rights as a consumer under UK law.
Beyond that, and because this is a small service costing a few pounds a year, what we owe you if something goes wrong is limited to what you have paid us in the previous twelve months. We are not liable for anything that follows on from a wrong or out-of-date location on a handle - see the box at the top of this page.
If these terms change in a way that matters to you, we will email you before it takes effect, and you may cancel if you do not want to accept it. The date at the top is when they were last changed.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live elsewhere in the UK or in the EU, nothing here takes away the protection of the consumer law where you live, or your right to bring a case in your own local courts.
hello@locates.me. We answer.