Terms & Privacy

The short version

This map is a community archive of American malls, built from memories and photos shared by people like you, for everyone. When you share something here, you give Bright Sun Films Ltd permission to use it. Please only share things that are yours to share.

Terms of Use

1. What this site is

The American Mall Map is a community archive of American shopping malls: their locations, histories, photos, and the memories people have of them. It is made by Bright Sun Films Ltd and built for everyone to explore and add to.

2. Your submissions

When you submit a story, photo, or anything else, it becomes part of a public archive that anyone can enjoy. You also give Bright Sun Films Ltd permission to share, post, reproduce, adapt, and use it in any way, in any media, anywhere, with no time limit. That covers the map itself and anything we might make in the future, such as films, videos, books, or exhibitions. This permission is royalty-free, meaning no payment is owed for these uses.

We can also pass this permission along to partners who help us make and release those projects, such as editors, distributors, broadcasters, and streaming platforms.

You still own your content. This is permission to use it, not a transfer of ownership. You are always free to keep sharing your own stories and photos anywhere you like.

3. What you're telling us when you submit

The content is yours to share. You created it, or you have permission from the person who did, and you are able to give us the permissions above.
It doesn't violate anyone else's rights (copyright, privacy) or any law.
If people are recognizable in a photo, you're confident they are okay with it appearing publicly.

4. Moderation & credit

Submissions are reviewed before they appear. We may edit lightly for length or clarity, decline a submission, or remove one at any time. If you include your name, we will aim to credit you where practical. Anonymous submissions are welcome too.

5. Changed your mind?

Reach out to us and we will remove your submission from the site. If something has already been used in a published project, we may not be able to un-publish it, so please be sure before you submit.

6. About the map itself

Mall locations, dates, and histories are researched in good faith but come from many sources, so there are no guarantees of accuracy. And please: many closed malls are private property and genuinely unsafe. Don't trespass.

7. The usual

The site is provided as is, without warranties. We may update these terms from time to time, and the date at the bottom of this page will change when we do.

Privacy

What we collect

Only what you give us: your submission and, if you choose to add it, your name. Behind the scenes, technical basics like your IP address are used solely for spam prevention and moderation logs, never for advertising.

Cookies & tracking

No ad trackers, no analytics profiles, and we never sell data. The site stores a couple of small local settings in your browser (like your theme preference).

Services we rely on

The site runs on Cloudflare (hosting and spam checks), Supabase (database and photo storage), and Mapbox (the map itself). Watching an embedded video loads it from YouTube or Vimeo. Each of these processes basic technical data under their own privacy policies.