In this Techlore Talks interview, I sat down with Alexander Borsuk (co-founder of Organic Maps) to dig into something most people don’t treat as “sensitive data” until it’s too late: maps. Mainstream apps like Google Maps (and often Apple Maps) can learn where you are, what you search, and what areas you view—because the experience is fundamentally cloud-first. Even if you download an offline region, a lot of the “smart” stuff still tends to rely on server requests. Organic Maps flips that model. Alexander explains how the project was born after Maps.me was sold and later “screwed up,” which pushed the original creators to fork the last clean open-source version, remove trackers/ads, and focus on a “pure map experience.” The big takeaway: Organic Maps collects zero data about you. The only network activity is downloading/updating map files, and they’ve even disabled server logs. We also get into why offline-first matters for digital rights, what OpenStreetMap is (think Wikipedia for maps), and why OSM’s volunteer-driven detail can beat proprietary datasets—especially for hiking/trails. If you want privacy by design, not privacy as a marketing layer, this is one of the most compelling map conversations I’ve had.