Terms of Use
Last updated: 17 October 2026
1. What Prospector Mate is
Prospector Mate is a mapping and record-keeping app for prospectors. It records your position, your finds and your outings on your own device, and it displays map data published by third parties, including government agencies.
2. Map data and land status
The maps, land status, watercourses, roads, mining features and other layers shown in the app come from third-party sources. We publish that data as we receive it. We do not survey, verify or audit it.
That data changes without notice, and may be incomplete, out of date or wrong. Land status in particular changes: a reserve open to prospecting one month may be closed the next, and whether prospecting is permitted can vary between two reserves of the same category.
Where the app cannot tell you the answer, it says so rather than guessing. A layer that marks an area as needing checking is telling you exactly that - check it.
3. What the app is not
What Prospector Mate shows is general information. It is not legal advice, it is not a survey, and it is not permission to enter, prospect, dig, detect, or take anything from any land.
Nothing in the app grants you a right of access, a Miner's Right, a licence, or the consent of a landowner or land manager.
4. Your responsibility
Before you prospect, it is your responsibility to confirm:
- the status of the land, and whether prospecting is permitted there,
- whether you need a Miner's Right, licence, permit or consent, and
- permission from the landowner, if the land is private.
Confirm these with the authority responsible for that land - the parks service or lands department for your state, the local council, or the landowner. Their answer governs, not ours.
You are also responsible for your own safety. Historic workings - shafts, adits, costeans and mullock heaps - can be open, unfenced and deep, and mapped positions are approximate.
5. Your account
You do not need an account to use the app. There is no sign-up. Download it, answer a few set-up questions that stay on your phone, and you are on the map. The free version and every subscription work without one, because the App Store and Play Store handle purchases on their own.
Your outings, tracks, finds, photos and waypoints are stored on your device - and in your own iCloud Drive or a cloud folder you choose, if you switch on Backup - and are never uploaded to us. No account of ours ever holds them.
The one sign-in the app has is optional, under Settings. It reaches the same account as the website login (section 6), and it is only useful if you hold something on that account - such as Victorian LiDAR, once it goes on sale on the website - that you want on your phone. It asks for your email address and nothing else; we email you a six-digit code. If you have no website account, there is no reason to sign in.
If you sign in, the app holds your email address and a record of which device you last signed in from. That is all. Signing in to the app does not sign you in to the website, and the other way round.
You can sign out, or delete the account, at any time under Settings, or delete it from the website (section 6). Neither deletes anything on your phone, and neither cancels a subscription bought in the app - only the App Store or Play Store can do that.
6. The website and the Web Map Viewer
The Web Map Viewer at prospectormate.com opens a .pmate file on a big screen. It has its own login, and what it lets you do depends on what your account holds.
Who can use the Web Map Viewer. A Prospector Mate subscription bought in the app includes the Web Map Viewer: link it from your account page, and the app proves the subscription to the store - nothing about your outings is sent. Whatever you have in the app, you have in the viewer, and no more. Without the app, a Web Map Viewer subscription is sold on the website.
Victorian LiDAR is coming soon. It is not on sale yet, in the app or on the website. When it is, it will be a separate yearly subscription, sold on the website only, as an add-on to a Prospector Mate subscription (app or web). It will show in the Web Map Viewer and, if you sign in to the same account in the app, on your phone. If the subscription underneath it lapses, Victorian LiDAR stops showing until that is renewed - cancel it from your account page if you do not want to keep paying for it.
The website login asks for your name and email address. We email you a code to sign in; there are no passwords. Signing in on the website does not sign you in to the app. If you choose to sign in to the app with the same email (section 5), the app can see what this account holds - that is how a subscription held on the website reaches your phone - and nothing else about the phone reaches the website.
Payment on the website is taken by Stripe, our payment processor. Stripe holds your card details and handles the charge; we never see your card. The current price and renewal terms are shown before you subscribe. Cancel from your account page and the subscription runs to the end of the period already paid for. Subscriptions bought in the app are cancelled through the App Store or Google Play, not here.
Your files stay yours. A .pmate you open in the Web Map Viewer is read in your own browser. It is not uploaded, not stored by us, and not linked to your login - close the tab and it is gone from the site.
You can delete your website account at any time from your account page. Deleting it erases your name and email and ends any subscription paid through the website, without a refund of the current period. An app subscription is not cancelled by deleting your website account - only the App Store or Google Play can do that - it simply stops being linked.
7. Purchases and subscriptions in the app
Purchases in the app are made through the App Store or Play Store, who act as the seller and handle billing, tax and refunds. The Prospector Subscription is a yearly or monthly subscription, and it includes LiDAR relief for Queensland, New South Wales, the ACT and Tasmania. Victorian LiDAR is not sold in the app: it will be a website add-on (section 6). Prices are shown in the store before you buy. Cancel or change a subscription in your store account; we cannot do it for you.
A lapsed subscription never locks you out of your own records. If a subscription ends, the app returns to the free version and you keep everything on your phone: you can still open your outings, load them onto the map, see your waypoints, print and export them, and import outings and waypoints. What you can no longer do is record new field work - start an outing, mark finds and waypoints, or navigate to a waypoint - until you subscribe again.
8. Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss, cost, fine, penalty, prosecution, injury, death or damage arising out of your use of Prospector Mate or your reliance on anything it displays, including any error, omission or delay in third-party data.
Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where our liability cannot be excluded but can be limited, our liability is limited, at our option, to resupplying the app or paying the cost of having it resupplied.
9. Your data
Your outings, finds and photos are stored on your device. See the Privacy Policy for what that means and what leaves your phone.
10. Changes
We may update these terms. The current version is always the one published on prospectormate.com, with the date it was last changed at the top. By continuing to use the app or the website after a change you accept the updated terms. If you have an account with us and we change them materially, we will ask you to accept the new version.
11. Contact
Questions about these terms, or anything else: contact us.