Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to our community-powered public transport and taxi tracking application ("the App"). We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring that your personal information is handled lawfully, transparently, and securely in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

To provide our services, including accurate minibus taxi or bus sightings, route timelines, and community contributions, users are required to create an account. This policy explains what data we collect and your rights regarding that data.

2. Compliance with POPIA

We adhere to the 8 conditions for lawful processing as set out in South Africa’s POPI Act:

Accountability: We take responsibility for the data we process.
Processing Limitation: We only process data with your consent and for defined purposes.
Purpose Specification: Data is collected specifically for account management and transit tracking.
Openness: We are transparent about the information we collect.
Security Safeguards: We implement industry-standard encryption to protect your records.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Account Information (Required)

To log sightings and prevent spam, we collect:

Email address (used for account authentication and security)
Display name or Username
Unique User ID (assigned upon registration)

3.2 Technical & Ad Data

To support the App, we display advertisements. Our ad partners may collect:

Google Advertising ID (AAID)
Device metadata (model, OS version)
Coarse location data (IP-based) to show relevant local ads

3.3 Location Information (Precise Telemetry)

To provide live transit streams and accurate mapping feeds, the App requests permission to access your device's Precise Location Services (GPS). When you explicitly log a transit sighting using your device telemetry, we collect and store:

Precise geographical coordinates (Latitude and Longitude)
Textual representations of the stop name or landmark location

This tracking is performative and only runs in the foreground when you interact with the sighting feature. This location information is transmitted to our cloud database to be mapped within the route feed for other community members.

4. Advertising and Third Parties

The App uses third-party advertising services (such as Google AdMob) to serve ads. These providers may use cookies or advertising identifiers to collect non-personal information about your activities within the App to provide targeted advertisements.

You can opt-out of personalized advertising in your Android device settings (Settings > Google > Ads > Opt out of Ads Personalization).

5. Data Retention & Account Deletion

We retain your personal information as long as your account is active. In compliance with Google Play’s Data Safety policy:

Right to Delete: You may request the deletion of your account and all associated personal data at any time via the App settings or by contacting support.
Data Scrubbing: Upon account deletion, we remove your email, precise coordinates, and personal identifiers from our storage layers. Anonymized public transit sightings may remain to maintain community timeline history, but they will be permanently decoupled from your identity.

6. International Data Transfers

As we use cloud providers like Supabase, your data may be stored on servers located outside of South Africa. We ensure these providers maintain security standards equivalent to or higher than those required by POPIA.

7. Contact and Regulator

For any privacy inquiries or to exercise your rights to access/delete data:

Support Email: ozunuoden@gmail.com

Information Regulator SA: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za