Privacy Policy

Information you give us

When you create an account and use Swervo, you give us:

• Account details. Your name and email address, and a password if you sign up with email. If you continue with Google or Apple, they share your name and email address with us (Apple lets you hide your email).
• Your profile. Your username, profile photo, bio and location (such as your city), and any website or vehicle you add. You choose your username when you sign up. If you sign up with Google or Apple, or the one you picked is taken, you get a random one (like rider48213) until you choose your own. You can change it in Edit Profile.
• Your garage. The vehicles you add: make, model, year, engine size, mileage, nickname and photo.
• What you create. Posts and their photos, comments, likes, routes and route photos, cruises you save, meets you host or join, friend requests, messages, group cruise chat and the reports you send.
• Messages to us. If you contact us, we keep your message and whatever you include with it, such as your app version and phone model.
• Premium. If you subscribe, which plan you have, when it started and when it renews or ends. It comes from the App Store or Google Play through RevenueCat (below). We never see your card details.

Safety Tracking contacts stay on your phone. The names and phone numbers you add as safety contacts are stored only on your device. We never receive them.

Your location

Swervo is a navigation app, so it uses your phone's location. You can allow or deny this, and change your mind, in your phone's settings. Without it the map can't show where you are, and navigation and cruise tracking won't work.

• While the app is open, your location puts you on the map, finds places near you and guides navigation.
• In the background, if you allow it, the app keeps tracking a cruise or navigation, or keeps Safety Tracking going, while the screen is off or you use other apps. On Android a notification shows whenever this is happening.
• Recording a cruise. While you track a cruise, the app backs up the track to our servers every few seconds, so the cruise can be recovered if the app closes. The backup is deleted when you save or discard the cruise. A saved cruise (its track, distance, times, speed and start and end places) stays in your account until you delete it.
• Posts can show the area you posted from: your town or city, with a map point rounded to about 5 km, never your exact spot. You see it before you post and can take it off.
• Photos you add (to posts, routes, meets, your profile or your garage) are uploaded without the location your phone saves in them.
• Group cruises. While you're in a group cruise, the other members see your live position. Your positions are deleted when you leave or the cruise ends.
• On your phone only. The app remembers your last known position, for up to 7 days, so the map opens in the right place. To help fix navigation problems it also keeps a technical log of navigation, including location points. The log stays on your phone, and old logs are deleted automatically.

Safety Tracking

Safety Tracking lets people you choose follow you on a map. It's off until you turn it on, and you decide whether it shares your location whenever the app is open or only during cruises.

Anyone who has your private link can see, while you're sharing:

• your first name
• your live position, direction of travel and speed
• your phone's battery level (in steps of 5%) and whether it's charging
• during a cruise, the route you've travelled so far, your planned route and destination, and the distance and time

When you stop sharing, your position, trail, route, destination and battery level are deleted straight away. After a cruise ends, the page shows it, without your battery level, for 2 more hours, then only its name, distance and time. If your phone stops sending updates (no signal, or the app was closed), the page keeps showing your last position for up to 12 hours.

You can make a new link at any time in Safety Tracking, and the old one stops working immediately. Only share your link with people you trust.

Who can see what

• Your profile (name, username, photo, bio and location) is public.
• Posts: you choose who sees each one: Public or Friends. Friends posts are only for your friends; public ones can be seen by anyone. Comments and likes show with the post.
• Routes you save are public by default, so other people can find, cruise and save them. Make a route Private and only you can see it. Cruises you record stay private unless you share one as a public route.
• Meets: public meets, and who's going, can be seen by everyone in the app. Private meets are invite-only and aren't listed for others.
• Group cruises: the members of a group cruise see each other's live positions and the group chat. The chat stays with the group cruise after it ends.
• Messages can only be seen by you and the person you're talking to, unless one of you reports a message: then we see that message. Your friends, and people you've messaged, can see whether you're online and when you were last active.
• Blocking: when you block someone, you no longer see each other's posts, routes, meets, comments or messages, they can't see your profile or send you friend requests or invites, and you stop being friends. We don't tell them, though they may notice.
• Friends: other people can find you by name or username and send you a friend request.
• Your garage, favourites and achievements are only shown to you.
• Reports: when you report something, we see what you reported, why, and any note you add. We don't tell the person you reported who it was.

Anything public can be seen, saved or shared by others, and we can't take back copies they make.

How we use your information

We use your information to:

• run Swervo: your account, maps, search, route planning, navigation, cruise tracking, posts, meets, group cruises, messages and Safety Tracking
• keep Swervo safe: review reports, remove content that breaks our Terms of Use and prevent abuse
• fix problems and improve the app
• email you about your account, such as a password reset or an important change to these policies
• send you the notifications you allow (below)

We don't sell your information, share it for advertising or use it to show you ads. The app has no third-party analytics or advertising trackers.

Usage counts. The app sends our own servers a count, for each day, of how it was used on your account: which features were used and how often (such as navigation, round trips, group cruises and offline maps), how often navigation had to reroute or failed, how many errors and requests to our servers and maps there were, plus the app version and your phone's platform and system version. They are only numbers, tied to your account: never where you were, what you searched for or what you wrote, and they aren't shared with anyone. We use them to fix problems and plan the app. Each day's counts are kept for about 13 months (400 days), then deleted automatically, and deleting your account deletes them straight away.

Notifications. If you allow notifications, the app gives our servers a push token: an address for the app on your phone, with your phone's platform (Android or iPhone) and the app's language. We use it only to send the notifications you've turned on: cruise invites and group cruise updates, messages, meet changes, friend requests and news from Swervo. A notification shows who it's from and what it's about, and a message's notification shows the start of the message (up to 180 characters). Depending on your phone's settings, they can show on your lock screen. Meet reminders and the next-turn notification during navigation are made on your phone and don't go through our servers.

If you're in the European Union, the UK or Switzerland: we use your information to provide the service you signed up for (contract); with your consent, for background location and Safety Tracking; for our legitimate interests in keeping Swervo safe, secure and working; and to meet legal obligations.

Companies that help run Swervo

We share information only as needed to run Swervo, with:

• Supabase, which hosts our database, accounts, file storage and live updates. What you store in Swervo is kept there.
• Brevo, which sends our account emails, such as the sign-up confirmation and the password reset. It receives your email address and the email, and records whether it was delivered and whether its link was opened, as described in Brevo's privacy policy.
• Mapbox, for maps, place search, directions and elevation. When you search, plan or navigate, Mapbox receives what you searched for, your position and the points on your route. Mapbox's map software also collects some usage and location information of its own, as described in Mapbox's privacy policy.
• Google and Apple, if you sign in with them, under their own privacy policies. When you post, your phone's built-in location service (Google's on Android, Apple's on iPhone) turns your position into a place name.
• goQR.me, whose service draws the QR code when you show a group cruise invite. It receives the invite link.
• The App Store and Google Play, which handle downloads and Premium payments. We never see your card details.
• Expo, Google and Apple, to deliver notifications if you allow them. Our servers send each one through Expo's push service, which passes it to Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) on Android or to Apple (Apple Push Notification service) on iPhone. They receive your push token and the notification: its text, and what the app needs to open it, such as the sender's name and photo or which meet or cruise it's about. See Expo's privacy policy.
• Sentry, which receives crash and error reports so we can fix problems: what went wrong, where in the app, the app version, and the phone's model and OS version. Reports never include your location, routes, messages, contacts or email, and identify you only by a random code. See Sentry's privacy policy.
• RevenueCat, which keeps track of Premium subscriptions for us. It receives your Swervo account's random id and your store purchase records (plan, dates, renewals and refunds), and no card details, as described in RevenueCat's privacy policy.

We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or as part of a merger or sale of Swervo, in which case we'll tell you before your information moves to a new owner. Otherwise it's shared only when you choose, for example when you export a GPX file or share a link.

Stored on your phone

To work quickly and offline, the app keeps some data on your phone: your sign-in (in your phone's secure storage), your settings, recent searches, your last known position, your Safety Tracking contacts, your meet reminders, a copy of what you've recently viewed (for up to a day), the offline maps you download, the navigation log and the usage counts it hasn't sent yet. Deleting the app removes it.

Our website doesn't use cookies or analytics. It remembers whether you picked light or dark mode, in your browser, and loads its fonts from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address.

How long we keep it

• Your account and profile: until you delete your account.
• Posts, photos, comments, routes, cruises and meets: until you delete them or your account.
• A cruise's backup while you record it: until you save or discard the cruise.
• Group cruise positions: until you leave or the cruise ends.
• Safety Tracking: only your latest share is kept, as described above.
• Messages and group cruise chat you send: until your account is deleted.
• Daily usage counts: about 13 months (400 days), then deleted automatically.
• Push tokens: until you sign out on that phone or delete your account.
• Crash and error reports: up to 90 days, then deleted automatically.
• Reports: as long as we need them to keep Swervo safe.
• Premium purchase records: as long as tax and accounting law requires.

When you delete your account, we delete your personal information straight away, or within 30 days if part of it has to be retried, except anything the law requires us to keep. We keep a record that the deletion happened (the account's random id and the dates, nothing else) for 7 days, so it can finish safely. Copies in backups may last a little longer, until they are overwritten.

Your choices and rights

• Edit your profile, and delete your posts, comments, routes, cruises and meets, in the app.
• Turn off location access, background location or Safety Tracking at any time.
• Choose which notifications you get in Profile → Settings → Notifications, or turn them all off in your phone's settings.
• Delete your account in the app: Profile → Settings → Account & Privacy → Delete account. Or email us at swervoapp@gmail.com from the address on your account; we'll confirm it's you, then delete it. Either way we delete your profile, routes, cruises, photos, posts, meets, the messages you sent and the rest of your account's information, and people who saved your routes lose them. What other people made stays theirs: their own cruises (even along your routes, without the link to them), posts, replies and the messages they sent you.
• Ask us for a copy of your information, or to correct it.

Depending on where you live (for example Canada, the EU, the UK or California), you may have other rights too, such as to object to or restrict some uses of your information, or to withdraw your consent. To use any of them, email us at swervoapp@gmail.com. We'll reply within 30 days, and may need to confirm the account is yours. We won't treat you differently for using your rights.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or your local data protection authority. We'd appreciate the chance to put it right first.

Security

The app talks to our servers over encrypted connections and keeps your sign-in in your phone's secure storage. No app or system is perfectly secure, so we can't guarantee your information will never be accessed without permission. If you find a security problem, please tell us at swervoapp@gmail.com.

Where your information is processed

Swervo is run from Canada. The companies that help run it may store and process your information in Canada, the United States and other countries, where privacy laws may differ from those where you live. We rely on their contractual commitments to protect it.

Children

Swervo is for people 16 and older. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If you think someone under 16 has an account, email us at swervoapp@gmail.com and we'll delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy: email us at swervoapp@gmail.com.