Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

BesideSafe is a personal safety application that helps you share your location with trusted friends and family, monitor safe travels, and send emergency alerts. We are committed to protecting your privacy and being transparent about what data we collect and why.

2. What We Collect

• •Your current location (latitude, longitude, speed) — shared only with friends you explicitly approve, and kept only while it is current.
• •Your route history is NOT collected. It is recorded and kept on your own phone, is never uploaded to us, and you can delete it at any time from the app.
• •Profile information (name, email, profile photo URL) — sourced from your Google or Apple account.
• •Device type (Android/iOS/Web) — used to optimize the app experience.
• •Push notification token — used to deliver SOS alerts and check-ins.
• •Friend connections — the list of people you have mutually approved.
• •Emergency contacts — phone numbers you manually enter for SOS alerts.
• •Usage data (online/offline status, last seen timestamp) — shown to your accepted friends only.
• •If you subscribe — which plan you are on and when it runs out, plus a record of each purchase so the same one is not applied twice. The purchase itself is handled entirely by Apple; we receive confirmation that it happened and nothing about how you paid.
• •Bluetooth sightings, if you turn FollowCheck on — the anonymous identifier a nearby device broadcasts, its signal strength, and the time and place you saw it. This is how the app can tell you that the same unknown device has followed you across several locations. These records are kept on your phone, are shown only to you, and are deleted when you turn FollowCheck off or delete your account. FollowCheck is off until you switch it on.

3. What We Never Collect

• •Your device contacts list
• •Photos, camera roll, or microphone data
• •Browsing history or app usage outside BesideSafe
• •Payment card details — a subscription is bought and charged by Apple. We never see a card number, and no payment processor of ours is involved because we do not have one.
• •Location data when Ghost Mode is enabled
• •Any data from minors under 13

4. How We Use Your Data

• •To provide core safety features: live location sharing, SOS alerts, drive and walk monitoring.
• •To send push notifications for pings, SOS events, and friend requests.
• •To display your online status and location to your accepted friends.
• •To improve app performance and fix bugs (aggregated, never individual tracking).

5. Who Sees Your Data

Your location and profile are visible only to friends you have mutually accepted. We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes. Our development team may access data for support and safety purposes — this access is logged and audited.

6. Services We Rely On

Some features cannot work without sending a request to someone else's servers. Those requests are listed here in full, because “we do not sell your data” is not the same as “no one else ever receives any of it”, and you should be able to tell the difference.

• •Google Firebase — hosts the app's database, sign-in and push notifications. It processes everything described above on our behalf.
• •OpenStreetMap (tile.openstreetmap.org and nominatim.openstreetmap.org) — receives the approximate area you are looking at, so the map can be drawn and a street address shown. This happens whenever a map is on screen, including while Ghost Mode is on: Ghost Mode stops your friends seeing you, and a map cannot be drawn without asking a map server for your area.
• •weather.gov, USGS, GDACS and OpenStreetMap's Overpass service — receive an approximate location when Place Alerts checks for severe weather, earthquakes, disasters or road works near you.
• •Brevo — receives the email address of someone you invite, so the invitation can be sent. It receives nothing else.
• •Apple and Google — handle sign-in, app distribution, and the maps app we hand you off to when you ask for directions. Apple also processes any subscription: it takes the payment, and tells our server that a purchase is valid and when it expires so the right plan can be applied.

7. Data Retention

We do not retain your route history at all — it stays on your phone and you can clear it whenever you like. Your current location is kept only while it is current. Your account data is retained until you delete your account. Emergency contacts are deleted immediately when you remove them or delete your account.

8. Your Rights (GDPR / CCPA)

• •Right to access: You can view all your data in the app at any time.
• •Right to deletion: Delete your account and all associated data instantly via Settings → Delete Account.
• •Right to portability: Contact us to request a copy of your data.
• •Right to object: You can disable location sharing via Ghost Mode at any time.
• •Right to correction: Update your profile in the app settings.

9. Data Security

All data is transmitted over HTTPS and stored in Firebase (Google Cloud infrastructure) with industry-standard encryption at rest and in transit. Access to your data is controlled by Firebase Security Rules that enforce authentication and ownership checks on every read and write.

10. Children's Privacy

BesideSafe is not intended for users under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us immediately and we will delete the account.

11. Changes to This Policy

We will notify you of significant changes to this policy via email or in-app notification. Continued use of BesideSafe after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact Us

For privacy requests, data deletion, or questions: support@besidesafe.com