Privacy

Welcome 👋

We understand that privacy is crucial when sharing your location and content. That’s why we’ve prepared this Privacy Policy to make sure that you are aware of our practices. This policy applies to your use of the Refuge mobile application and any other services (“Services”) that Refuge SAS (“Refuge”, “We”, “Us”, “Our Team”) may offer.

Summary

To make it short and sweet, we’ve highlighted the most important and useful information in this section. Though they provide a great summary of our Privacy Policy, we still recommend that you to carefully review the Policy in full.

When you use our Services, you share information with Refuge and companies within our corporate family. Refuge SAS is the data controller and responsible for processing your data.

To create your account, we only require a valid email address and password. Your email address is used to authenticate your account and to recover your password if you lose it. Your password is required to make sure you are the only person able to log into your Refuge account. Refuge will never be able to see your password nor will any member of Our Team ever ask for it. Your password is encrypted and safely stored by Firebase, Inc. a subsidiary of Google LLC.

Refuge is a location-based application. In order to provide you with the Services, we need to access and store your location data.

In order to offer our services, we may need to transfer your information to third parties based outside the European Union. More information can be found about this in the next section: How we share information.

You can always email us at contact@refuge.camp if you have questions about our Privacy Policy, if you want access to your data, if you want us to correct your data, or if you want us to delete it. More information about this can be found in the section titled Control over your information.

We have a data deletion and retention policy in place that details how long we store your information. As a general rule, we store the information we collect as long as you are actively using the Refuge app. If you haven’t opened or used the app for more than 36 months, we may delete most of the data collected by us. For details, have a look at How long we keep your information.

If you’re based in the European Union, you can always file a complaint with the supervisory authority in your Member State. For example, if you’re based in France you can file a complaint with the CNIL.

You have the right to provide us with instructions on how to handle the deletion and retention of your personal data after your death.

What information does Refuge collect

We collect three categories of information : information you provide (1), information we may get when you use Refuge (2) and information we collect from third parties (3).

Information you provide

When you interact with our services, we collect information that you choose to share with us.

Registration. When you register through the app, you provide us with an email address and password. During registration, you will receive a confirmation email to verify that you are the owner of the email address you entered. This is how we’re able to verify your Refuge account.

Username. You can change your username at any time in your Settings.

Profile picture. Add a profile picture to make it easier and more fun to interact with your friends. You will be able to change your photo at any point in time in your Settings.

Location. Refuge is a location-based service. In order for the app to fully function we need permission to note your precise location and store your location data. We only need permission to use your location when the app is running. We will never ask for permission to access your location in the background. You provide us with your location through the permission settings on your phone. We collect your location using methods that include GPS, wireless networks, cell towers, WiFi access points, and other sensors, such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses. If, for whatever reason, you’re letting someone else use your phone, you can disable location sharing to keep their location private as well as prevent any misunderstandings about your location.

Communications. You also provide us with any other information you send through our Services, such the comments you post and the emojis you share.

Information we may get when you use Refuge

When you use our Services, we collect information about how you use those Services so we can provide you with a better experience. Here are some examples:

Usage information. We collect information with regard to your activity on Refuge. For example: the time you spend on the map, the number of comments you post, the number of refuges you save, the categories you prefer to look into, when you take a screenshot, and so on. This helps us understand what you like, and what we should improve.

Device information. We collect a variety of device-specific information, such as the battery level, the BSSIDs of WiFi terminals, as well as the SSIDs but only in a temporary manner and for statistical purposes, whether or not headphones are connected, phone name, phone hardware model, operating system version, your phone’s advertising identifier, unique application identifiers, unique device identifiers, phone language, wireless network names, IP addresses, and general mobile network information. This helps us protect your security, fix bugs, and improve the accuracy of your geolocation.

Information we collect from third parties

We may collect information from other companies that are owned or operated by us—or any other third-party sources—and combine that with the information we normally collect through our Services. For example, we may obtain information from third parties to help identify what you’re passionate about. Be sure we’ll never share information about your exact location with anyone.

How we use information

Our goal is to provide the best possible service to help you find, capture and share the world’s most fascinating places for photos and videos. Because of the nature of our platform, it only makes sense to provide you with a Service based on your current location.

We may use your information : to develop, operate, improve, deliver, maintain and protect our services ; to send you communications, including by email when we respond to direct support inquiries ; to monitor and analyze trends like movement patterns (predict your movement patterns based on your location data), statistical studies (creating statistical studies on an anonymized basis without disclosing your identity or even your name), registration statistics (determining which user segments are statistically relevant to the different studies that Refuge conducts on an aggregated basis), interactions (studying how you interact and connect with your friends on Refuge) ; to personalize and or contextualize your experience by sorting out tags in a way that better reflects your preferences ; to enhance the safety and security of our products and Services (detecting and preventing excessive practices like spam) ; to send you push notifications (only for important events or interactions that we think you want to know about) ; to verify your identity and prevent fraud, unauthorized or illegal activity ; to store information locally on your device so that you can open the app and view content faster ; to enforce our Terms of Use and other usage policies.

Bases for using your information

As an EU-based company, we are only allowed to use your personal information under specific conditions. These conditions are called “legal bases” and, at Refuge, we typically rely on one of four :

Contract. One reason we might use your information is because it’s necessary to provide our services to you as described in our Terms of Use.

Legitimate interest. Another reason we might use your information is because we have a legitimate interest in doing so. For example, we need to use your information to provide and improve our services, including protecting your account, providing customer support, and helping you connect with other Refuge users. An important point to understand about legitimate interest is that our interests don’t outweigh your right to privacy. So we only rely on legitimate interest when we think the way we are using your data doesn’t significantly impact your privacy or would be expected by you.

Consent. In some cases we may ask for consent to use your information for specific purposes. If we do, we’ll make sure you can revoke your consent in our Services our through your device permissions. Even if we’re not relying on consent to use your information, we may ask you for permission to access data like contracts and location.

Legal obligation. We may be required to use your personal information to comply with the law when we have to respond to legal obligations or need to take action to protect our users.

How we share information

We may share your information with other Refuge users. Specifically : information about you, such as your username or profile picture ; information about how you’ve interacted with the Service such as the day you joined, the number of refuges you’ve added to your favorites or shared ; and any other information you’ve consented for us to share.

We may share your information with our affiliates. That means that we may share information with entities within the Refuge SAS family of companies.

We may share your information with third parties. Specifically : with service providers and partners who perform services on our behalf and business partners that provide services and functionality ; with third parties for legal reasons if we reasonably believe that disclosing the information is needed (to comply with any valid legal process, governmental request or applicable law, rule, or regulation ; to investigate, remedy, or enforce potential Terms of Service violations ; to protect the rights, property, and safety of us, our users, or others ; or to detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns) ; or with other third parties with whom we may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable or de-identified information.

We may also share information with third parties as part of a merger or acquisition. If Refuge SAS gets involved in a merger, asset sale, stock sale, share sale, financing liquidation or bankruptcy, or acquisition of all or some portion of our business to another company, we may share your information with that company before and after the transaction closes. Things like that can happen in the wild world of Tech.

Also, be aware that other Refuge users may take screenshots of the app and/or share some information about their interactions with you on Refuge.

Third-Party Content and Integrations

Our services may also contain third-party links and include third-party integrations. Through these links and third-party integrations, you may be providing information (including personal information) directly to the third party, us, or both. You acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. As always, we encourage you to review the pricacy policies of every third-party service that you visit or use, including those third parties you interact with through our Services.

How long we keep your information

We store your information as long as necessary and as long as you’re a user of our service. We have different retention protocols in place depending on the information. As a general rule, we store the information we collect as long as you are actively using Refuge. If you haven’t opened or used the app for more than 36 months, we may delete most of the data we’ve collected unless you send us a request to keep it up. For example, if you mainly use Refuge when you’re traveling to a new country and have done that just once in 36 months, we won’t delete your account. Also note that we aggregate or anonymize information for certain purposes such as data analytics. Once we’ve anonymized the data, we retain it indefinitely.

The data that we store for as long as you are actively using Refuge include : your username, your profile picture, your email, your encrypted password, your location data, your device and usage information. We may store additional data like your age, phone number, name or address book if we ever, for any reason, obtain your permission to collect or access those data in the future.

Of course, we also respect your requests for account deletion. The following section Control over your information, provides more information on how to delete your account.

Our team takes data deletion and retention very seriously. As a basic principle, we only keep the data we need to provide you with our Services.

Control over your information It is very important to us that you have control over your information. Here are some ways for you to adjust or revoke access to your information:

Location. You can prevent Refuge from accessing your location data at any time by adjusting your device’s settings. Just remember we will no longer be able to locate you when you open the app. It only makes sense for you to open Refuge when you’ve allowed our Service to access your location.

Access. We strive to let you access and update most of the personal information that we have about you. Most of this can be done in the profile section of the app. If you need to access, update, or delete any other personal information that we may have, you can contact contact@refuge.camp. Please note that our team will proceed to a mandatory identity check before we can provide access to your information.

Account deletion. We don’t like seeing you leave us but if, for some reason, you want to delete your account you can always contact us at contact@refuge.camp to request account deletion.

Account un-deletion. If you’ve asked us to delete your account… and then changed your mind, you’ll have up to 30 days to restore your account before we delete your information from our servers. During this period, your account will not be visible to other users.

Right to object. You have the right to object to our use of your information. With many types of data, we’ve provided you with the ability to simply delete it if you don’t want us processing it anymore. For other types of data, we’ve given you the ability to stop the use of your data by disabling the feature altogether. If there are other types of information you don’t agree with us processing, you can contact us at contact@refuge.camp.

Children

Our Services are not intended for—and we don’t direct them to—anyone under the age of 13. And that’s why we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. Additionally, you must be old enough to consent to the processing of your information in your country.

Revisions to the Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we’ll let you know one way or another. Sometimes, we’ll let you know by revising the date at the top of the Privacy Policy. Other times—especially if there is a major change—we’ll provide you with additional notice, such as adding a statement to our websites’ homepages or make sure to send you an in-app notification.

That’s all for now! 🥳

You can always contact us at contact@refuge.camp if you have any questions regarding the protection of your data.

Updated: December 11th, 2022

The Refuge Team