SafeNav — Privacy Policy

Effective date: 13 September 2026
Last updated: 25 October 2026

SafeNav (“we”, “us”, the “app”) is a navigation and location-sharing app that helps you route around areas you mark as dangerous, share your live location and trips with people you trust (“circles”), and send an emergency SOS. This policy explains what we collect, why, who it is shared with, and your choices.

Operated by Fonz Group Ltd, Broxhead House, 60 Barbados Road, Bordon, Hants, England, GU35 0FX.
Contact: [email protected].

SafeNav is used in South Africa and the United Kingdom, and this policy is written to meet POPIA (South Africa) and the UK GDPR.

Information we collect

• Precise location, including in the background. With your permission, SafeNav collects your device location — including while the app is closed or not in use — to power live location sharing, safe-zone and No-go zone alerts, trip/route sharing, arrival alerts, and SOS. Background collection only happens while you have location sharing switched on.
• Account information. Your email address and a display name. Your email address is used to sign in. Your circle members see your display name (and your profile picture, if you add one), not your email address. If you have never set a display name, an older account may show the part of your email address before the “@” until you change it: Settings → Account Settings → Username. Authentication is provided by Supabase. If you sign in with Google, we receive your email and basic profile from Google per their consent screen.
• “Watch my trip” sessions. If you set up Watch my trip, we store the destination and label, your expected arrival deadline, the state of the trip, the circle members you picked to watch it, and timestamps. Once the trip is watching, those watchers can see it. If you do not check in on time, they are told roughly where you were last heard from. Your location is collected as described above, and only while location sharing is on.
• Content you create. Circles you join and invite codes; safe zones, No-go zones and avoid zones (map areas, radii, and which type each is); saved places (e.g. Home/Work); shared routes and destinations; an optional profile picture.
• Device data. A push-notification token (to deliver alerts) and, while sharing, your device battery level (shown to your circle) and current speed.
• Diagnostics. Crash reports and basic diagnostic data (via Firebase Crashlytics) to fix bugs. We also keep a daily, app-wide count of certain actions (for example searches, offline map downloads, and routing requests) to measure what the app costs to run. The stored counts have no user or device identifier and are not linked to your account.
• Help assistant questions. If you use the in-app help assistant, the questions you type, and the conversation so far, are sent to generate an answer. We don’t store the questions or answers; we keep only a count of questions asked, to limit usage. If you report an answer, the question, answer and your comment are sent to us as feedback.

How we use your information

• Show your live location and trips to members of circles you belong to.
• Compute routes and directions, route around your No-go zones, and estimate journey times using live traffic where available.
• Send safe-zone / No-go zone entry and exit, arrival, and SOS alerts to your circle.
• Run Watch my trip: check in with you on the deadline you set, and alert the watchers you picked if you do not answer.
• Maintain your account and app preferences.
• Diagnose crashes and improve reliability.
• Read the feedback you send from inside the app, so a report can be acted on.
• Answer questions you ask the in-app help assistant.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your location for advertising.

Who we share it with

• Your circle members. Location, trips and destinations, battery level, and SOS alerts are visible to members of circles you join — that is the app’s purpose. You control this by joining or leaving circles and by turning sharing off.
• Service providers that make the app work:
  • Supabase — backend database, authentication, and delivery of shared data and alerts.
  • Firebase (Google) — push notifications (Cloud Messaging) and crash reporting (Crashlytics).
  • Mapbox — map display and geocoding/search.
  • OpenStreetMap services (Nominatim / Overpass) — place and road search. Your phone sends them the text you search for, coordinates you look up, points along a route when you search along it, and your IP address. They are public services run by others, and we have no data processing agreement with them.
  • Our routing server (Valhalla) — turn-by-turn routing. Start, waypoint and destination coordinates are sent to compute routes. It runs on a server we rent from Hetzner.
  • TomTom — estimates journey times using live traffic. It receives the points along your candidate routes, including where they start and end, through our own traffic service (a Cloudflare Worker), not directly from your phone, so it does not receive your name, account ID or IP address.
  • Cloudflare — runs the secure network in front of our routing server, traffic service and this website. Requests pass through it, including route points, your IP address and your sign-in token, which carries your account ID, email address and username (and your name and profile photo link, if you signed in with Google). The token is used to check you're signed in.
  • Anthropic — generates answers for the in-app help assistant. For the help assistant, only the text of your help conversation is sent; your location, zones and account details are not. Anthropic’s AI also reads the feedback you send from inside the app, when we review it.
• Legal reasons. We may disclose information if required by law or to protect safety, rights, or property.

Where your data is stored

Our main database (Supabase) is in Ireland. The providers listed above (Supabase, Firebase / Google, Mapbox, Cloudflare, TomTom, Anthropic, Hetzner and the OpenStreetMap services) may process your data in the European Union, the United Kingdom or the United States. Where that means your data leaves the country you live in, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision, where they apply. The OpenStreetMap services are the exception: they are public services run by others, and we have no data processing agreement with them.

Data retention

We keep your account data and content until you delete it, or until you delete your account. Concretely:

• Live location — the latest position only. Each update overwrites the last, and it is cleared when you turn sharing off.
• Zone presence (which safe zones or No-go zones you are currently inside) — the current state only, overwritten as you move.
• Account, circles, zones, saved places and destinations — until you delete them or delete your account.
• Shared routes — until you or the recipient deletes them.
• Crash reports and diagnostics — retained by Firebase Crashlytics for up to 90 days.
• Watch my trip sessions — the trip, its destination and its watcher list are deleted 7 days after the trip ends (including a trip that was cancelled or that arrived).
• Feedback you send from inside the app — kept for up to 24 months in the app’s feedback store, so that a report can be acted on, then deleted automatically. A short quote may be kept longer in our internal records where we have acted on it.

Your choices and rights

• Turn location sharing on or off at any time in Settings → Circle Management.
• Manage or delete your zones, saved places, circles, and shared routes in the app.
• Revoke location or notification permissions in your device settings.
• Delete your account and all your data in the app: Settings → Account Settings → Delete account. This is immediate and irreversible.
• Request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data by contacting [email protected]. Under POPIA and the UK GDPR you may also object to processing, ask for a copy of your data, or complain to a regulator — the Information Regulator (South Africa) or the Information Commissioner’s Office (United Kingdom).

Children

SafeNav is only for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if we learn an account belongs to someone under 18 we will delete it.

Security

We use industry-standard measures (encrypted transport, access controls via row-level security) to protect your data. No method is 100% secure.

Changes

We may update this policy; material changes will be posted here with a new “Last updated” date.

Contact

Fonz Group Ltd — [email protected] — Broxhead House, 60 Barbados Road, Bordon, Hants, England, GU35 0FX.