Privacy policy

Your sign-in details. Your email address and password are held by our sign-in provider, Clerk. We never store your password, and your email never appears on your public profile.

Your Freebies identity. The handle you choose, your nickname and the avatar generated for you. This is all other members see.

Your listings. Item title, description, category, condition, handover choice and any photo you upload. Photos are re-encoded and stripped of hidden data, including the GPS coordinates cameras add, before they are stored.

Your pickup area. The town you pick, or your device location if you choose “use my current location”. A shared location is rounded to about one kilometre before it is saved, and is kept in a cookie on your device.

Requests and messages. The requests you send or receive and the messages exchanged after a request is accepted.

Basic technical records. Standard server logs such as IP address, browser type and pages requested, used for security and to keep the service running.

Other members only ever see:

• your handle, nickname and generated avatar;
• your activity counts, badges and member-since month;
• your listings, including the neighbourhood an item is in.

They never see your email address, phone number, legal name, street address or exact location. Items are shown by area only, and handovers happen at a handover point or by delivery, so you never have to meet in person.

• to run your account and show your public Freebies identity;
• to show items near your chosen area and work out distances;
• to deliver requests, notifications and messages between members;
• to keep Freebies safe: spotting scams, abuse and banned items, and acting on reports;
• to understand how the service is used, in aggregate, so we can improve it.

We process personal data under the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843). We rely on your consent when you create an account or share your device location, on the need to perform our agreement with you when we run the service, and on our legitimate interest in keeping members safe from fraud and abuse. You can withdraw consent at any time by removing your location or deleting your account.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising. We do use a small number of providers to run the service:

• Clerk for sign-in and account security;
• [Add your hosting and database providers] for hosting the app and storing listings;
• OpenStreetMap for map images. Your browser requests map tiles directly, so OpenStreetMap receives your IP address and the area being viewed.

We may disclose information where the law requires it, for example a valid order from a Ghanaian court or the police, or where it is needed to investigate a serious safety incident.

• Account and profile: until you delete your account.
• Listings: until you withdraw them, plus up to [add period] in backups.
• Messages and requests: kept while your account is open, so both sides keep a record of an agreed handover.
• Reports and safety records: kept up to [add period] after an investigation ends.
• Server logs: [add period].

Under Act 843 you can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• correct anything that is wrong;
• delete your account and personal data;
• stop using your data for a particular purpose.

You can delete your account yourself in Sign-in and security. When you do, your profile and listings are removed. For anything else, email [Add your privacy contact email] and we will reply within [add number] days. If you are not satisfied, you may complain to the Data Protection Commission of Ghana.

We keep cookies to a minimum and use none for advertising:

• Sign-in cookies set by Clerk, which keep you signed in;
• Pickup area cookie (freebies_pickup), which remembers the area and distance you browse in for a year. Clearing your browser data removes it.

Freebies is for people aged [add minimum age] and over. If you believe a child has created an account, email [Add your privacy contact email] and we will remove it.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top and, for significant changes, tell members in the app. Questions about privacy go to [Add your privacy contact email], or write to [Add your postal address].