usage notes privacy

PRIVACY.md

@@ -0,0 +1,95 @@
+# Privacy policy
+
+Gearslip belongs to Twink Software LLC ("we"). This policy says what Gearslip sends off your
+phone, to whom, and why. Most of what Gearslip does stays on the phone.
+
+Last updated: November 11, 2026
+
+## What stays on your phone
+
+- **Your voice.** Speech turns into text on the phone. Gearslip never records or sends what
+  you say.
+- **Messages, calls, and contacts.** Gearslip reads them to show and speak them in the car,
+  and it never sends them anywhere.
+- **The certificate.** It stays on your phone. Gearslip never uploads, backs up, or logs it.
+- **Logs.** Gearslip writes a log of each connection to the phone. It leaves the phone only
+  when you share it yourself, for example by attaching it to a GitHub issue.
+- **Your location.** Gearslip uses it only while a car is connected, so the car's map and
+  weather work, and with Allow all the time, so the map keeps working with the phone locked.
+  It sends the location nowhere except to the weather service listed below.
+- **What your car reports.** Speed, fuel, location, and the like go only to the apps on
+  your phone that ask for them.
+
+## Usage notes
+
+Gearslip can send us short notes that show which cars it works in. They stay off unless you
+turn them on, in setup or in Settings. Turn them off, and they stop at once.
+
+- **What they carry.** The Gearslip version and which boxes you ticked, plus whatever those
+  boxes cover: the Android version and whether the phone runs GrapheneOS, the phone model,
+  whether a car connected that day, and each car's head unit, model, year, screen size, and
+  connection result, with whether that drive used the cable or wireless and whether music
+  went through Gearslip or over Bluetooth. If you tick it, how each drive went: how far the
+  connection got, how long it lasted, and how it ended. Settings shows the exact note.
+- **What they leave out.** Your name, accounts, location, contacts, messages, and anything
+  you type or play.
+- **How phones are counted.** A random number counts each phone once. We keep only a salted
+  hash of it.
+- **Your country.** Our server works out the country from the connection a note arrives on,
+  and keeps the country only. It sees your IP address, as any website does, and doesn't
+  store it.
+- **When they go out.** When you open Gearslip, at most once a day, and after each drive.
+- **Why.** To find out which cars, phones, and releases work, and to fix the ones that don't.
+  We never sell the notes, show ads, or share them with anyone, and nothing in them is used
+  to build a profile of you.
+- **Where they're kept.** On our server, which runs on Cloudflare. Cloudflare stores the
+  notes for us and doesn't use them for anything else.
+- **How long.** Two years. Older notes are deleted automatically.
+
+## Other services Gearslip contacts
+
+Each of these gets only what it needs, and each has its own privacy policy.
+
+| Service | When | What it receives |
+|---|---|---|
+| [Open-Meteo](https://open-meteo.com/en/terms) | When the car's dashboard shows the weather | Your phone's location |
+| BetterLyrics (lyrics-api.boidu.dev), [LRCLIB](https://lrclib.net), and KuGou | While the lyrics panel is open, for each song that plays | The song's title, artist, album, and length |
+| [GitHub](https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement) | Once a day, to check for an update, unless you turn checks off | A request for the latest release |
+| GitHub | In setup, if you choose to download the certificate | A request for the certificate file |
+| [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/privacy) | When you download a speech model | A request for the model file |
+| [OpenFreeMap](https://openfreemap.org) | When an app in the car shows a list of places on a map | Requests for the map tiles of the area shown |
+| [EasyList](https://easylist.to) | About once a week on Wi-Fi, while the browser's ad blocker is on | A request for the filter lists |
+| Any address you give | When you download a certificate from a link, or add your own filter list | A request for that file |
+
+Every request also carries your IP address, as any connection to the internet does.
+
+The web browser in the car searches with the engine you pick (DuckDuckGo unless you change
+it) and opens whatever sites you visit, like any browser. A bookmark's icon comes from that
+site itself. The map, music, and messaging apps you use through Gearslip are other
+companies' apps, with their own policies.
+
+## Your rights
+
+You can turn usage notes off at any time. Untick a phone detail in Settings, and our server
+drops the copy it kept. To see the notes we hold for your phone, or to have them all
+deleted, write to 9xgpevy3@anonaddy.me and include your phone's ID. It's the "id" line at the
+top of the note in Settings, under Usage notes, and you can copy it from there. We answer
+within 30 days.
+
+If you live in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you also have the right to
+complain to your data protection authority. We rely on your consent to collect usage notes,
+and you can withdraw it by turning them off.
+
+## Children
+
+Gearslip is for drivers, not for children under 13. We don't knowingly collect anything from
+them.
+
+## Changes
+
+When this policy changes, the new version goes here with a new date, and the release notes
+say so.
+
+## Contact
+
+Twink Software LLC, 9xgpevy3@anonaddy.me.