Privacy policy

Luc Smits is the controller under the GDPR. Contact: parkind@lucsmits.com.

Parkind asks to use your location while the app is open, never in the background, to find the bays nearest you. It is used on your phone, except in the two cases below. The location permission is yours to control: you can deny it, or revoke it at any time in your phone’s settings, and the app still works; you search for a destination instead.

Your position leaves the phone in two cases:

• Address search. While you type a destination, the app sends your last known position (to about a metre) with the text to Photon, so nearby places come first.
• Bays outside the council cities. To fetch OpenStreetMap bays, the app sends the place you are looking at, rounded to about 100 metres, to Parkind’s server. The server keeps the answer briefly in memory, under that rounded point.

Search is answered by Photon (photon.komoot.io), run by komoot GmbH in Germany. It is an independent third-party service. It receives what you type, the position described above, and your phone’s IP address; see komoot’s privacy policy. Parkind does not receive your searches. Recent destinations stay on your phone.

• Online map. Tiles and label fonts come from OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org), which sees your IP address and the part of the map being drawn.
• Map packs and bay data. Both come from Parkind’s server and file storage. The app sends no location with these requests.

When you tap “Still here” or “Gone”, or add a missing bay, the app sends the bay (or the pin you placed and the number of spaces, if you gave one) and a random number your copy of the app made when it was installed: the install ID.

The server stores a scrambled form of the install ID, made with a secret key, and never the ID itself. It is used only to allow one report per bay per day, a limited number of reports and three new bays per day from each phone, and so that you cannot confirm a bay you added yourself. No location, name, account, IP address or free text is stored with a report or a bay.

Reports count towards what a bay shows for 90 days. A bay you add is shown to every driver, marked unconfirmed, until two other drivers say it is still there; two saying it is gone take it off the map, and Parkind may approve or remove it by hand. Reports on OpenStreetMap bays are stored the same way, in a table of their own, and are never sent to OpenStreetMap. Added bays are never mixed into council records.

Retention. The scrambled install ID on a report or an added bay is kept, with no fixed end date, for as long as that report or bay is in Parkind’s records. It is what lets Parkind tell drivers apart, so one phone cannot vote twice or confirm its own bay, and it keeps what drivers are shown accurate. It is deleted earlier on request: email parkind@lucsmits.com with the install ID shown on the app’s About screen. This period will be reviewed as the app grows. The bay data itself is kept.

The install ID, recent destinations, your reports and added bays, the last bay you navigated to, your walking distance setting, a copy of the bay data and any map packs you downloaded. Deleting the app deletes them.

When you navigate to a bay, the app opens Apple Maps or Google Maps with the bay’s position. When you share a bay, your phone’s share sheet sends a description and a Google Maps link to the app you pick. Nothing happens until you tap; from there, that app’s own privacy policy applies.

• Position sent for address search and OpenStreetMap bays: our legitimate interest in giving you the nearby results you asked for (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Reports and added bays: our legitimate interest in keeping bay data accurate and the app free of abuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object; see below.
• Serving bay data, map packs and address search: our legitimate interest in running the app you installed (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

You do not have to provide any data. Parkind makes no automated decisions about you.

Under the GDPR you can ask for access to, correction or deletion of, or restriction of personal data about you, and object to its use. Email parkind@lucsmits.com.

Parkind has no accounts, so it can only find your data if you send the install ID of your copy of the app, shown in the app’s About screen. Without it, nothing stored can be tied to you.

You may complain to a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR), in particular in the EU member state where you live. German data protection law applies alongside the GDPR. Parkind is for drivers and sets no minimum age.

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.