Privacy policy

1.Who we are

ForkOut is published by Robin Schneider, a private individual (“we”). We are responsible for the personal data processed through the ForkOut app and this website.

For anything about your data, write to contact@forkout.io.

2.This website

forkout.io sets no cookies, runs no analytics and has no forms. Fonts and images are served from forkout.io itself, so your browser contacts no one else while you read it.

The site is hosted by Cloudflare. To deliver each page and protect the site from attacks, Cloudflare processes your IP address and the details of your request, on our behalf and for a limited time. We use them for nothing else.

3.What the app stores

In your groups

Group names; members’ names — a member can be added by name by someone else, and a name is all we store about them; expenses and settlements (title, amount, currency, exchange rate, date, category, note, payers and participants); the activity log of every change.

Everyone in a group can see that group’s data, so choose names and notes accordingly.

If you secure your account

Your email address, and your password, which we only store in hashed form.

To make the app work

• An account identifier, created in the background the first time you open the app, without asking you for anything. Until you secure your account, it lives on this phone alone.
• The day your account was last used, so that an account nobody uses any more can be deleted.
• If you allow notifications, a token that lets us send them to this phone.
• A copy of your groups on your phone, so the app works offline.
• Like any server, ours record technical logs (IP address, date and time, request) to keep the service running and secure.
• If the app crashes, or an action or a sync fails unexpectedly, a crash report: what failed in the code, the app version, technical facts about your phone (its model and Android version, language and time zone, screen, memory and storage, battery and connection), and a random identifier created for this installation, not linked to your account. It contains nothing from your groups, except, when our server refuses a change, that change’s identifier and amounts.

If you write to us

Your email address, what you write, and our replies.

4.Why we use it, and on what basis

• To run the service you ask for: storing and syncing your groups, computing balances, signing you in, sending notifications (performance of a contract, GDPR Article 6(1)(b)).
• To let a group keep its accounts with people who don’t use the app, from the name someone else entered for them, and to keep the activity log that lets members trust those accounts (our legitimate interest, and the group’s, Article 6(1)(f)).
• To keep the service secure and working, including crash reports that let us fix errors, and to prevent abuse (our legitimate interest, Article 6(1)(f)).
• To answer you when you write to us (our legitimate interest, Article 6(1)(f)) — or because the law requires it, for a request about your data or a report of unlawful content (Article 6(1)(c)).
• To personalise ads, where the law requires your consent: only if you agree (Article 6(1)(a), collected in the app).
• To meet our legal obligations (Article 6(1)(c)).

We never sell your data for money, and we never use the content of your groups for advertising.

5.Advertising

ForkOut is free because it shows ads, served by Google AdMob.

In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, a consent form from Google asks, before the app shows its first ad, whether ads may use your data to be personalised. Refusing is as easy as accepting, and you can change your choice at any time in Settings › Advertising › Ad privacy. If you refuse, ads keep coming, but they are not personalised.

In some US states, the law treats letting an ad network personalise ads as “selling” or “sharing” personal information. If you live in one of them, you can opt out in the same place.

Elsewhere, Google may personalise ads with your device’s advertising identifier, which you can reset or delete in your phone’s settings.

Whatever you choose, Google processes some data to show ads, count them and prevent fraud, such as your IP address. Google explains how in its own privacy policy, at policies.google.com/privacy.

6.Who else sees your data

• The other members of your groups, for that group’s data.
• Supabase, which stores your groups and your account in the European Union, and signs you in.
• Brevo, which sends the emails about your account — the codes, the notice when your password changes, the warning before an unused account is deleted — and our replies when you write to us. Brevo counts, anonymously, whether each email is opened and its links clicked; our plan doesn’t let us turn this off.
• Expo and Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging), which deliver notifications to your phone: they receive its token and the text of each notification — the group, who did what, and the amount.
• Google, for ads, as described above.
• Sentry, which receives crash reports and stores them in the European Union.
• Cloudflare, which hosts this website, and forwards the emails you send us to our mailbox.
• Google, which stores our mailbox (Gmail): the emails you send us, and our replies.
• Public authorities, only when the law requires it.

Supabase, Brevo, Expo, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Sentry and Cloudflare process data only on our behalf, under a data processing agreement. For ads, Google decides itself how it uses the data it collects, as a separate controller (section 5). Our mailbox is a personal Gmail account, which comes with no such agreement: Google stores it under its own terms.

7.Where it is stored

Your groups and your account are stored in the European Union, by Supabase, in Paris. Crash reports are stored in the European Union too, by Sentry, in Frankfurt.

Some providers process data outside the European Union, mostly in the United States: Google, for ads, notifications and our mailbox; Expo, for notifications; Cloudflare, to deliver and protect this website and to forward the emails you send us; Sentry, an American company, which may access crash reports from the United States. Google, Cloudflare and Sentry are certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Transfers to Expo, and to Supabase, a company based in Singapore, rely on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, as do the others’ should the Framework stop applying.

8.How long we keep it

• Group data: as long as the group exists, activity log included. A group is deleted for everyone 30 days after its closure is approved, or 90 days after nobody using the app belongs to it any more.
• Account data: until you delete your account. Deletion is immediate.
• Unused accounts: an account nobody uses for 24 months is deleted, as if you had deleted it yourself without erasing your names. Opening the app with a connection counts as using it. A secured account gets an email 30 days before, and opening the app or signing in keeps it; a silent account has no address to write to, and goes without notice.
• Notification token: deleted when you sign out, when your phone stops accepting notifications, or with your account.
• Server logs: 1 day.
• Crash reports: 30 days.
• Emails you send us, and our replies: one year after our last exchange.

9.Your rights

You can ask to access, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive it in a portable format.

The app does several of these for you: export any group as a CSV (access and portability), correct any expense or settlement, with the activity log keeping track (rectification), and delete your account (erasure).

To use a right, write to contact@forkout.io. We answer within one month.

If you think we haven’t respected your rights, you can complain to a data protection authority, such as the CNIL in France, or the one in the country where you live.

10.Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Settings › Account › Delete my account. It needs a connection, and waits until the changes made on your phone have reached our servers — otherwise they would be lost, for the other members of your groups too. It is immediate and final; a secured account confirms it with its password.

• What disappears: your email address and your password, your settings, and the link between your groups and your account.
• What stays: your groups and everyone in them, and the expenses, settlements and history you took part in — they belong to the groups.

You can also have your name erased in the groups you still belong to: everyone there then sees “Former member”. A group you left, or were removed from, keeps the name you had there. The activity log keeps each name as it was at the time: it is the record members rely on, and nobody can rewrite it — not even us, unless the law requires us to remove unlawful content.

Without the app

If you no longer have the app, email contact@forkout.io from your account’s address, and tell us whether your names should be erased too. We check that the request comes from you, then delete your account within a month.

An account you never secured can’t be deleted this way: it has no address, and nothing tells us which one is yours. Delete it in the app while you have it; otherwise it is deleted after 24 months without use.

11.Children

ForkOut is for people aged 16 and over.

12.Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top of this page.

13.Contact

Robin Schneider. Email: contact@forkout.io.

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