INeedHelp Privacy Policy

Effective date: 02 Oct 2026

Last updated: 09 Nov 2026

Data controller: Siarhei Kananovich, sole proprietor registered in Poland

Business name: Siarhei Kananovich

Registered correspondence address: ul. Grudziądzka 12, lok. 8, 80-414 Gdańsk, Poland

NIP: 5842820580

REGON: 522546255

Privacy contact: ineedhelpkonon@gmail.com

Contact phone: +48 571 830 202

1. Who we are

The controller of your personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

Siarhei Kananovich
ul. Grudziądzka 12, lok. 8
80-414 Gdańsk, Poland
Email: ineedhelpkonon@gmail.com
Phone: +48 571 830 202

2. What data we process

• Account data: your email address, username, the name you choose to show to others (optional), a hash of your password (never the password itself), your account status, and which versions of our legal documents you accepted, when, and in which language.
• Groups: the groups you own or belong to, your role in them, and invitations you send or receive.
• Alerts: when you raise an alert - the message you wrote, when it started and ends, whether it was cancelled, which groups it went to, whether it was sent to people nearby and the radius, and its location: the point where it started, and your current location with the time it was taken (for a manual point, when you set it). While the alert is active, the app sends your location up to every 10 seconds while you move (less often when your battery is low) and every 5 minutes while you stay in one place. An alert that starts without a current position - location is off or not allowed, or the phone has not found one yet - carries the last position recorded on your phone (section 3), however old, with the time it was taken, until a current one comes. The alert also carries your phone's battery level and whether it is charging, sent again whenever it changes noticeably, so that the people helping you know how long your phone may stay reachable. We keep the current position, its time and the battery level only; we do not keep a track of where you went.
• Your last known location: one point for each phone or tablet signed in to your account, replaced every time that device sends a new one. The app sends it while it is open, and in the background only if you turn on Enhanced Tracking or while an alert you raised is active. It is used to find the people an alert near them should reach (see section 5). Instead of your GPS position you can set a point on the map yourself (manual location); then that point is used.
• Nearby alert records: which accounts a nearby alert reached and when, which alerts you opened (used to show the sender a count of how many people saw it), reports about nearby alerts with the reason you wrote, and any pause of your ability to send nearby alerts.
• Devices: an identifier of your app installation, its push notification token, app version, platform, language and when it was last active - so that alerts and notifications reach your phone. When you sign out, the installation is unlinked from your account; the record itself, which then no longer says whose phone it is, is kept so that a notice to update the app can still reach it.
• Subscription: your plan (Basic or Premium), its status and renewal state, and the Google Play purchase token, stored encrypted, which we use to verify the purchase with Google. We do not receive your payment card details; Google Play handles payment.
• Reports you choose to send: when you send a crash report, a bug report or a suggestion, it contains what you wrote, the app version, device model and operating system version, recent entries of the app's own log (for crash and bug reports), your IP address and the app's user agent. Nothing is sent unless you choose to send it. The app's log does not contain your email address or password.
• Technical data: our servers record requests, including IP addresses and the app's user agent, in logs used to keep the Service running and secure. Logs do not contain email addresses or passwords.
• Correspondence: emails and other messages you send us.

The app also asks for permission to use Bluetooth (to connect a Bluetooth button you pair as a trigger) and to send notifications. We do not access your camera, microphone, contacts or photos.

3. Data that stays on your phone

Some things are kept on your device and are never sent to us: the nicknames you give other people, the list of people you blocked, your triggers and Bluetooth buttons, the pictures you draw for your widgets, your alert rules, a note on each alert you sent from this phone (its rule, trigger and message, kept for a year after the alert began), your app settings including the PIN for cancelling an alert, and the app's log (unless you send it with a report). The app also keeps on the phone the last position it recorded for your account, replaced by each newer one: it reaches us only as the position of an alert you raise (section 2), and deleting your account in the app removes it. Uninstalling the app or clearing its data removes all of this from the phone. Android also copies them, with the rest of the app's data on the phone but not the log, into your phone's own backup in your Google Account when backup is turned on in your phone's settings, and into a transfer of your data to a new phone; we never receive either, and restoring them brings them back.

4. Who can see your data

• Your groups: the members of a group see your username and chosen name. When you send an alert to a group, its members see your username and name, your message, your location and your phone's battery level, updated while the alert is active. The alert stays in their alert history, with its last location (the battery level is shown only while the alert is active), for as long as it is kept (section 8).
• People nearby (Premium nearby alerts): if you send an alert to people nearby, people you do not know who are within the radius you chose see the same as your groups: your username and name, your message, your location and your phone's battery level while the alert is active. Do not put anything in the message that you would not want strangers to read.
• As a sender, you see only how many people were reached and how many opened your alert, not who they are.
• Our administrators see reports about nearby alerts (including the reported alert, its location and the account's username and email) to decide on them, and the crash reports, bug reports and suggestions you send.
• Service providers who process data for us (section 7).
• Authorities, only where the law requires us to disclose data.

We do not show your email address or phone number to other users, and we do not sell personal data or use it for advertising.

5. How location is used

• During your alert, its location is shown to the people it reached, with the time it was taken (for a point set by hand, when you set it), so that they can find you. When a GPS position is more than 15 minutes old, they are also told that you may no longer be there.
• An alert you send to people nearby reaches them only around a position taken within the last 15 minutes or around your manual point; until your phone sends one, the alert waits for it.
• The last known location of each of your devices is compared with the location of other people's nearby alerts, so that an alert raised near you can reach you; it goes only to the one of your devices nearest to it. On the Basic plan receiving nearby alerts is always on; on Premium you can turn it off in Settings. A GPS position older than 24 hours is not used for this. A manual point is used until you change it.
• We never show your last known location to anybody. Other people see a location only from an alert you raised, which may be the last position recorded on your phone (section 2).
• The maps in the app are provided by Google Maps. To draw a map, your phone downloads map images from Google, which therefore learns the area being shown and your IP address.
• You can stop the app taking your location at any time in your phone's settings, or use a manual point instead. Your alerts then carry your manual point or, if you set none, the last position recorded on your phone (section 2), which can bring people nearby an alert only within 15 minutes of when it was taken. Nearby alerts reach you around your manual point or, without one, around the last GPS position your device sent, for up to 24 hours after it was sent.

6. Why we process data, and on what legal basis

• To provide the Service you signed up for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, performance of a contract): your account, groups and invitations, delivering your alerts and showing their location to the people they reached (also the last position recorded on your phone, when an alert has no current one), matching nearby alerts using your last known location, push notifications, and your subscription.
• To keep the Service safe and working (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, legitimate interests): security, preventing abuse and false alerts, handling reports about nearby alerts, investigating crashes and bugs you report, and defending legal claims. Our interest is a reliable and safe service for everyone using it; you can object (section 11).
• Where you choose (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, consent, and the device permissions you grant): location in the background with Enhanced Tracking, Bluetooth, notifications, and the reports you decide to send. You can withdraw consent at any time; this does not affect what was done before.
• To meet legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR): for example tax and accounting records of subscriptions, and responding to lawful requests of authorities.

7. Service providers and international transfers

We use these providers, who process data on our behalf or as independent controllers for their own services:

• Hosting: our servers and databases are run on infrastructure in the European Union.
• Google (Google Ireland Limited / Google LLC): Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers push notifications (it receives your device's push token and the notification text, i.e. the sender's username and the alert message); Google Maps draws maps in the app; Google Play handles subscription payments and lets us verify purchases.
• Zoho Corporation (ZeptoMail, data centre in the EU): sends emails such as sign-in codes, password resets and email confirmations.

Google may process data in the United States. Such transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and on standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission.

8. How long we keep data

• Alerts, with the records of who they reached, who opened them and reports about them: 1 year from the start of the alert, then deleted automatically.
• Last known location: only the latest point of each device is kept; it is replaced with every update and deleted when that device signs out of your account, when its app installation is deleted (below), and with your account.
• Account, groups and subscription: while your account exists.
• App installations: deleted after 6 months in which the app was not used on that phone, and with your account.
• Crash reports: 30 days. Bug reports: 1 year. Suggestions: after 30 days we remove who sent them (account, installation, IP address, user agent) and keep only the text.
• Sign-in codes: minutes, until used or expired. Sign-in sessions: deleted 7 days after they expire.
• Server logs: kept in a fixed amount of space; the oldest entries are deleted as new ones are written.
• Backups: a copy of our databases is made every night and kept for up to 5 weeks, so data that was deleted, including an erased account, disappears from the backups within that time.
• Statistics that we keep for up to 5 years are aggregated counts and contain no personal data.
• Records we must keep by law, such as tax and accounting records, are kept for the period the law requires.

9. Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app (Account > Delete account) or request it on our website at https://ineedhelp.konon.net/delete-account. Your sign-in is removed at once and the rest of your data - profile, groups you own, memberships, alerts, location, devices, subscription record, crash and bug reports and the records of accepted documents - is erased automatically, normally within minutes; suggestions you sent are kept without anything that links them to you. Any active alert is cancelled. A Premium subscription is managed by Google Play: cancel it there, or it keeps renewing.

10. How we protect data

We use encrypted connections, hashed passwords, one-time sign-in codes, access control, encryption of purchase tokens and of your session on the device, and monitoring of our systems. No system is perfectly secure, but we will inform you and the supervisory authority of a breach where the law requires it.

11. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• access your personal data and get a copy of it;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data deleted;
• restrict processing;
• object to processing based on legitimate interests;
• receive the data you provided in a portable format;
• withdraw consent at any time.

Write to ineedhelpkonon@gmail.com. We will answer within one month. You can also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority; in Poland it is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Danych Osobowych, UODO), ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warsaw.

12. Do you have to give us your data?

An email address, a username and a password are needed to create an account. Location is not required. Without it, your alerts carry your manual point if you set one, otherwise the last position recorded on your phone, if any (section 2); section 5 says what this means for nearby alerts.

13. Automated decisions

Who a nearby alert reaches is worked out automatically, from distance and the settings described in section 5. If five different people report one person's nearby alerts within 24 hours, that person's ability to send nearby alerts is paused automatically for 7 days; alerts to their groups keep working. An administrator reviews the reports and can end the pause, or, where the reports are confirmed, extend it. If you think a pause is wrong, write to us and a person will look at it. These decisions do not have legal effects on you within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR.

14. Children

The Service is intended for people aged 13 and over. If you are younger than the age at which the law of your country lets you agree to the use of your personal data yourself (between 13 and 16 in the European Union), you may use it only with the consent of a parent or guardian. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 uses the Service, or a child uses it without the consent required, contact us and we will delete the account.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If a change matters for how your data is used, the app asks you to read and accept the new version; you have 7 days to do so. Smaller changes, such as corrections of wording, take effect when published. The date at the top shows the last change.

16. Language

This policy is written in English. Translations are provided for convenience; if a translation differs from the English text, the English text applies.

17. Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about this policy or your data: ineedhelpkonon@gmail.com, phone +48 571 830 202.