Privacy policy

1. Who is responsible

4TheKeepers is an independent project based in Lausanne, Switzerland. For any request, including the publisher's full identity, write to contact@4thekeepers.com: we answer within 30 days.

For any data-related question: contact@4thekeepers.com.

2. What this policy covers

The 4thekeepers.com website and its early-access list. The mobile app is not published yet: this policy will be completed at launch, and you will be notified.

The app's guiding principle, worth knowing now: your cards, with their photos and PDF documents, are stored on your phone. If you create an account (optional), they are copied to our server hosted by Supabase in Zurich (Switzerland), under your identifier, so they can be found on another device; deleting the account, from inside the app, erases that copy. Without an account, the only data that leaves your device is what you give the assistant to read: the text of a card when you ask a question, a screenshot, the photo of a business card or a voice note when you hand one over. The QR code of a business card, for its part, is read on your phone and goes nowhere. That content passes through our server, which relays it to Google Gemini without storing it, and serves no other purpose. Added to that are a report, when you send one, what you type to look up the place of a meeting, and the area chosen on the Activities page (see below).

3. Data we process

• Early access: your email address, your first name if you give it (it is optional, and it only serves to personalise the launch email), the language of the site and the date you signed up. Nothing else: no last name, no age, no password, no account. There is nothing to sign in to.
• Technical data: IP address and server logs, kept by our hosting provider for security and operations (30 days maximum).
• Audience measurement: aggregated, anonymous statistics (page views, country, device type) via Vercel Analytics, without cookies or personal identifiers.
• Live demo: if you ask the demo chat a question, its text is sent to our server and then to the Google Gemini API to generate the answer. We do not store it. Our calls come from an account established in Switzerland, where Google's terms apply its most protective regime, excluding human review and model training. We still ask you not to put personal data in it: this is a public demo.
• Reports: when you report a problem or suggest an idea from inside the app, what you write, the screenshots you choose to attach, the assistant's answer if you attach it (it may quote a card), and technical context (app and system version, language, open universe, plan, whether you have an account) reach us by email. Neither your email address nor your identifier is included. The attached answer is shown to you before sending, and you can remove it.

We collect no data about anyone other than you through the website. The cards you create in the app describe third parties: they stay on your device, under your sole responsibility. With an account, the copy on our server is never browsed for its own sake: only a documented request from someone who appears in it (access or erasure) can lead us to look for a card there.

4. Purposes and legal bases

• Writing to you when the app launches: your consent, given on the form and timestamped, which you can withdraw at any time (GDPR art. 6(1)(a)). That is the only reason we keep your address.
• Securing the site and preventing abuse: legitimate interest (art. 6(1)(f)).
• Reading your reports to fix and improve the app: legitimate interest (art. 6(1)(f)). Nothing leaves until you tap "Send".
• Suggesting places while you type the place of a meeting: performing the service you ask for (art. 6(1)(b)). What you type passes through our server to a place search service, with the app's language and an approximate point (that of the last place you picked, otherwise the city inferred from your IP address, both rounded to about a kilometre) so that nearby places come first. Neither your IP address, nor your cards, nor your account are sent. Nothing is stored.
• Suggesting activities and events around a city or an address (Activities page): performing the service you ask for (art. 6(1)(b)). Only the point of the chosen area (a city, an address, or your position if you pick "Around me", asked for at that moment), rounded to about a kilometre, the category searched and the app's language leave, through our server. The match percentage with a card is computed on your phone: nothing from your cards is sent. The chosen area stays on your phone; our server only keeps the places and events of an area, for a few days, with nothing about you.
• Making the seven-day trial last seven days, once: legitimate interest (art. 6(1)(f)). If you create an account, the start date of your trial is stored on our server under your identifier. It is a date and nothing else, and it serves only that purpose: without it, uninstalling and reinstalling the app would reopen seven days every time. It cannot be changed, and deleting the account erases it with everything else.
• Asking the assistant a question, generating a brief, having a screenshot, the photo of a business card or a voice note read: your consent, asked for inside the app before the first send and timestamped (GDPR art. 6(1)(a)). That content passes through our server, which relays it to the Google Gemini API. We neither store nor read it: the relay carries and keeps nothing. It exists so the access key is not embedded in the app, where it would be extractable. Google's terms exclude human review and using this data to train its models; it keeps that content for at most 55 days, solely to detect and prevent abuse, then deletes it.

You can withdraw this permission at any time, from inside the app: Settings, Permission section, the "Let Noa read your cards" switch. It takes effect immediately and asks for no confirmation. Everything else keeps working without it: cards, timeline and search send nothing to anyone.

5. Where your data is, and who can access it

• Early access list: Supabase, database hosted in Zurich, Switzerland.
• Website: Vercel Inc. (United States), global delivery network. Vercel acts as a processor under standard contractual clauses.
• Relay to the AI: Vercel Inc. (United States), which hosts the server that content passes through without being stored. - Answer generation: Google LLC (Gemini API), established in the United States. ⚠️ Google commits to no region: it may process that content in any country where it operates facilities. Transfers covered by the Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
• Reports: carried by our server (Vercel) and our mail service (Infomaniak, Switzerland), received in a mailbox hosted by Google. Never sent to the AI.
• Looking up the place of a meeting: our server (Vercel) relays what you type to Photon, the search service of Komoot GmbH (Germany), built on OpenStreetMap data. The map shown under a chosen place is the phone's own (Apple Maps on iPhone, Google Maps on Android): it receives the area to display, as when you open an address.
• Activities: our server (Vercel) asks Photon (Komoot GmbH, Germany) for the places of an area, Nominatim (OpenStreetMap Foundation, United Kingdom) for their details, opening hours included, and, for events, OpenAgenda (France), through the OpenDataSoft platform (France), Eventfrog (Eventfrog AG, Switzerland) in and around Switzerland, Ticketmaster (Live Nation Entertainment, United States) for concerts, sport and shows, and, in Helsinki or Brisbane, the city's open calendar (City of Helsinki, Finland; Brisbane City Council, Australia, through OpenDataSoft). They only receive the rounded point of the area, or the identifiers of the places. The "Google reviews", "Website" and "See the event" links open the site concerned, like any link.

We never sell or rent data. No third party receives your data for advertising purposes.

6. Retention

Your address is kept until the app launches, or until you ask us to erase it. Technical logs are erased after 30 days at most. Audience statistics are anonymous from the moment they are collected.

What you give the assistant to read: nothing on our side, the relay keeps nothing. At Google, 55 days at most, solely to detect and prevent abuse.

Your reports: for as long as it takes to handle them, and 12 months at most.

Your permission to send to the AI: the date and the version of the text you accepted stay on your phone for as long as the permission is active. Withdrawing it erases them.

7. Your rights

At any time you can: access your data, correct it, delete it, request a portable copy, object to processing based on legitimate interest, and withdraw consent.

To erase your address, withdraw that consent or exercise any other right, write to contact@4thekeepers.com: we answer within 30 days.

The permission to send to the AI is withdrawn from inside the app, without writing to us: Settings, Permission section, the "Let Noa read your cards" switch. Your cards are handled from the app too, Data section: "Export my data" produces a ZIP file with your cards, memories, meetings, conversations with the assistant, photos and PDF documents, as JSON and as readable text (that is your portable copy, GDPR art. 20 and FADP art. 28); "Erase all data" deletes everything from the phone and, when an account is signed in, the copy on our server.

You can also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC); in the EU, the authority of your country of residence.

8. Cookies

The site uses no tracking or advertising cookies, which is why it shows no banner. There is no session cookie either, since there is nothing to sign in to. Audience measurement works without cookies.

9. Security

End-to-end TLS encryption, database-level access rules (row level security) that make the early-access list unreadable from the browser, administrator access limited to what is strictly necessary, strict security headers on the site. No system is infallible: if an incident affects your data, we will inform you without undue delay.

10. Minimum age

4TheKeepers is for adults. We do not knowingly add minors to the early-access list.

11. Changes

If this policy changes substantially, in particular at the app launch, you will be informed by email or in the app before the change takes effect.