Privacy Policy

The short version

Who we are

N4S ("we", "us") runs the N4S – Riders Community app for Android and iPhone and the website n4s.live, from Georgia. We decide how your personal data is used, so under Georgia's Law on Personal Data Protection (and the EU GDPR where it applies) we are the data controller.

Contact us about anything in this policy at [email protected].

What we collect and why

Your account

Your email address, a password (stored only as a secure hash), display name, handle, language, and anything you add to your profile: photo, bio and the optional "About me" details (gender, age range, driving since, languages). Gender is shown on your profile only if you switch it on. We use this to run your account, show your profile to other members and send you sign-in codes and important account emails.

Your rides

Make, model, year, plate number, photos, specs and description of the cars and motorbikes in your garage. Other members see your plate with the letters hidden (for example ••-123-••); only people you made your trusted people, and 1vs1 ride partners, see it in full. Photos are resized on our server. Please keep plates, documents, addresses and faces out of ride photos.

Your location

When you allow location and are visible on the map, the app sends your position to our server about every 30 seconds while it is open. The server immediately turns it into a fixed 200 m square (wider where few people live) and only that square is shown to other members. Your precise latest position is held in memory for about 90 seconds so we can find riders near you and show it to your trusted people; it is never written into a history. We never record your speed, direction or route.

• Background sharing is off unless you turn it on. Then sharing continues while the app is minimised, with a notification on your phone, and stops after 4 hours or when you close the app.
• Safe place: if you set one, we store that point and its radius so we can keep you off the map near it.
• Navigate: your start point and heading are sent with each route request to our own route server and are not stored.
• Be careful alerts you post are stored as a 100 m area for up to 3 hours. Others never see who posted.
• Meeting spots and meetups are places you pick on the map, not your device position.
• Track mode on closed roads: we store only that you confirmed the road was closed, and when. Run times stay on our server as private results; no position or route is kept.
• Play together: to start a song on two parked phones at once, both phones briefly send their position; it is checked and discarded within about a minute.

You can stop all of this at any time by turning off location for N4S in your phone's settings, by using the free 24-hour hide, or with Invisible mode if you have the Pass.

Requests, chats and groups

Connect requests and their answers, your connections, blocks, trusted people, messages, photos and GIFs you send, and the groups and clubs you're in. We store messages so they can be delivered and read on your devices. Photos sent in chats are re-encoded so their hidden data (including any GPS position) is removed, and only members of that chat can open them. Messages are protected in transit and at rest on our servers; they are not end-to-end encrypted.

Staff do not read your chats. A moderator sees a message only when someone reports it, and every such view is logged.

Identity verification

Verification is optional and free. If you choose it, you give us a photo of your driving licence, the car passport (registration certificate) of a ride registered to you, and two selfies taken live in the app. We use them to check that you are a real person aged 18 or over and that you own the ride. The checks:

• image quality, and a comparison of your selfie with your licence photo (the face measurements are computed in memory and never stored);
• an automated reading of the printed fields of both documents by Anthropic's Claude AI, which also looks for signs of editing and checks the selfie is of a live person;
• a review by our moderators, who make or confirm every decision. The automated checks never reject anyone on their own.

The documents and selfies are stored on a separate, locked-down server, are seen only by moderators with verification access (every view is logged) and are deleted 7 days after the decision. Afterwards we keep only the result: approved or not, the document type and country, whether you are 18+, the decision date and reason, and a keyed fingerprint of your personal number so the same document can't verify a second account. We don't keep your date of birth or document number. Before you start, the app asks for your separate consent to this processing.

Votes and activity

Your Top Rides votes, likes, skips and super likes, meetup sign-ups, reports you file, and notifications we send you (kept 30 days).

Purchases

The N4S Pass is bought through Google Play or the App Store. They handle payment; we receive the purchase status, product and renewal dates so we can turn the Pass on and off. We never see your card details.

Device and technical data

A push notification token for each of your devices, the app version and platform, and short-lived server logs (IP address, time, request) used to keep the service secure and working. If the app or our server crashes, a crash report is sent to Sentry; reports are stripped of message text, tokens, positions and identities before they leave.

When you contact us

Your emails to support and our replies.

Legal grounds

• To provide the service you signed up for: your account, garage, map, requests, chats, the Pass.
• Your consent: location sharing, background sharing, push notifications, and identity verification (including the biometric face comparison). You can withdraw consent at any time; it doesn't affect what happened before.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping members safe, preventing fraud and spam, moderating reports, securing and improving the service.
• Legal obligations: for example keeping purchase records or answering lawful requests from authorities.

What other members see

• Your display name, handle, profile photo, bio, Verified badge and the "About me" details you chose to show.
• Your published rides, with the plate letters hidden.
• Your approximate 200 m area while you're visible on the map. Members who are not verified see only your ride, not your name. With Ghost mode (Pass) only your connections see you.
• Your exact point only to the trusted people you chose, and to a 1vs1 ride partner for 2 hours.
• Meetup sign-ups show as a count; only your connections see your name.

Who else handles your data

We use these service providers. They process data only on our instructions and for the purpose listed.

Maps, address search and routes come from OpenStreetMap data on our own servers, so your searches and routes don't go to a map company.

We may also disclose data when Georgian law requires it, to protect someone from serious harm, or as part of a sale or merger of N4S (you would be told first). We never sell personal data.

Transfers outside Georgia

Some providers above are in the EU or the United States. Where data leaves Georgia, we rely on the protections Georgian law allows, such as the provider's data processing agreement and standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

Deleting your account

Delete your account in the app under Profile › Settings › Delete account. You are signed out everywhere at once. After 30 days we remove your profile, rides, ride photos, chat photos and linked sign-ins. Text messages you sent stay in the other person's conversation under the name "Deleted member". We keep the minimum needed for fraud prevention and the law, such as purchase records and the verification fingerprint. Deleting your account does not cancel an N4S Pass: cancel it in Google Play or the App Store. See Delete your account for the steps and the email route.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what data we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct data that is wrong (most of it you can edit in the app);
• delete your data, or stop or limit how we use it;
• withdraw any consent you gave.

Email [email protected] from the address on your account. We answer within the time Georgian law requires, at the latest within one month. If you're unhappy with our answer you can complain to Georgia's Personal Data Protection Service (personaldata.ge), or to the data protection authority in your country if you live in the EU.

Adults only

N4S is only for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a minor is using N4S, tell us at [email protected] and we will close the account. See our child safety standards.

Security

Connections to N4S are encrypted. Passwords are hashed with Argon2id. Staff accounts need two-factor sign-in, and every staff action is logged. Verification files live on a separate server that can only be reached from our main server. No system is perfect; if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change matters, we tell you in the app before it applies.