Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective 11 October 2026 · Version 3.13 · Zone Tick Pty Ltd
Version 3.13: the server functions the app and this website call now run in Google Cloud’s Sydney region, with a copy in the United States for older versions of the app; alerts and scheduled jobs still run in the United States until the database moves to Sydney (section 8). Nothing else changes. Supersedes version 3.12 (10 October 2026).
Version 3.12 corrects where your data is stored. Earlier versions said your account and app data was stored in Google Cloud’s Sydney region. That was wrong: our database was set up in Google Cloud’s United States multi-region, where your account records, messages, circle data and location are held today. Photos and recordings you upload are stored in Sydney. We are moving the database and our server functions to Sydney and will update this policy when that is done. Supersedes version 3.11 (7 October 2026).
Version 3.11: Community rewards are now paid from our own account through Airwallex, a payment company, into the bank account you add in the app, instead of through Stripe, so nobody signs in to anything else to be paid. Your BSB and account number go to Airwallex; we keep only the account name, the first three digits of the BSB and the last three digits of the account number. Adding or changing the account emails you and holds payouts for 7 days. Supersedes version 3.10 (5 October 2026).
Version 3.10 covers sharing your location on a schedule: the times stay on your phone; if you choose to stop when you get home, the point you set as home is stored with your account until you turn that off. Photos for safety reports are now taken with the camera at the time. Supersedes version 3.9 (3 October 2026).
Version 3.9 covers photos on Community safety reports: Google Cloud Vision checks each photo for nudity, sexual or violent content and faces before anyone sees it, we remove the location and other details a phone stores inside a photo, only members of the group can open it, and it is deleted with its report. Supersedes version 3.8 (2 October 2026).
Version 3.8 adds withdrawals: you can send your Community rewards balance to your bank from the app. We record each withdrawal as a payout, and collect nothing new. Supersedes version 3.7 (2 October 2026).
Version 3.7 updates the Community rewards split: we keep 10% of what the ads on Community pages earn us, 63% is shared between the people whose reports others read and 27% goes to the community fund. Supersedes version 3.6 (1 October 2026).
Version 3.6 added Community rewards. When they are on, we count which safety reports other Community members read, so that a share of what the ads on Community pages earn us can go to the people who wrote them, and a share to a community fund we give to the charity named in the app. An author sees how many people read a report, never who. To be paid, you set up a Stripe account: Stripe collects your identity and bank details, and we never see them. Supersedes version 3.5 (1 October 2026).
Version 3.5 added Community, for adults only: local groups, safety reports, friends and personal chats with friends. People in Community see only the name you choose there — never your account, phone number, email or where you are. Community messages and reports are kept for 30 days. It also covers chess (against the bot, your family or other players — who see only a random name like “Player 4821”), offers and news you can claim in the app, and, on Premium, Home, Work and School safe places that the app sets for you from your own location history. Supersedes version 3.4 (19 September 2026).
Version 3.4: Zone Tick can now send the occasional offer and a reminder before days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Both are off unless you switch them on, and you can turn either off at any time in the app under Settings → Notifications. Special-day reminders are scheduled on your phone using your App Store or Google Play country; no location is used for them. Supersedes version 3.3 (17 September 2026).
Version 3.3: on Premium, daily location history also shows when your phone was offline or had location switched off, so the day reads as a whole rather than as unexplained gaps. Your circle can also see on the family map when your phone was last moved or used (for example “Active 5 min ago”); only that time is shared, never the sensor readings behind it. Support requests and in-app reports are now handled in a private support channel on Discord, relayed by a server we run on Oracle Cloud in Melbourne, and answered by email from our Google Workspace mailbox, with Brevo and SendGrid as backup senders; all four are listed below. Supersedes version 3.2 (11 September 2026).
Version 3.2 added daily location history, a Premium feature: for subscribers the app records the route taken during the day and where they stop, so it can be viewed on a map. It is not recorded on the Free plan. Subscribers can switch it off in Settings, it stays private to them unless they share it with their circle, and it is deleted after 7 days. On the Free plan no location history is collected; the app keeps today’s route on the device only, to preview the feature, and that copy is never uploaded. That replaces the previous "up to 30 days" location retention. Supersedes version 3.1 (8 September 2026).

The short version

• We do not sell your personal information, and we never have.
• Your account and app data is stored in Google Cloud's United States region today; photos and recordings you upload are stored in Sydney, Australia. We are moving the rest to Sydney — see Where data is stored.
• Location is shared only inside the private circles you join, plus emergency contacts you choose during an SOS.
• The microphone is not always on. It activates only for features you enable, and only during a timed safety session you or a detected event starts.
• Emergency audio recordings stay on your phone and auto-delete after 7 days, unless you explicitly share one.
• Free plans show ads, but only non-personalised ones. Ad networks are not permitted to use your data to build an advertising profile, so there is nothing for us to sell or share.
• Offers and special-day notifications are off unless you switch them on, and your safety alerts never depend on them.
• Community is for adults only. People in your Community groups see only the name you choose there — never your account, phone number, email or where you are.
• You can delete your account at any time, from inside the app or from this website.

This policy explains what Zone Tick collects, why we collect it, who it is shared with, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. It covers the Zone Tick mobile app on iOS and Android and the website at zonetick.com. We have tried to write it in plain English and to be specific rather than vague — if anything here is unclear, email privacy@zonetick.com and we will explain it.

1. Who we are

Zone Tick is built and operated by Zone Tick Pty Ltd, an Australian company based in Victoria, Australia. For the purposes of the EU/UK GDPR, Zone Tick Pty Ltd is the data controller for personal data processed through the app and this website.

• Privacy enquiries: privacy@zonetick.com
• General support: support@zonetick.com
• Website: zonetick.com

2. What we collect

Zone Tick is a safety product, so it requests sensitive permissions. Below is every category of data the app can access, what it is used for, and whether it is optional. "Optional" means the feature is off until you turn it on, and turning it off stops the collection.

3. How we use your information

• To deliver safety features — SOS alerts, live location, safe zones, check-ins, crash detection, run/chase detection, voice and scream detection, and family circles.
• To notify the right people — push notifications to your circle and SMS to the emergency contacts you nominate.
• To run Community — finding the group for your area, delivering group messages, safety reports, friend requests, personal chats and friend SOS, and keeping Community safe: some words are blocked automatically, and people can report posts and members to us. When something is reported, we read it to decide what to do, and we may hide it, remove it or suspend the person.
• To run Community rewards — when they are on, counting which reports other members read, working out each author’s share of what Community ads earn us, paying it by bank transfer through Airwallex, and keeping the count honest. Nobody, the author included, can see who read a report.
• To run games — checking every move of an online chess game, rating games against other players, matching you with a player near your rating, and telling you when someone in your family invites you to a game. Chess invitations can be switched off in Settings → Notifications.
• To tell you about Zone Tick — offers and news we publish appear in the app (under the gift icon, and once as a card), in your language. We write them in English and translate them with Google Cloud Translation; only our own text is sent for translation, never anything about you.
• To operate your account — sign-in, security, App Check abuse prevention, and support requests.
• To manage subscriptions — verifying purchases through Apple, Google, RevenueCat and Stripe.
• To show non-personalised advertising on free plans — in the app and on this website, and to grant temporary Premium after a rewarded ad.
• With your permission, to send offers and special-day reminders — the occasional Zone Tick offer, and a reminder before days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Both are off until you switch them on, either when the app asks once or in Settings → Notifications, and you can switch them off there at any time. Offer notifications reach your phone only after you opt in; special-day reminders are scheduled on your phone from your App Store or Google Play country, and no location is used to find it. We keep a record of your choice with your notification settings. Limited-time offers may also appear as a card inside the app; they use no personal data beyond your plan and app language.
• To improve reliability — aggregate analytics and crash reporting to find and fix bugs.
• To meet legal obligations — responding to lawful requests and protecting against fraud, abuse and harm.

We do not use your location, audio, messages or sensor data to build advertising profiles, and we do not provide any of it to data brokers.

4. Legal bases for processing

If you are in the EEA or UK, we rely on the following legal bases under Article 6 GDPR:

• Contract — to provide the account and features you signed up for (account data, messaging, subscriptions).
• Consent — for optional sensitive processing: precise and background location, microphone and speech recognition, motion sensors, and contacts; and for offer and special-day notifications. You can withdraw consent at any time in the app or your device settings.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the service secure and reliable, preventing abuse, and basic non-personalised analytics, balanced against your rights.
• Vital interests — sharing your location and alert details with your nominated contacts during an active emergency.
• Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose data to comply with the law.

Location, audio and health-adjacent sensor data may constitute special category data in some jurisdictions. Where that is the case, we process it on the basis of your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a)) or to protect vital interests (Article 9(2)(c)).

5. Device permissions, and what happens if you decline

Every permission below is requested in context, with an explanation, at the moment the relevant feature is first used. You can revoke any of them later in your device settings.

• Location (while in use / always) — declining disables live sharing, the family map, safe zones and location in SOS alerts. The rest of the app still works.
• Microphone — declining disables scream detection, keyword detection and emergency recording.
• Motion & physical activity — declining disables crash detection, shake-to-activate and run/chase detection.
• Notifications — declining means you will not receive SOS alerts, check-in reminders or messages. We strongly recommend allowing this one.
• Camera / photos — declining only prevents setting a profile photo, attaching images or adding a photo to a safety report.
• Contacts — declining only means you type emergency contact numbers manually.
• SMS / phone state — declining means emergency SMS opens your messaging app for you to send manually instead of sending directly.
• App Tracking Transparency (iOS) — we never show this prompt, because Zone Tick does not track you across other apps or websites.

6. Who we share information with

We share personal information in only four situations:

1. With people you choose — members of the family circles you join, and the emergency contacts you add. In Community, the people in the groups you join see your community name and what you post there; only friends you have accepted see your profile and your personal chats, and friends you choose to receive your SOS get your location at the time you send it.
2. With service providers who process data on our behalf under contract, listed below.
3. With app stores — Apple and Google, when you buy or manage a subscription.
4. When legally required — to comply with a valid legal request, or to prevent serious harm to someone's safety.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Our service providers (sub-processors)

7. Advertising and tracking

Zone Tick is free to use, and advertising is part of how that stays possible. We have chosen to run it in the most restricted way Google offers.

• We serve non-personalised ads only — in the app (Google AdMob) and on this website (Google AdSense). Every ad request is flagged as non-personalised, which means Google is not permitted to use cookies or advertising identifiers from these impressions to build or apply a profile about you across other apps and sites.
• Ads are shown to free-plan users only. Premium removes all advertising in the app.
• We never show an App Tracking Transparency prompt on iOS. That prompt exists to ask permission to track you across other companies' apps — we don't do that, so there is nothing to ask.
• We do not pass your location, audio, sensor data, messages, contacts or circle membership to any ad network. Ever.
• Rewarded ads may grant temporary Premium access. Watching one is always voluntary.
• Community rewards, when on, share what the ads on Community pages earn us with the people who write safety reports there. Those ads are non-personalised like all the others, and nobody is paid for seeing or clicking one.
• You can additionally reset or limit your advertising ID in your device settings (iOS: Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Android: Settings → Google → Ads).

This is the reason we can state plainly that we do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising — the two things a "free, ad-supported" app is usually doing. It costs us advertising revenue. We think it is the right trade for a safety app that families are asked to trust with their location.

8. Where your data is stored and transferred

Your account records, messages, circle data and location are stored in Google Cloud's United States multi-region (nam5). Photos, voice recordings and other files you upload are stored in Google Cloud's Sydney region (australia-southeast1), in Australia.

Our server functions are the code that receives your location while the app is closed, handles sign-in links and payments, sends alerts and notifications, checks reports and runs scheduled jobs. The ones the app and this website call run in Google Cloud's Sydney region (australia-southeast1), with a copy in us-central1 in the United States for older versions of the app. The ones that send alerts and notifications and run scheduled jobs run in us-central1, next to the database, until it moves. Sign-in (Firebase Authentication) and notification delivery (Firebase Cloud Messaging) are Google services that do not let us choose a region.

Versions of this policy before 3.12 said your account data was stored in Sydney. That was wrong: the database was set up in the United States. We are moving the database, and the rest of our server functions, to Google Cloud's Sydney region, and will update this section when that is done.

Support requests and in-app reports are relayed by a server we run in Oracle Cloud's Melbourne region, in Australia, and a copy is posted to our private support channel on Discord, which stores it in the United States.

In addition, our service providers listed above may process data in other countries. Where personal data of EEA or UK residents is transferred outside those regions, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the equivalent UK addendum, as incorporated into the data-processing terms of the providers we use.

9. How long we keep your data

10. How we protect your data

• All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted with TLS, and data is encrypted at rest by Google Cloud.
• Access to production data is restricted to authorised personnel who need it to operate the service.
• Firebase App Check is enabled to block requests from unauthorised or tampered clients.
• Database access is governed by server-side security rules so that circle data is readable only by members of that circle.
• Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication, including Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple.

No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify affected users and the relevant regulators as required by law — including the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in Australia and Articles 33–34 GDPR.

11. Your rights and choices

Wherever you live, you can:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct your details, directly in the app.
• Delete your account and data — in the app under Settings → Account → Delete Account, or via our account deletion page.
• Export a copy of your data by emailing privacy@zonetick.com.
• Withdraw consent for any optional feature by turning it off or revoking the permission.
• Opt out of non-essential emails using the unsubscribe link, and of offer and special-day notifications in the app under Settings → Notifications.
• Complain to us, or to your local data protection authority.

We respond to verified requests within 30 days. We do not charge for this.

12. If you are in the EEA or the UK

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR you also have the right to:

• Restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Data portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal effects. Zone Tick does not make such decisions; safety detections always result in a notification you can cancel, never an irreversible automated action.
• Lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

To exercise any of these, email privacy@zonetick.com.

13. If you are in California

Under the CCPA as amended by the CPRA, we disclose the following. In the past 12 months we have collected these categories of personal information: identifiers (name, email, phone number, user ID, device identifiers), customer records, commercial information (subscription and purchase history), internet or network activity (app usage and diagnostics), geolocation data, audio information, and sensory data from motion sensors.

We do not collect the "inferences" category. Because every ad request we make is flagged non-personalised, ad networks are not permitted to build or apply a profile about you, so no advertising segments or inferred characteristics are created or received.

Sensitive personal information

Two of the categories above are sensitive personal information as the CPRA defines it: precise geolocation, and the contents of audio recordings made during a safety session.

We use both only to perform the services you switched on — showing your location to your circle, attaching it to an SOS, and capturing audio during a safety session — together with security and fraud prevention. We do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you, and we do not sell or share it. Because our use falls within the purposes permitted by Civil Code section 1798.121(d), we are not required to offer a "Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information" link — but you can switch these features off in the app at any time, which stops the collection entirely.

• We have not sold personal information in the preceding 12 months.
• We have not shared personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising as those terms are defined by the CPRA. Our ad requests are flagged non-personalised, so ad networks are not permitted to build or apply a cross-context profile from them.
• We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of consumers under 16.
• You have the right to know, delete, correct, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information.
• We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

To make a request, email privacy@zonetick.com with the subject "California Privacy Request". An authorised agent may submit on your behalf with written proof.

14. If you are in Australia

Zone Tick Pty Ltd is an Australian company and handles personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

• You may request access to, or correction of, your personal information under APP 12 and APP 13.
• You may complain to us first at privacy@zonetick.com. We will acknowledge within 7 days and respond within 30 days.
• If you are unsatisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
• Eligible data breaches are notified under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

15. Children and family use

Zone Tick is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13 who signs up independently. Accounts must be created by someone aged 13 or over.

Zone Tick is, however, designed for families. A parent or guardian may set up and manage a circle that includes a minor in their care, and is responsible for obtaining that child's awareness and any consent required in your jurisdiction. Where we know a user is under 18, we do not serve personalised advertising to anyone, at any age.

Community is for adults only. We ask for a date of birth once, and your phone may also ask your Google Play or Apple account for an age range. We keep only whether you are 18 or over and where the answer came from — never your date of birth or the range — and an account that either check says is under 18 cannot use Community.

If you believe a child has provided us information without appropriate consent, contact privacy@zonetick.com and we will delete it promptly.

16. Google Play Data Safety & Apple privacy labels

The disclosures we file with Google Play and Apple are intended to match this policy exactly. In summary:

Data is encrypted in transit. You can request deletion of your data at any time.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product changes. When we make a material change we will update the effective date above, and — for changes that meaningfully affect your rights — notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect. Previous versions are available on request.

18. Contact us

• Company: Zone Tick Pty Ltd, ABN 20 690 893 460 — owner Akshay Kumar, akshay@zonetick.com
• Privacy: privacy@zonetick.com
• Support: support@zonetick.com
• Account deletion: zonetick.com/account-deletion.html
• Postal address available on request for formal legal correspondence.

Zone Tick Pty Ltd · Victoria, Australia