Privacy policy
Last updated: 31 October 2026
Lucioles is an app where volunteers walk people home on foot, with an SOS button. It is designed to know as little as possible about you, and to forget quickly. This page explains, in plain words, what we collect and why. It covers the lucioles.app website and the app (app.lucioles.app and the Android app).
Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is the publisher of Lucioles, a private volunteer (no company or association for now). Their details have been given to the host (see the legal notice). Contact: contact@lucioles.app.
The lucioles.app website
This website sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and uses no analytics, no web fonts and no outside services. The server keeps a technical log of visits (IP address, date, page requested, browser) for 7 days, for security, then deletes it.
What the app collects, why, and for how long
| Data | Why | Legal basis | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone number | Create your account, sign in with an SMS code, one account per number. | Providing the service (contract) | As long as your account exists. |
| First name | Show it to the person you walk with. | Contract | As long as your account exists. |
| Declaration that you are 18 or over | Lucioles is for adults only. | Contract | As long as your account exists. |
| Selfie (taken live in the app) | Show it to the person the app matches you with, before and during the walk. No face recognition. | Contract | As long as your account exists (replaced if you take a new one). |
| Position during a walk | Meet up and see each other on the map. | Contract | Only from the request to the end of the walk, then erased. |
| Position while “available” | Offer you nearby requests (others only see a distance). | Contract | Only while “available” is on, then erased. |
| Position during an SOS | Share it with the people coming to help you. | Vital interests, and contract | Until the alert ends, then erased. The server keeps only the latest position, never a trail. |
| SOS record: who started it, when, an area of about 5 km, and whether it was a real emergency | Deal with misuse and false alarms. | Legitimate interest (members’ safety) | 30 days, then deleted. |
| Alert area (if you choose to receive SOS alerts) | Send you nearby alerts. Only an area of about 5 km is stored, never your position. | Consent | Until you turn alerts off. |
| Walks and ratings: who walked with whom, when, and the stars given | Show your rating and number of walks, avoid matching the same pair twice in a row. | Contract and legitimate interest | As long as your account exists, then deleted with it. No position is attached. |
| Notification subscription (browser) | Tell you about a nearby SOS alert while Lucioles isn’t open. | Consent | Until you block them in your browser’s site settings, remove the app from your home screen, or your account is deleted. |
| Server technical log | Security and keeping things running. No positions, no request contents. | Legitimate interest | 7 days. |
Server backups are encrypted and kept for 14 days: deleted data may stay in them for up to 14 more days, unused.
We never collect your address, ID documents, contacts or the history of your journeys. The “home safe” message to people who aren’t members is sent from your own messaging app: their number is not stored.
Who sees what
- Other members see only what’s needed: the person you walk with sees your first name, selfie, rating and position during the walk; during an SOS, your position is visible to the people alerted until the alert ends. Nobody can search for a member or see their history.
- The host, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, hosts the server in France (Paris region) as a processor. See the legal notice.
- Sign-up codes are sent by text message from a phone used by the project, through its mobile operator.
- Notifications (for now in the browser only: the Android app doesn’t receive notifications for now) go through the push service of the browser you use: for example Google for Chrome, Mozilla for Firefox, Apple for Safari. These services may be outside the European Union; such transfers are covered by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or by standard contractual clauses. The notification is encrypted. It holds a fixed title and text (“Lucioles alert: someone needs help”), an alert identifier and a rough distance (“400 m from you”), with no position and no name.
Nothing is sold, rented or used for advertising. No trackers.
What the app keeps on your device
The app sets no advertising or analytics cookies. It keeps only what it strictly needs to work, which does not require your consent:
- your sign-in session, so you don’t have to sign in every time;
- your notification subscription’s identifier, if you turned notifications on in the browser;
- the app’s files, so it opens quickly, even on a poor connection.
All of it goes away when you clear the site’s data in your browser, or uninstall the app (or remove it from your home screen).
Your rights
At any time you can ask to access your data, correct it, delete it (delete your account), restrict or object to its use, or get it in a readable format. Write to contact@lucioles.app with your account’s phone number. We answer within one month at most. Without writing, you can also: stop sharing your position by switching off “Available to walk someone” on the home screen; stop receiving SOS alerts (and erase your alert area) by switching off “Receive emergency alerts” in Settings; stop notifications by blocking them in your browser’s site settings (or by removing the app from your home screen). To erase everything, ask for your account to be deleted by email.
For now, account deletion is by email. It deletes your number, first name, selfie, walks and ratings. SOS records stay for at most 30 days, as described above, then are deleted.
If you think your rights aren’t respected, you can complain to the CNIL, the French data protection authority: www.cnil.fr/fr/plaintes.
Security
Encrypted connections (HTTPS), no database reachable from the internet, encrypted backups, positions never written to logs. The code is open: anyone can check what the app does.
Minors
Lucioles is for people aged 18 or over.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes too, and important changes are announced in the app.