NearAsk Privacy Policy

1. Data Controller

The party responsible for processing data in the NearAsk app within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

DEVNIK LLC 30 N Gould St, Ste R Sheridan, Wyoming 82801 United States of America Represented by: Niklas Grieger, Managing Member Email: niklas.grieger@devnik.dev

2. In Short

• There is no account, no advertising and no tracking of you. NearAsk does not sell or share data for advertising.
• Your search history, contact statuses and notes stay on your phone.
• To find shops, NearAsk sends the search area and your search term to its own server, which asks shop directories and AI services on your behalf. Nothing of this is stored with your device.
• Messages to shops are never sent by NearAsk: the app opens WhatsApp or your phone app, and you send or call yourself.
• Besides that, NearAsk sends error reports, feedback you choose to give, checks for app updates, and once a day anonymous usage stats, which you can turn off. Each is described below.

3. Data on Your Phone

• Location: if you allow it, NearAsk reads your current location to suggest the search place. You can type a place instead; the app works without location access. Typed places are turned into coordinates by your phone's built-in geocoder (on Android, provided by Google).
• Search history: each search (term, place name, radius, the shop types and the shops found, but for shops found only through Google just their Google place ID), the shops you contacted, their status and your notes are stored in the app on your phone. Searches you never acted on are deleted automatically after 7 days; you can delete any search in the history.
• Settings and feedback answers are stored on your phone as well.

Uninstalling the app removes this data.

4. Data Sent by the App

All requests go to NearAsk's server (nearask.expo.app, hosted by Expo / 650 Industries, Inc., USA, on Cloudflare's network). As with any web request, the hosting providers briefly process your IP address in their logs for secure operation. The server keeps no record of your searches.

4.1 Shop types and message

When you search, the app sends the search term and the country and region of the search place (never coordinates) to the server, which asks an AI service which kinds of shops might have it and writes the pre-filled message. AI services used, in this order: Google Gemini (Google LLC, USA) and Groq (Groq, Inc., USA, with zero data retention). Google's free tier may use the request to improve its services, so no personal data beyond the term and region is sent.

4.2 Shop search

To find shops, the app sends the coordinates and radius of the search area and the chosen shop types to the server, which searches Open Places API (Overture Maps data) and, for shop types with few results, the Google Places API (Google LLC, USA). Phone numbers and websites of Google shops are only requested when you tap Tap for number. Results are not stored on the server.

4.3 Which shops fit best

To sort the list, the server sends the search term and the shop names and types to an AI service (see 4.1). Names of shops found only through Google are only sent to a service that stores nothing and doesn't train on them (Groq with zero data retention).

4.4 Map

The map is provided by Google Maps (Google LLC, USA). Showing it loads map data for the visible area from Google under Google's privacy policy.

4.5 Contacting a shop

Tapping WhatsApp, Call or Website opens WhatsApp, your phone app or a browser tab with the shop's number or page and, for WhatsApp, the pre-filled message. NearAsk does not send anything itself; from then on the privacy policy of WhatsApp (Meta), your phone provider or the shop's website applies.

4.6 Error reports and feedback

If the app runs into an error, it sends a technical report to Sentry (Functional Software, Inc., USA; data stored in the EU, Frankfurt): the error and where in the app's code it happened, the app version, your phone's model and system version, and the screens shortly before the error. Phone numbers, links to WhatsApp or phone calls, message texts and coordinates are removed before sending. Reports are not linked to your name or an account and are deleted after 30 days at the latest.

If you answer the short feedback question after a search, your answer (rating, reasons, optional text), the search term, the place name, the radius and the number of shops are sent to Sentry as feedback.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in finding and fixing errors and improving results (Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR); feedback only when you send it.

4.7 App updates

When you open the app, it checks with Expo (650 Industries, Inc., USA) whether a small update is available and downloads it in the background. For this, your phone sends technical information such as the app version, the platform and your IP address.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the app working and secure (Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR).

4.8 Anonymous usage stats (on by default, can be turned off)

To see which features help and which go unused, NearAsk counts on your phone how often features are used per day — for example how many searches you started, how many shops were found, and how often you opened WhatsApp, a call or a shop's website. Once a day, it sends the counts of the previous days to NearAsk's server, together with the app version and the platform (Android or iOS), and then deletes them from your phone.

The counts contain no search terms, places, coordinates, shop names, phone numbers, notes or messages, and no device identifier. Each report carries a random number used only to avoid counting it twice; it is different for every report and deleted after 35 days. The server adds the counts to totals per day, feature, app version and platform (database by Neon, Databricks, Inc., USA), so a single phone cannot be told apart. Totals are kept for at least two years.

You can turn this off at any time in the settings under Share anonymous usage stats. Counts not yet sent are then deleted right away.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving the app (Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR); you can object at any time with the setting above.

5. App Stores

NearAsk is distributed through Google Play and the App Store. Google and Apple process data about your download and installation under their own privacy policies.

6. Transfers outside the EU

Where service providers are located outside the EU/EEA, appropriate safeguards (e.g. EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework) are in place.

7. Children

NearAsk is not directed at children under 16.

8. Your Rights under the GDPR

You have the right to access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20), to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21), to withdraw consent with effect for the future (Art. 7 (3)) and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR).

Since error reports, feedback and usage stats are not linked to your name or device, I usually cannot find the entries that belong to you. Tell me what you need, and I will help as far as possible.

9. Contact

For any questions about NearAsk and your data, please contact me at niklas.grieger@devnik.dev.

10. Changes to this Policy

This privacy policy may be updated when the app or applicable law changes. The most recent version is always available at https://nearask.app/privacy.