Privacy policy

Piki Dada connects passengers and senders in Uganda with boda and car riders. This policy explains what personal data we collect when you use the Piki Dada app or website, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and your rights under Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019.

Piki Dada is run by Pikidada Services Ltd, Kampala, Uganda, which decides how your data is used (the "data controller"). Questions or requests: [email protected].

What we collect

• Your account: name, email address, phone number, password (stored only as a secure scrambled form we can't read back), your Google account ID if you sign in with Google, the places you save (Home, Work and others), and who invited you, if you joined with a friend's code.
• Trips and deliveries: pickup, stops and destination, the notes you add, times, fare, payment method, ratings and comments, messages sent in the in-app chat, and when you book for someone else, their name and phone number. For deliveries, the item description and photo, the names and phone numbers of the people at pickup and drop-off, and when there's no drop-off code, the rider's photo of the item handed over.
• Location: passengers' location when they choose to use it for pickup. Riders' location while they are online and during a job, including in the background when the phone is locked in the Piki Dada Android app (the app shows a notification whenever this is happening). This is how riders are matched to nearby requests, how passengers see their rider arrive, and how fares and waiting time are worked out.
• Riders: national ID, driving permit, vehicle registration and insurance documents, a photo set by our team against your ID, a selfie about once a week that our team compares with that photo, vehicle details and plate number, earnings and wallet records, and where your withdrawals are paid: a mobile money number or bank account (kept encrypted) and the name it is registered in, which may be someone else's if you use their account.
• Company accounts: when a business applies, the company's name, town and what it sends, and a contact name, phone number and email (usually the owner's own). Who is in the company, and invitations to people who already have a Piki Dada account. The company's mobile money numbers, and for each delivery with cash on delivery how the client paid: the amount, and for mobile money the transaction ID and the number it was paid from, as the rider and the client tell us.
• Safety: the emergency contacts you add (name and phone number), and when you press SOS: the time and the trip. And, as the app tells you before it first asks for your location: “Piki Dada collects your precise location from the moment you press SOS until our safety team resolves your alert, for at most 12 hours, also while the app is closed or not in use. Only Piki Dada's safety team (our administrators) can see it. It is kept for 2 years after the alert is resolved, 90 days if we confirm it was pressed by mistake, and longer only while it is needed for an investigation or a legal claim.” In the app this keeps going with the screen off or the app closed, with a notification saying so. If you decline, your alert stays on, without your location.
• Payments: what was paid, how and when. Card and mobile money payments are handled by Stripe and Flutterwave; we never see or store your card number or mobile money PIN.
• Device and security: a notification token for your device or browser, sign-in records (time, IP address, device type), and error reports when something breaks, on our servers, in the app or on the website (what went wrong, on which screen and what kind of phone or browser, without your name). We keep reports from the app and website until 30 days after that error last happened. These reports, and errors on our servers, can also appear in our servers' technical logs. Error reports go to Sentry too, and crash reports from the Android app go to Google Firebase; both keep them under their own retention periods for our account.
• On your phone only: a booking you've started but not sent, including the names and phone numbers you typed, so it isn't lost if the app closes. It stays on your device, never on our servers, for up to 12 hours after you last changed it for a delivery and 30 minutes for a ride (where you're going, not the pickup), and is removed when you book or sign out.

We don't use advertising or tracking tools, and we don't sell personal data.

Why we use it

• To run your account and the service: booking, matching, navigation, live tracking, fares and payments.
• For safety and to prevent fraud: checking riders' identity and documents, investigating complaints, stopping misuse.
• To contact you about your trips, your account and important changes.
• To meet legal duties, such as keeping financial records.
• To improve the service, for example to estimate fares and travel times better from the routes riders actually take. This uses trip routes without names.

Who sees it

• Mobile money networks and banks. When we pay a rider's withdrawal, the network or bank gets the number or account and the name on it, to make the transfer.
• The other person on a trip. Your rider sees your name, pickup, destination and notes; your passenger sees your name, photo, vehicle, plate number and location. They can call each other during a trip.
• Service providers who process data for us under contract: Hetzner (our servers, in Germany), Cloudflare (every connection to our website and app passes through it, for security and speed, and it forwards email sent to our @pikidada.com addresses), Google (maps, addresses and routes, and Google sign-in), Amazon Web Services (sending email), Stripe and Flutterwave (payments), Google Firebase (notifications to the Android app, and crash reports from it), and Sentry (error reports from our servers, the app and the website).
• Google's Gmail, when you email us: messages sent to [email protected] are kept in that Gmail mailbox, under Google's own terms for Gmail.
• The push service your web browser uses (run by Google, Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft, depending on the browser), if you turn on notifications in the browser: it delivers them. The message is encrypted so it can't be read there, but the service sees that Piki Dada sent one to your browser, when, and how large it is.
• Your company, if you book deliveries for one: everyone in it sees the deliveries booked for it, including who booked each one and the recipients' names and phone numbers. Its owner also sees the email addresses of the people in it. Your own deliveries stay private.
• Our safety team, when you press SOS: who you are, where you are, the trip, the other person on it and your emergency contacts, so they can call you, them, or the police.
• Authorities, when the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

Our service providers store or process data outside Uganda. Hetzner keeps our servers in Germany and Amazon Web Services sends our email from Sweden; Google (including Firebase), Stripe and Sentry may handle data in the United States; Flutterwave may handle it in Nigeria, the United States or other countries where it operates; and Cloudflare handles connections at its locations around the world. We only use service providers whose protection of personal data is at least as strong as Ugandan law requires. Your browser's push service is chosen by your browser, not by us. Gmail works under Google's own terms and may store email in the United States or elsewhere.

How long we keep it

• Your account details: for as long as you have an account. After you delete it, if you had trips or deliveries, who it belonged to (name, phone number, for riders the vehicle and plate, and your email only as a fingerprint that matches it but doesn't show it) is kept to answer disputes, fraud and safety questions about them, for a period we are setting with our lawyer before launch; you can ask us to erase it sooner (see Your rights). An account with no trips or deliveries leaves no such record.
• The detailed GPS points of a trip's route: up to 6 months.
• In-app chat messages: 30 days.
• Delivery handover photos: 90 days after the delivery.
• Photos you add of what you're sending: 90 days after the delivery ends.
• Rider selfies: until the next one has been checked.
• SOS alerts and the location trail recorded with them: 2 years after the alert was closed, as evidence for any investigation (90 days if we confirmed it was pressed by mistake). An alert needed for an investigation or a legal claim is kept, on our senior administrator's decision, until that ends. Only Piki Dada's administrators can see them, and each time one is opened is recorded.
• Requests to support: 2 years after they're resolved.
• Notifications: 6 months. Sign-in and security records: up to 12 months.
• Trip, delivery, payment and withdrawal records (places, times and amounts, and for a withdrawal the account it was paid to and the name on it): at least as long as the law requires us to keep financial records (usually 5 years).

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in the app, or from pikidada.com/account/delete. You can no longer sign in: your password, Google sign-in, two-step login and devices are removed, and your email can be used to sign up again. Deleted: your photo, and for riders your ID documents, selfie checks, vehicle photo and saved payout details; your saved places, emergency contacts, chats, notifications, sign-in records and resolved support requests; your review comments; and the names, phone numbers, notes and item photos on your own trips and deliveries. Kept in Piki Dada's records, for the periods above: your trips, deliveries and payments (places, times and amounts), your withdrawals (amounts, times, the transfer reference, and the account each was paid to and the name on it), and, if you had any, who the account belonged to (name, phone number, for riders the vehicle and plate, and your email only as a fingerprint), to deal with disputes, fraud, safety and legal or tax questions. A company you ran keeps the contact details it was given (see below). Your SOS alerts and their location trails are kept until their usual deletion dates above, no longer shown with your name, and open support requests too. You can't delete your account while an SOS alert of yours, or one about your trip or delivery, is open, was closed less than 30 days ago, or is kept for an investigation, nor while a withdrawal of yours is waiting to be paid or we are checking whether one reached you. The list of who deleted accounts belonged to is for our senior administrator only. To ask us to erase more, contact us (see Your rights).

Deliveries you booked for a company are that company's records (its clients, and pickups such as a bus office): they are kept whole when you delete your account. If you leave the company, they stay in your history without the clients' phone numbers, and its owner manages them. If you run a company with other people in it, remove them or ask us to make one of them the owner first. If you run it on your own, deleting your account closes it, unless deliveries are still on the way, we still owe the company cash on delivery, or we have paused it: then we settle that with you first. If you are made a company's owner, your name, phone number and email become its contact details (you can change them). A closed company, or an application, keeps its details and records for our records. Changes to a company account (who joined, left or was invited, contact details changed, the company closed) are written to our records with the email of the person who made them; they stay when you delete your account, without your email.

Your rights

Under the Data Protection and Privacy Act you can:

• ask what personal data we hold about you and get a copy;
• ask us to correct data that is wrong;
• ask us to delete your data, or to stop using it for a purpose;
• complain to the Personal Data Protection Office (pdpo.go.ug).

Email [email protected] from the address on your account (or, if you have deleted it, from the address it had). We reply within 30 days. Erasing what is kept after an account is deleted is done by hand for now.

Keeping it safe

Data travels encrypted, phone numbers are encrypted in our database, rider documents are kept in storage no one can reach from the internet, and staff access is limited, logged and protected by two-step sign-in. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the Personal Data Protection Office as the law requires.

Children

You must be 18 or older to have a Piki Dada account.

Changes

If we change this policy we'll update the date above, and tell you in the app before an important change takes effect.