Roadtrip privacy notice
This notice explains what information the Roadtrip app uses, why, who can see it, how long it is kept and what you can ask us to do. It applies to the Roadtrip real-use beta. It does not cover other DCS products or websites.
1. Who we are
Roadtrip is a product of Louis Clarence Peter, trading as Digital & Creative Solutions (DCS), a sole proprietorship registered in Zanzibar, Tanzania (BPRA business registration Z0000306690). We are responsible for the processing described here. Business location: Jambiani, Zanzibar, Tanzania (contact: info@hellodcs.com, +255 714 202 848).
Questions, privacy requests and deletion requests: info@hellodcs.com, answered by Louis Peter every day, 09:00–17:00 East Africa Time (UTC+3). Messages sent outside 09:00–17:00 EAT are queued and answered in the next daily window. During any temporary absence while a backup support person is being added, an automatic reply or notice will state when the next review will take place.
2. What we use and why
| Information | Why we use it |
|---|---|
| Name, phone number and account ID | To create your account, sign you in and connect your activity to you. We do not yet verify that a phone number belongs to you. |
| Password, sessions and saved recovery codes | To sign you in securely and let you recover access. Passwords, sessions and recovery codes are stored only as protected hashes. |
| Adult declaration | Accounts are for people aged 18 or over. We record that you declared this and when. We do not collect your date of birth or ID for this. |
| Agreement to these documents | We record which versions of the terms and this notice you accepted, their content fingerprints and the time. |
| Profile, vehicle and pickup preferences | Optional details you add, such as an introduction, vehicle description, seats and usual pickup. |
| Searches, saved routes and recent searches | To find rides. When you are signed in, we keep your recent searches and any routes you save. Guest searches are not linked to an account. |
| Rides, bookings and trip updates | To publish seats, match riders and drivers and coordinate pickup and trip progress. This includes route, pickup text, time, vehicle, seats, agreed contribution, status and participants. Arrival updates are entered by members; Roadtrip does not track GPS location. |
| Messages, ratings and reviews | To coordinate a booking and share feedback. Messages are stored on our server and are not end-to-end encrypted. |
| Cash contribution records | To show the agreed contribution. In this beta, riders pay drivers in cash after the trip and Roadtrip charges no platform fee. We do not handle or confirm the cash payment. |
| Driver and vehicle review | To decide whether a driver and vehicle may publish rides, and to record approvals, suspensions and expiry. |
| Public-text review | New or edited names, driver introductions, ride descriptions and review comments are reviewed before others see them. We record the review decision. |
| Reports, blocks and support decisions | To review concerns, prevent unwanted contact and keep a record of decisions. A report can include message text and booking details. |
| Deletion requests | To process, hold or complete account deletion and to stop backups from restoring deleted accounts. |
| Technical and security information | Our hosting receives connection details such as IP addresses. We use protected (hashed) identifiers to limit abuse. These are pseudonymous, not anonymous. |
The app does not ask for GPS permission, does not include advertising or analytics tools, and has no field for uploading identity documents. Town names and pickup text can still reveal where you plan to be, so share only what is needed. Please do not send identity documents or passwords in messages.
Under the Tanzania Personal Data Protection Act, 2022 (PDPA) and applicable Zanzibar law, we process this information on the following grounds: (a) to provide the Roadtrip service and perform our agreement with you (creating and securing your account, publishing and finding rides, managing bookings and trip updates, delivering booking messages and providing member support); (b) to comply with legal obligations and protect member safety, security and fraud prevention (driver and vehicle approval, public-text review, handling safety reports and blocks, maintaining deletion and closure ledgers and keeping security rate-limit records); and (c) your declaration or choice where applicable (confirming that you are 18 or over and choosing to add optional profile, vehicle or saved-route details).
3. Who can see your information
- Other app users, including guests: published ride details, driver names, vehicle and pickup descriptions, driver introductions and reviews.
- Your booking counterpart: the rider and driver of a booking see its details, names, contribution, messages and read status. Other riders on the same ride do not see your conversation. Phone numbers are not shared automatically.
- Roadtrip operations: authorised staff (currently Louis Peter) may access records to provide support, review public text, handle reports and keep the service secure. You cannot see other members' reports or private operator notes.
- Service providers listed in section 4, only to run the service.
We do not sell your information. We will only disclose information for a legal request after checking its authority and limiting it to what is required.
4. Service providers and locations
| Provider | What it does |
|---|---|
| Render (Frankfurt, Germany) | Hosts the Roadtrip server and database, and the backup service. |
| Cloudflare R2 (European Union) | Stores encrypted backups. Public access is disabled. |
| Bitwarden (European Union) | Securely holds the backup encryption key. It does not hold member data. |
| Healthchecks.io | Receives backup status signals only. No member data. |
| Apple TestFlight and our download website (Netlify) | Distribute the beta apps. These services process their own technical and visit data under their own policies. |
This means your information is stored and processed outside Tanzania, mainly in the European Union. These transfers are necessary to host, operate and back up the Roadtrip beta service securely, and are protected by contractual data-protection terms, access controls, HTTPS in transit and encrypted backups (with backup keys held separately in Bitwarden EU) in accordance with the Tanzania Personal Data Protection Act, 2022, together with any applicable cross-border registration or filing with the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC).
5. Your device and security
The app keeps you signed in using secure session storage on your device, and may keep unsent ride, pickup or review details so a retry does not lose your work. Signing out ends your session on our server. It does not guarantee that every copy on your device or in device backups is erased. We protect passwords and sessions, check permissions on every request and encrypt our backups. No system is perfectly secure. If you think someone has accessed your account, contact us.
6. How long we keep information
- Sessions expire after seven days. Expired sessions and abuse counters are removed automatically when new sessions or checks run and through our daily operator cleanup tool.
- Encrypted backups are taken hourly under a 30-day recovery window, with older snapshots removed through reviewed operator pruning while keeping deletion and closure ledgers separate so old backups cannot restore deleted accounts.
- Service logs are kept for about seven days and do not contain request contents.
- Account data is kept while your account is open, and handled as described in section 7 when you ask to delete it.
- Records kept after deletion (see section 7) are reviewed after 30 days. Once the 30-day post-closure review window expires, retained shared-trip, safety and closure records that have no active dispute, ongoing safety investigation or statutory legal or tax hold are permanently deleted or anonymised during our daily operator retention review, while separate deletion and closure ledger hashes are kept only to stop older backups from restoring deleted accounts.
7. Deleting your account
You can request deletion in the app (Profile) or by emailing info@hellodcs.com.
- If your account has no shared trip history, you can delete it in the app after confirming your password. Your account and private data are removed and all sessions are ended.
- If you have an active trip, an unpaid or disputed contribution, or an open report, deletion is put on hold. You keep access, and we tell you the reason and the date we will review it. We review held requests within 24 hours, then at least every seven days.
- If your account has shared history (for example past trips with other members), your in-app deletion request is recorded for operator review and handled with Louis Peter via info@hellodcs.com (first review within 24 hours). When shared-history closure is completed, we close your account, remove your private profile, sign-in details and the text you wrote, and keep only the shared facts other members need (such as that a trip took place) plus records required for safety cases or disputes.
Deleted accounts cannot be brought back by restoring a backup. Copies in older encrypted backups disappear when those backups expire.
8. Your rights and choices
You can view and change your profile and preferences in the app, and ask us for a copy of your information, a correction or deletion. We may need to confirm it is really you before acting. We never ask for your password or an unused recovery code.
Under the Tanzania Personal Data Protection Act, 2022 (PDPA), you have the right to be informed, to access a copy of your personal data, to ask for inaccurate or incomplete data to be corrected, to ask for deletion or restriction of processing where applicable, and to object to processing in the circumstances provided by law. To exercise any of these rights, email info@hellodcs.com (we aim to send an initial response within 24 hours during daily 09:00–17:00 EAT support hours and to complete your request within 30 days). If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) of the United Republic of Tanzania.
9. Age
Roadtrip accounts and trips in this beta are only for people aged 18 or over. You confirm this when you register, and every driver and rider travelling on a Roadtrip booking must be 18 or over.
10. Changes to this notice
Each version has its own number and date. When we make an important change, you will be asked to review the new version in the app before continuing with new bookings or rides. Earlier versions stay available at their own addresses.