Privacy Policy
This is the privacy policy for Dumsor, a Ghana-focused crowdsourced power-outage tracker built by The Playmakers. We are an independent project. We are not affiliated with the Government of Ghana, ECG, GRIDCo, or any utility.
The short version
- You can use the app fully anonymously. No name, no email, no phone number required.
- We use your approximate location only at the moment you tap to report — never in the background, never continuous tracking.
- Reports are stored as a coarse area code (geohash, ~5km cell) — not as your exact GPS position.
- Aggregate area statistics may be visible to other users. Individual reports are not personally identifiable.
- You can delete all your data from Settings → Delete my data at any time.
What we collect
- Anonymous user ID — created automatically by Firebase Authentication on first launch. Not linked to any personal information.
- Outage reports — timestamps when you tapped "Power Off" / "Power Back", a coarse geohash code (~5 km), the platform (Android or iOS), and the app version.
- Approximate location — captured only at the instant you submit a report or set your load-management group. Stored on our servers as a geohash code (~5 km cell), not as raw GPS coordinates.
- Precise location, in-flight only — when you set up your group on first launch, the device's precise GPS fix is sent once to the operating system's reverse-geocoder (Google's on Android, Apple's on iOS) so we can suggest the right area. The precise fix is never stored by Dumsor and never leaves your device a second time.
- Presence heartbeats — when you open the app and have not reported an outage, we log a "still has power" data point so the area-stats are honest about who has lights.
- Optional sign-in identity — if you choose to upgrade your anonymous account with Google or Sign in with Apple, we receive your account email so your reports survive a reinstall. Not shared with anyone. Apple users who choose "Hide My Email" only ever expose a private relay address — we never see the underlying email.
- Crash data — Firebase Crashlytics may collect device model, OS version, and stack traces when the app crashes, so we can fix bugs. No personal content is collected.
What we don’t collect
- We don’t track you in the background.
- We don’t store precise GPS coordinates on our servers — only the ~5 km geohash bucket.
- We don’t collect names, phone numbers, or addresses.
- We don’t sell data. We have no advertising partners.
- Firebase Analytics is disabled at the SDK level — no usage events are collected.
How we use the data
- To show you the timeline of your own reports.
- To compute area statistics (reports today, peak hour, longest outage).
- To train an honest prediction model that activates once each area has 100+ reports. Until then, the predictions screen is clearly labeled as "Pattern-based" or "Bootstrapping".
- To send push notifications about real-time outage clusters in your area (only if you opt in).
Where the data lives
Data is stored in Google Cloud Firestore in the europe-multi (eur3) region. Google's privacy policy and security commitments apply: firebase.google.com/support/privacy.
Sharing with third parties
We do not sell or share your individual data. We may share aggregated, non-identifiable outage statistics with researchers, journalists, or the public in dashboards. Examples: "Sowutuom had 312 reports last week." Never anything tied to a specific user.
Your controls
- Delete your account + all your data — Settings → Delete account inside the app. Or follow the steps at /delete-account. Removes your anonymous user record, every cut you've ever logged, and unbinds any sign-in. Anonymised aggregate area stats remain. Backups are purged within 30 days.
- Revoke location permission — in your phone's system settings, at any time. The app falls back to a manual area picker.
- Sign out — Settings → Sign out. Returns you to anonymous mode.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13. We don’t knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe we have, contact us and we’ll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we make material changes, we’ll update the effective date at the top and surface a notice in the app before the change takes effect.
Contact
Questions, account-deletion requests, or anything else: fritz.playmaker@gmail.com.