Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 2026 · Version 2.1 · Effective immediately

What's new in v2.1 (June 2026)

• Cruising Mode location sharing. When you start or join a cruise, your live GPS coordinates are written to Firebase Realtime Database for the duration of the cruise so your crew sees you on the convoy map. The data is scoped to your crew, deleted when the cruise ends, and never used outside the cruise. See section 4c.
• Save my route (opt-in per cruise). If you turn on "Save my route" before starting or joining a cruise, your own path is saved to your account under users/{your-uid}/cruises/{cruiseId}/route.json. Other crew members' paths are never saved under your account. You can delete a saved route at any time from Profile → My Cruises. See section 4c.

What's new in v2 (June 2026)

• Public build pages. Pro subscribers can publish their car + mods at torqhaus.app/build/@username. Data shown there is exactly what your in-app build profile already shows; nothing extra is collected. See section 4a.
• Username index is now publicly readable. The /usernames/{name} doc holds only your uid and exists so the public build page can resolve a handle to a profile. See section 5a.
• Wishlist vendor links. URLs you save on wishlist items are opened in your device browser when you tap them. We don't proxy or track these clicks. See section 4b.
• Marketplace sold flow. When you mark a listing sold, your local mod's lifecycle state changes; we write the same data we already had + a timestamp.
• Opt-in mod photo sharing. When you publish a mod to the community feed, you can choose to attach the mod photo. The photo URL is stored on the feed event (not duplicated).
• Legal-acceptance log. We now record the policy versions you've accepted and the timestamp. See section 11a.

1. What We Collect

2. What We Don't Collect

• We do not track which news articles you read.
• We do not track your background or always-on GPS location. Outside of an active cruise that you have started or joined, your GPS coordinates are never sent to our servers. Meetup location search and stationary-start checks run locally on your device.
• We do not collect payment information. Subscriptions are handled entirely by Google Play / App Store.
• We do not sell, rent, or share your data with advertisers.
• We do not serve ads in TorQ-Haus.
• Crash reports contain only stack traces — no emails, names, or build data.

3. How We Use Your Data

• Profile & community — your username, display name, and photo are shown on your profile, in the feed, Q&A, and marketplace to other authenticated users.
• Push notifications — your FCM token is stored in a private, owner-only subcollection and used only to send you notifications you've opted into. It is never readable by other users.
• Build data — your cars, mods, and maintenance records are private by default. You choose what to share to the community feed.
• Leaderboards — only users with public profiles and usernames appear on leaderboards.
• Marketplace — your username and active car info are shown on listings you create. Contact details you provide (phone, email, Instagram) are shown to interested buyers. We don't store or intermediate these.

4. Profile Photos

Photos you upload are stored in Firebase Storage at a path only accessible to you and the app. Your photo URL is stored in your Firestore profile and displayed to other authenticated users. You can remove your photo at any time from Profile → tap your avatar. When you delete your account, your photo is permanently deleted.

4a. Public Build Pages (Pro feature)

If you have an active Pro subscription and tap "Share build page" in the app, the page at torqhaus.app/build/@username renders the following from your account, with no authentication required:

• Your username, display name, and profile photo
• Your location city (only if you set one in Edit build profile)
• Your badges and Q&A counts
• Your cars' public details — year, make, model, trim, engine, drivetrain, color, and the photos in your car gallery
• Your mods (name, category, install date, optional photo, optional part number, optional install mileage) — terminal-sold mods are excluded
• Your best performance run numbers (HP, 0–60, ¼ mile) when present

The page reads the same Firestore documents the rest of the app already uses; it does not collect anything new. Make your profile private (Profile → Edit build profile → toggle off "Public profile") to disable the page — it will show a "private" message instead of your data.

4b. Vendor / Product Links

When you save a vendor URL on a wishlist item and later tap "View product page" or "Open link", TorQ-Haus opens that URL in your device's browser via the system's external launcher. We don't proxy these requests; we don't log the click; we don't share that you tapped a link. The destination site is operated by whoever owns it, and their own privacy practices apply once you arrive there.

4c. Cruising Mode location data

Cruising Mode is the only feature in TorQ-Haus that transmits your live GPS coordinates to our servers. Strict rules apply because we treat location as the most sensitive category of data we process.

When we collect it

• Only while you have an active cruise. Live GPS is captured only after you tap "Start cruise" (as the crew leader) or "Join the convoy" (as a member) AND have explicitly accepted the safety disclaimer for that cruise.
• Foreground only. We do not request "Always" location permission. If you switch away from the app or the screen turns off, the broadcast pauses; it resumes when the app is foregrounded again.
• Walking-pace check on start. Before broadcasting begins we verify your phone reports a speed below a walking pace, so a cruise cannot be started while you're already moving.

What we collect

• Latitude, longitude, heading, and GPS accuracy radius (in meters)
• Speed — only if you opt in via the "Share my speed" toggle on the cruise start sheet. Default OFF
• A timestamp on each sample, your username, and the car name you selected
• An optional "maintenance alert" flag (a boolean) when you tap "Report car trouble"

Sample cadence: roughly once every 3 seconds while moving, once every 10 seconds while stationary.

Who can see it

• Members of your crew, during the active cruise only. Firebase Realtime Database security rules check that the requesting user is in the cruise's snapshot of crew membership before returning any location data. No one else — not other crews, not the public, not search engines — can read it.
• The crew membership snapshot is frozen at cruise-start time. Members added to the crew mid-cruise do not get access to that cruise's data.

When it gets deleted

• Wiped server-side when the cruise ends. A Cloud Function listens for the cruise's status flipping to ended (whether the leader tapped End, the duration elapsed, or a 24-hour stale-cruise sweep caught it) and removes the entire RTDB node for that cruise. This runs even if every client device crashed before the wipe — Firestore commits the status change remotely so the trigger fires reliably.
• Once wiped, the live GPS data is gone. We do not back it up, archive it, or move it elsewhere.

Saved routes (opt-in per cruise)

• Saved routes are off by default. You must turn on "Save my route" on the cruise start sheet for that cruise.
• When enabled, your phone buffers your own GPS samples in memory during the cruise. When the cruise ends, the buffer is written to Firebase Storage at users/{your-uid}/cruises/{cruiseId}/route.json along with a Firestore summary doc at users/{your-uid}/cruiseHistory/{cruiseId}.
• Only your own path is saved under your account. Other crew members' positions are never written to your storage path. Security rules enforce this — you can only read and write your own uid prefix.
• You can review saved routes from Profile → My Cruises and delete any of them. Deleting removes both the route blob and the history doc.
• If you do not turn on Save my route, no permanent record of the cruise's path is created on our servers.

What we never do with cruise location

• We never use cruise location data to build advertising profiles. We do not serve ads.
• We never share cruise location data with third parties, except as required by valid legal process.
• We never make cruise location data publicly visible. The future public-share URL for a single saved route (Phase 2 follow-up) will show only the polyline + summary stats — no member identities, no per-point timestamps, no speed.
• We never use cruise location for any purpose other than rendering the live convoy map and, if you opted in, your own saved route.

5. Firebase & Google Services

TorQ-Haus is built on Google Firebase. Firebase processes data in accordance with Google's privacy policies. We use:

• Firebase Auth — authentication
• Firebase Firestore — database
• Firebase Storage — photos and files
• Firebase Cloud Messaging — push notifications
• Firebase Crashlytics — anonymous crash reporting
• Firebase Remote Config — feature flags and the in-app update prompt
• Firebase Hosting — the public web pages at torqhaus.app and torqhaus.app/build/@username
• Firebase App Check + Google Play Integrity — security attestation (applies to both the app and the public web pages)

5a. Publicly readable Firestore collections

To support unauthenticated web visitors landing on a build page, a small set of Firestore paths are configured for public read. This is the same data already shown to other signed-in users today; the new aspect is that no sign-in is required to read it:

• /usernames/{name} — holds only { uid }, the index used to resolve @username to a profile.
• /users/{uid} — your public profile fields. Notably, your email is never stored here.
• /users/{uid}/cars/{carId} — public car details (no VIN; VINs live in a separate owner-only path).
• /users/{uid}/mods/{modId} — your build log entries.
• /users/{uid}/runs/{runId} — your performance runs.

Private data — including push tokens, fuel receipts, service receipts, FCM tokens, VINs, and the legal-acceptance log — remains owner-only.

Google's privacy policy: policies.google.com/privacy

6. AI Run Verification (Anthropic API)

When you use the AI verification scan feature to scan a Dragy screenshot or drag strip time slip, your image is sent to the Anthropic API for processing:

• The image is transmitted securely over HTTPS to Anthropic's API.
• Anthropic processes the image to extract performance data and does not store or train on your image.
• The extracted data (split times, trap speed, conditions, date) is stored in your run record in Firebase Firestore.
• The original verification photo is stored in Firebase Storage at users/{uid}/runs/{runId}/verification.jpg — accessible only to you.
• You can delete the verification photo by deleting the run.

Anthropic's privacy policy: anthropic.com/privacy

7. Performance Verification Photos

Verification photos (Dragy screenshots and time slips) you attach to runs are stored in Firebase Storage. They are visible only to you within the app — they are not shared publicly or shown to other users unless you explicitly share them. When you delete a run, the associated verification photo is permanently deleted.

8. Reports

When you submit a report on a post, Q&A question, answer, or listing, we collect: your user ID, the reported content ID, the reported user ID, report type, and timestamp. This data is stored in Firebase Firestore and is readable only by TorQ-Haus administrators. It is used solely for moderation purposes and is never shared publicly.

9. RevenueCat

Subscription management is handled by RevenueCat. RevenueCat receives your app user ID and subscription status. They do not receive your email or personal details. RevenueCat's privacy policy: revenuecat.com/privacy

10. News Aggregation

The news feed fetches publicly available RSS feeds from automotive media outlets every 6 hours. We do not track which articles you view. Article content is sourced from third-party publishers — TorQ-Haus does not own or store full article text, only headlines, summaries, and links.

11a. Legal-Acceptance Log

When we update the Privacy Policy or Terms of Service in a meaningful way, we bump a version number and prompt you in-app to review and accept. When you accept, we record:

• The accepted policy type (privacy / terms)
• The accepted version number
• A server timestamp of when you accepted
• The app version you were running at the time

The log is stored at users/{uid}/legalAcceptances/{entryId} and is owner-readable / write-once. We keep this record as proof that you reviewed the current policies — it's purely for legal-compliance purposes and is never shared, sold, or used for analytics.

11. Data Retention

• Your account data is kept as long as your account is active.
• When you delete your account, all your data is permanently deleted — cars, mods, maintenance, receipts, photos, verification photos, Q&A posts, marketplace listings, and activity feed posts.
• Crash reports are retained by Crashlytics per Google's standard retention policy (90 days).
• News articles older than 30 days are automatically removed from our database.
• Report records are retained for moderation purposes for up to 12 months.

12. Your Rights

• Access — your build data is visible in the app at all times.
• Delete — delete your account from Profile → scroll to bottom → Delete account. All data is permanently removed.
• Export — coming in a future update.
• Notification control — manage all notification preferences from Profile → Notification settings.
• Profile visibility — make your profile private from Profile → Edit build profile.

13. Children's Privacy

TorQ-Haus is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us at hello@torqhaus.app.

14. Security

• All data is transmitted over HTTPS.
• Firebase Security Rules restrict access — users can only read/write their own data.
• FCM tokens are stored in a private subcollection readable only by the account owner.
• App Check verifies all requests come from the authentic TorQ-Haus app.
• No passwords are stored — authentication is via Google Sign-In.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy. We'll notify you of significant changes via the app. The "last updated" date at the top always reflects the most recent version.

16. Contact

Privacy questions or data requests: hello@torqhaus.app

© 2026 TorQ-Haus · Terms · Privacy