SawaFone privacy policy

Who we are

SawaFone is an app made by ETITE LTD, a company in Rwanda. ETITE LTD is responsible for your data in SawaFone (the “data controller”).

Address: Kicukiro, Kigali City, Rwanda.

Website: etite.tech.

Questions about your data? Email [email protected].

Or write to us on WhatsApp: +250 794 768 888.

The short version

• Your records stay on your phone, locked (encrypted).
• SawaFone does not send your records to us. The app does not use the internet.
• We never sell your data.
• We never upload your address book to find other users.
• We never message your contacts without you.
• We never read your SMS messages.
• Every permission is optional. Say no, and the rest of the app still works.

What SawaFone keeps

SawaFone keeps what you put in it:

• Money records: who owes whom, how much, for what and when. Also the payment method, a receipt photo if you add one, categories, agreements (like rent or school fees) and collections.
• Reminders and lists.
• Notes: text, pictures and files you add or share into SawaFone.
• People without a phone: their name, place, how you know them, and who to reach them through.
• Links: which events, reminders, notes and money records belong to which person. A link uses the person's phone number.
• Your settings: for example your theme, and which app you use to message each person.

It also keeps:

• Old phone numbers of your contacts, so their old records still show on their page.
• Deleted contacts for 30 days in the Recycle bin, so you can undo a mistake.
• A locked backup of all of this (see “Backup” below).

What SawaFone does not keep

• Your contacts and calendar events stay in your phone's own Contacts and Calendar apps. SawaFone reads and changes them there. It does not copy them.
• No call history. SawaFone does not read your calls.
• No location history. See “Location” below.
• No fingerprints or PINs. Your phone checks them, not SawaFone.

Where your data is

• On your phone, locked. The key that opens it is kept inside your phone. It never leaves the phone.
• Pictures and files in notes are kept in SawaFone's private folder on the phone. Your phone's own encryption protects them.
• Nothing is on our servers. ETITE does not have a copy of your records.

Backup

• Every night, SawaFone saves a locked copy of your records, settings, pictures and files on your phone.
• Only your 24-digit recovery code opens it. Nobody else can open it, not even us. If you lose the code, the backup can't be opened.
• If Google backup is on in your phone's settings, Android copies this locked file to your Google account, so it can come back on your next phone. Google can't open it without your code. If the file is bigger than 20 MB, that copy leaves out pictures and files.
• You can also save a second copy in a place you choose, like an SD card or a folder in your Google Drive.
• If you turn backup off, the copy on your phone is deleted, and the copy in your Google account goes at Android's next backup. A copy you saved elsewhere stays.

Your settings are also in your Google account's phone backup, like other apps' settings, but not locked by your code. They include your choices in the app, the phone numbers of the people you chose a messaging app for, and the email address of the account where new contacts are saved.

What leaves your phone

SawaFone itself sends nothing over the internet. These can leave your phone, through Android and Google, not through us:

• Your phone's Google backup, as described above.
• An address lookup, only when you tap “Use my current location”: your phone's own address service turns your position into an address. On most phones that is a Google service, which receives the position for that lookup.
• App crash reports from Google Play, if you allowed your phone to share usage and diagnostics with Google. We may see these reports about the app crashing. They don't contain your records.
• What you choose to share (see “Sharing” below).

Permissions we ask for

We ask only when you use the feature. You can say no, and you can change your mind later in your phone's settings.

• Contacts: to show your people and link items to them. We never upload your address book to find other users. We never message your contacts without you.
• Calendar: to show and add events that sync with your Google calendar. We only change events you create or edit in SawaFone.
• Notifications: to remind you on time. No marketing notifications.
• Alarms & reminders: so reminders ring at the exact minute. Without it, they may come a few minutes late.
• Location: only when you tap “Use my current location”, to fill in an address. We never track you in the background or keep a history of where you have been. SawaFone keeps only the address text you leave in the field.
• Fingerprint or screen lock (for “Lock money”): to hide what people owe until you unlock. Screenshots of money are blocked while the lock is on.

Other people in your records

Your records are often about other people: your contacts, people who owe you, people in your notes.

• Keep only what you need.
• Be careful with private things, like health or family matters.
• We never contact these people, and we never use their data for anything else.

Sharing

SawaFone shares something only when you do it:

• when you send a statement or a payment reminder by WhatsApp or SMS;
• when you share a note or open a file in another app;
• when you save a file with “Download my data”.

That other app or place then has a copy, and its own rules apply.

Your rights

You can:

• Get a copy of your data: More → Privacy & permissions → “Download my data”. You get one file with everything you created in SawaFone. The file isn't locked: anyone who has it can read your records. Keep it somewhere safe.
• Move your data: on a new phone, open your backup with your recovery code, or use “Bring in data from a file”. Nothing on the new phone is deleted.
• Correct your data: edit it in the app. Money records are never changed: “Correct” adds a corrected record, and both stay in the history.
• Delete your data: More → Privacy & permissions → “Delete my data”. See Delete your data.
• Ask us about your data, or complain to us: [email protected]. We answer within 30 days, free of charge.
• Complain to the regulator: the Data Protection and Privacy Office of Rwanda's National Cyber Security Authority (NCSA), dpo.gov.rw.

You also have the other rights in Rwanda's law on the protection of personal data and privacy (Law No 058/2021 of 13/10/2021). Today ETITE does not have your records: they are only on your phone. So you use most of these rights yourself, in the app.

How long we keep data

• Your records stay on your phone until you delete them, use “Delete my data”, or uninstall the app.
• Deleted contacts: 30 days in the Recycle bin, then gone.
• A note, reminder or person without a phone that you delete disappears from the app at once, but stays hidden inside the locked database and backup until you use “Delete my data”.
• Money records are never changed or deleted one by one, so the history stays honest. They go when you delete all your data.
• Uninstalling SawaFone deletes what it keeps on the phone. A copy of the backup in your Google account follows Google's backup rules.

Children

SawaFone is for people aged 16 or older.

Coming later

These are not built yet. Before we add one, we will update this policy, and the app will ask you first.

• Caller card: when someone calls, SawaFone could show their name, balance and next event. It would look up the number on your phone only, and never block calls.
• Payment suggestions: reading only the notifications of the MoMo and Airtel Money apps, on your phone, to suggest money records. We never read your SMS messages.
• Sync between your phones: a copy kept on our servers, only if you turn it on.
• Crash reports from the app itself: off unless you turn them on, with names, numbers, amounts and your text removed.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the version and date at the top. Before an important change applies, the app tells you.