Kava Privacy Policy

Kava (“Kava,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is operated by Farspire Enterprises Inc., a Canadian company, which is responsible for the personal information described here. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why, who helps us process it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have, for the Kava iPhone app and for this website.

The short version: your cafés live on your phone. An account is optional. A few things reach our servers only when you choose them, and each one is listed below. We do not sell personal information, show ads, or track you across other apps and websites.

What Stays on Your Phone

Almost everything Kava is for lives on your device. The cafés you have marked, your ratings, your notes, your photos, your profile picture and your settings are stored in a local database on your phone, and the app runs no analytics of any kind.

Photos never leave the phone at all, whether or not you have an account or kava+. They are not part of the backup and are never uploaded. Sharing sends only the picture you preview and approve, through your phone's own share sheet, to wherever you choose to send it.

Your phone's own backup is separate from Kava. If your iPhone backs up to iCloud, that backup can include Kava's data on the phone, photos included. That copy is held by Apple in your iCloud account, under Apple's terms, and we cannot see or reach it.

Using Kava Without an Account

An account is optional. All of Kava works without one: the map, your cafés, ratings, notes and photos, sharing, feedback, and hiding the big chains. Only backup of your cafés needs an account. Without an account we hold no account or profile about you, only the feedback you choose to send and the short-lived technical records described below. The app still talks to our servers in these ways:

• The café list. When you add or open a city, the app asks our catalog service for that city's cafés and boundary and keeps a copy on your phone. Searching for a city sends what you type in that one search box. Our servers may pass that search text, and nothing about you, to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service to find the city. Searching cafés afterwards happens entirely on your phone, so your café searches and your visits never leave the device.
• The beta switch. During the beta, the app asks our servers whether the beta is still on. This request sends nothing about you.
• Feedback, if you choose to send it, described below.

Like any request over the internet, these carry your IP address and basic technical details to our servers and our hosting providers, which may keep them in short-lived server logs for security and troubleshooting. Catalog requests are not linked to an account.

Your Account

You can create an account with an email address and password, or with Sign in with Apple. Kava does not offer any other sign-in provider.

Email Sign-Up

We receive your email address and, if you choose to enter them, your first and last name. Your password is handled by our authentication provider, Supabase, and is stored only in hashed form; we never see it. We send a confirmation email to check the address is yours, and password-reset emails when you ask for one.

Sign in with Apple

If you sign in with Apple, Apple gives us a stable identifier for you, your email address and, the first time only, your name. If you choose Apple's Hide My Email, we receive a private relay address instead, which forwards to your real address; we treat it like any other address and never see the one behind it.

We also keep a token Apple issues when you sign in. It has one use: when you delete your account, we send it back to Apple so Apple ends Kava's access to your Apple ID. It is readable only by our servers, never by the app.

What an Account Is For

We use your account information to sign you in, including on a new phone, to put a name on your profile, to decide whether kava+ is on for you, to keep your backup if you turn it on, and to write to you about the service (see Emails below). It is never used for advertising or tracking.

kava+ and Backup

kava+ adds two things: backing up your cafés so they can come back on a new phone, and hiding the big chains from your map. Hiding chains happens on your phone, needs no account, and sends nothing about you. Backup needs an account, because the copy on our servers must belong to someone.

The Beta

While Kava is in beta, kava+ is free. No payment details are collected for it and nothing is recorded as a purchase.

• Hide big chains needs no account and no payment. You turn it on in the app, and it works on your phone.
• Backup needs a free account. Our servers treat every active account as entitled to kava+ during the beta.

The beta ends when we decide it does. We will say so in the app, and by email to account holders. When the beta ends, the free kava+ features stop unless you have a paid subscription.

What the Backup Holds

Backup is off until you turn it on, on the Profile tab. When it is on, Kava copies to our servers each café you have marked, with its name and map position, the kind of place it is, the date you first and last marked it, your rating and your note, and the cities you have added. Your photos and profile picture are never included. The copy is linked to your account, and only your account can read it back through the app. A small number of people at Kava can reach our database to run and support the service.

When you sign in on a phone with no cafés, Kava brings your backed-up cafés back to it. If both the phone and the backup have cafés, Kava asks you what the backup should keep before changing either.

Turning It Off, and When kava+ Ends

• Turning backup off deletes the copy on our servers straight away. The cafés on your phone are not touched.
• If your kava+ ends, whether a subscription lapses or the beta closes, the backup stops accepting changes but stays readable, so you can still bring your cafés back. If kava+ is not back on within 90 days of the last change it received, it is deleted automatically. Your account and your phone's data are kept.
• Deleting your account deletes the backup with it.

Subscriptions

When kava+ is sold, it is sold through the App Store. Apple takes the payment, and we never see your card or payment details.

You can buy kava+ with or without an account.

• Without an account, the app gives RevenueCat, the service that manages our subscriptions, a random anonymous identifier, not your name or email address. RevenueCat keeps the purchase under that identifier, with Apple's details of the transaction. Apple knows the purchase through your Apple Account, as with any App Store purchase. Our servers keep no record of it. Your phone asks RevenueCat whether the purchase is active, and turns on the paid features.
• With an account, the app tells RevenueCat your Kava account identifier, so the purchase is matched to your account.
• If you buy without an account and sign in later, the app moves the purchase from the anonymous identifier to your account.

For a purchase linked to an account, we store what is needed to know whether that account is entitled to the paid features: which plan was bought, Apple's identifiers for the transaction, whether it came from Apple's test environment, whether it will renew, and the dates it starts, renews, ends or is refunded, together with the notifications Apple sends about it. Our servers ask RevenueCat for the state of a subscription. Apple and RevenueCat process that information under their own privacy policies.

Feedback

You can send us feedback from inside the app: from the map, from Profile, or from under an error message. You do not need an account to send it. Feedback from someone without an account is kept with no account attached. When you send feedback, we receive:

• your message, and whether you marked it a bug, an idea or something else;
• the app version, your phone's operating system and device type, the city you have open, the screen it came from and, if it came from an error, the error text;
• your account identifier, if you are signed in;
• a screenshot of the screen you were on, only if you switch that on. It is off by default, because it can show your cafés.

The form lists everything that goes with a message before you send it. Tickets are stored in a private database table, and screenshots in private storage, that only our servers and the Kava team can reach.

To stop one source from flooding us, we limit how much feedback can be sent in a short time. For that, we keep a one-way cryptographic fingerprint (an HMAC) of the IP address a ticket came from. We never store the IP address itself, and the fingerprint cannot be turned back into it.

We use feedback to fix and improve Kava, and for nothing else. There is no automatic deletion of tickets yet: we keep them for as long as they help us improve Kava, and you can ask us to delete yours at any time. If you delete your account, your tickets are kept but lose any link to you.

Location

Location is off by default, and Kava does not ask iOS for permission until you turn it on, in Profile or when setting up your first city. It uses your position for two things:

• Suggesting the city you are in. Your phone asks Apple's own geocoding service to name the place at your position. Kava then sends only that place name to our catalog service, to find the city. If our catalog does not know the city name, Kava tries the name of the district, and then the name of the region. Your position is never sent to Kava's servers.
• Sorting cafés nearest first, which happens entirely on your phone.

Kava reads your position only while the app is open and the switch is on. It never uses location in the background, and it never stores a position, on the phone or anywhere else. A visit records the café you chose, never where you were standing. You can turn it off in Profile, or in iOS Settings.

Emails

If you have an account, we use its email address for:

• Service emails: confirming your address, resetting your password, and telling you about things that affect your account or the service, such as the beta ending or a change to these policies.
• Feedback requests: occasionally asking how Kava is working for you, with nothing sold in the message.

We do not send promotional email to account holders unless you have separately and actively agreed to receive it, as Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) requires. Agreeing to these terms or creating an account is not that agreement. Any promotional email we do send will identify us and include a working unsubscribe link. Account emails are sent through Brevo; if you use Hide My Email, they reach you through Apple's relay.

How We Use Your Information

We use personal information to:

• Sign you in and maintain your account.
• Provide Kava's features, including backup and kava+.
• Respond to feedback and support requests, and fix problems.
• Keep the service secure, including limiting abuse and investigating misuse.
• Send the service emails and feedback requests described above.
• Meet legal, tax and accounting obligations.

We do not sell personal information, use it for advertising, share it with data brokers, or track you across other companies' apps and websites.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we rely on these legal bases: performing our agreement with you (your account, backup and kava+), our legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention, serving the café list, and improving Kava from your feedback), your consent (location, the optional feedback screenshot, website cookies and any promotional email, each of which you can withdraw), and legal obligations (such as keeping transaction records).

Who Processes It for Us

We use a small number of service providers. Each handles information only to provide its service to us, under its own terms and privacy policy. Supabase, Railway, RevenueCat and Brevo, which process information from the app, are each bound by contract to protect personal information to the same or an equal standard as this policy.

• Supabase: our database, sign-in, backup storage, feedback tickets and screenshots, and the server functions that handle account deletion and feedback.
• Railway: hosts the catalog service that serves the café list.
• Apple: the App Store, payments, Sign in with Apple, Hide My Email, and the geocoding that names your city when location is on. See Apple's privacy policy.
• RevenueCat: manages subscriptions. See RevenueCat's privacy policy.
• Brevo: sends account emails.
• Vercel and Upstash: host this website and store the pre-release waitlist.
• Microsoft Clarity: website analytics only, never the app.

Two sources supply data to Kava rather than process yours: Overture Maps, whose open places data is the café catalog, and OpenStreetMap, whose Nominatim service supplies city boundaries. Neither receives anything about you.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the rights and safety of our users or others, or to a successor if Kava is sold or merged, in which case this policy continues to apply to it.

Where Your Information Is Stored

Kava is operated from Canada, and our service providers may store and process information in the United States and other countries. When they do, it is protected by the providers' contractual commitments, but it is subject to the laws of those countries, and courts and authorities there may be able to access it under their law.

The Kava Website

This site is not the app, and it collects a little where the app collects nothing. Everything below applies to www.mykava.app only.

The Waitlist

If you leave your email address to hear about the launch, we store that address so we can send you the App Store link the day Kava opens. It is held in a Redis database run by Upstash, keyed on the lowercased address so signing up twice does not create a second entry. We use it for the launch announcement and nothing else: no newsletter, no marketing on anyone else's behalf, and it is never sold or shared.

So that one source cannot flood the list, the form also counts recent submissions against the IP address they came from. That counter is stored alongside the list and expires by itself after an hour.

We keep the list until the launch emails have gone out, and delete it afterwards. You can ask to come off it at any point, before or after launch, by writing to info@mykava.app.

Analytics

The website uses Vercel Web Analytics, which counts page views and records which site or search sent you here, and Vercel Speed Insights, which measures how quickly pages load. Neither sets cookies or follows you across other sites, and Vercel processes what it collects under its own privacy policy.

The website also uses Microsoft Clarity, which records how visitors scroll, click and move around a page so we can see where the site is confusing. Clarity only sets cookies if you agree to them in the banner, and you can change your answer any time under Cookie settings at the foot of each page. Without a yes it runs without cookies and cannot connect one page view to the next. It masks what you type into form fields by default and processes what it collects under the Microsoft Privacy Statement. Your answer to the banner is kept in your browser's own storage, not in a cookie, and never sent to us.

The website also uses Google Analytics, which counts visits and page views and records which site or link sent you here. Only if you accept cookies in the banner does it set cookies to tell one visit from the next. If you decline, or do not answer, it sets no cookies and sends Google only signals without a cookie, which Google uses to estimate visits, and Google processes what it collects under the Google Privacy Policy. The app itself still runs no analytics at all.

Fonts

The site uses your device's own system font, so loading a page downloads no typefaces and sends nothing to a font provider.

Discord

We run a Kava Discord server for people waiting on the launch. Joining is optional, and it happens on Discord rather than here: we never see your password, and what Discord shows us is the account other members can already see, meaning your username, avatar and Discord ID. We run a bot that gives people who join before launch the Pre-release Coffeeholics role. Anything you post there is held by Discord, which processes your information under its own privacy policy and terms.

Security

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure. Everything travels over encrypted connections. On our servers, access rules limit each account to its own rows, and the most sensitive records, such as Apple tokens and feedback tickets, cannot be reached by the app at all. No system is perfectly secure, and if a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will tell you and the regulators the law requires us to tell.

How Long We Keep It

• Account information: until you delete your account.
• Backup: until you turn backup off or delete your account, or 90 days after the last change once kava+ has ended.
• Subscription records: kept after an account is deleted, with the link to the account removed, as transaction records we may need for refunds, disputes, tax and accounting.
• Feedback: as long as it helps us improve Kava, or until you ask us to delete it; unlinked from you if you delete your account.
• Waitlist: until the launch emails have gone out.
• Server logs: for the short periods our providers keep them.

Deleting Your Data

To delete your account, open the Profile tab and tap Delete my account, under Permanent. This deletes your account and your backup on our servers at the same time, and erases Kava's data on the phone. It permanently removes from our servers your email address, your name, your Apple identifier and your backup. If you signed in with Apple, we first ask Apple to end Kava's access to your Apple ID. Three things outlast the deletion, none of them naming you: the subscription records described above, with the link to your account removed, which we keep for Apple refunds, disputes, tax and accounting; your feedback tickets, with the link to your account removed, including any screenshot you chose to send; and short-lived server logs.

Deleting your account does not cancel a kava+ subscription. Subscriptions belong to your Apple ID, and only you can cancel one, in iOS Settings, under your name, then Subscriptions.

Without an account, the Profile tab shows Delete my data in the same place. It erases everything Kava keeps on the phone itself. Deleting the app does the same. Neither one removes what is on our servers, such as feedback you sent. To remove that, delete your account if you have one, or write to us.

Waitlist addresses are held separately from accounts and are deleted once the launch emails have gone out, or sooner if you ask.

Your Rights

Depending on where you live, including under Canada's PIPEDA, Quebec's privacy law, and the GDPR in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy;
• correct information that is wrong;
• delete it;
• withdraw a consent you gave, for the future;
• where the GDPR applies, restrict or object to some uses, and receive your information in a portable format.

Much of this you can do yourself: the app shows everything on your phone, and deletes your account in two taps. For anything else, write to info@mykava.app. We may need to confirm the request comes from you, and we will answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, or the data protection authority where you live.

Children

Kava is a general-audience app and is not directed at children. Children under 13, or under 14 in Quebec, should not create an account or send feedback without a parent's or guardian's consent. If you believe a child has given us personal information in those circumstances, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We update this policy when Kava's features or data practices change, and revise the date at the top when we do. If a change affects how we use information we already hold, we will tell account holders in the app or by email before it takes effect, and ask for consent where the law requires it.

Contact Us

For questions about this policy or a privacy request, contact the person responsible for privacy at Farspire Enterprises Inc.: