Privacy policy

Overview

Xignal is operated by XignalHQ Technologies Ltd ("Xignal", "we", "us", "our"), a company incorporated in Nigeria. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and share it, and the rights available to you, across:

• the Xignal mobile application ("App"), available on Android and iOS;
• this website, xignalhq.com ("Site") - including the contact form, the web coin-checkout flow, and analytics described in Analytics & cookies below.

This policy applies to the Xignal consumer App and this website only. If you are a business using the Xignal API or Business Portal, a separate Business Privacy Policy applies - our Business Portal is currently in early access, and its dedicated legal pages are not yet public. In the meantime, contact us at legal@xignalhq.com with any business-related privacy questions.

By creating an account, using the App, or browsing this Site, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the App or this Site - though you can still decline optional cookies via the banner shown on your first visit and continue browsing.

What we collect

Account & identity

When you create an account, you sign in through Clerk, our identity provider, using Google, Apple, or Facebook sign-in, or an email address with a password or a one-time email code. We receive your name and email address from your identity provider, and a profile photo if you use social sign-in. We never receive or store your password - it is held by Clerk or your social provider, not by us.

We also collect your country, derived from your device location the first time you use location-based features, so we can route your reports and alerts to the right region.

You can also choose a unique username in Settings and decide whether it or your name is shown to other users as your display name. A username is entirely optional, purely for how you're shown to others, and is never used to sign in.

Location data

The App uses your device location for several distinct purposes:

• Foreground location - while the App is open, to centre the incident map, tag the location of a report you submit, and calculate routes.
• Background location (optional) - if you turn on "Background Location" in Settings, the App periodically records your location while running in the background so we can alert you to incidents physically near you, even when the App is closed. You can turn this off at any time in Settings, or by revoking the background location permission in your device settings.
• SOS - if you activate SOS, your live location is recorded continuously and shared, in real time, with other nearby App users within your alert radius, your designated Trusted Circle contacts (a Pro feature), and any responder who accepts your SOS. A full trail of your location during the SOS event is stored and remains visible to you and your Trusted Circle contacts in your SOS history.
• Trusted Circle - Pro subscribers may invite up to five other Xignal users as trusted contacts. When you activate SOS, your trusted contacts are notified with your live location regardless of how far away they are, so they can check on you or send help.

We do not currently apply an automatic deletion schedule to SOS location trails or your last recorded location - see Data retention below.

Incident reports & community content

When you submit an incident report, we collect the incident type, severity, your note (if any), any photos or videos you attach, the location, and the time it occurred. Your account is linked to the report internally - for trust-scoring, moderation, and so you can edit or delete it - but other users only see your display name (your name, or your username if you've chosen to show that instead - see Account & identity above) and photo if you have not turned on Anonymous Reporting in Settings; if you have, you appear as "Anonymous" to everyone except our moderation team, regardless of your display name choice.

If you join or post in a Community - an interest-based group inside the App, not tied to your location - we collect the communities you join, the posts, comments, likes, and reports you make, and, for community owners and admins, the join requests you approve or deny. Community posts and comments are visible to other members of that community. Any member can escalate a community post into a public incident report; doing so creates a new incident attributed to the escalating member's account, not the original poster's.

Media

Photos and videos you upload - for incident reports, community posts, or your profile - are stored with our cloud storage provider and, once uploaded, are reachable at a fixed, unlisted web address. We do not currently strip location or other metadata that may be embedded in photos you upload, so please avoid including personal information you don't want shared (faces, number plates, documents) that isn't relevant to the report.

Payment data

Xignal Pro is funded from coins in your in-app Xignal wallet - there is no direct card charge for Pro itself. Coins can only be added to your wallet through the web coin-checkout flow on this Site, where your payment is processed by Flutterwave. We do not receive or store your card details - only confirmation that a payment succeeded and a transaction reference. The web checkout only needs your email address, verified with a one-time code, to confirm which account to credit.

Diagnostic data

The App includes Google Analytics for Firebase, bundled with the Google Mobile Ads SDK described in Advertising below. Unlike this Site's Google Analytics - which only runs if you accept analytics cookies, see Analytics & cookies - the App's Analytics for Firebase runs by default; we don't yet have an in-app control to turn it off. It collects app opens, screen views, session length, device/OS/locale, and approximate country-level location derived from your IP address. It does not receive your name, email address, or account ID.

We also use PostHog to understand how the App's core features are actually used - for example, that a route was analysed, a report was submitted (with its type and severity, never its note text), an SOS was activated, or Pro was activated. These events are linked to your internal account ID so we can see how one person's actions connect across a session, but never carry your name, email, exact location, or the content of anything you write.

Our backend servers use Sentry to log errors that occur while processing requests from the App or this Site - an error log can include your device's IP address and the contents of the specific request that failed (which, depending on what you were doing at the time, may include content such as report or message text). These logs are used only to diagnose and fix problems, are accessible only to our engineering team, and are not used for any other purpose.

How we use your information

• Operating the App - the incident map, community feed, route planning, alerts, and SOS
• Verifying, scoring, and moderating incident reports and community content, including detecting repeated false reporting
• Calculating your trust score, XP, and reputation tier
• Sending push notifications and alerts you have opted into
• Generating AI-assisted suggestions - for example, a suggested title for an incident report, or a written summary in Location Intelligence - using NVIDIA's AI model API, or OpenAI's API as a fallback when NVIDIA's service is unavailable or rate-limited. We send the relevant report text to whichever provider handles the request; neither receives your name or contact details as part of this.
• Calculating route risk scores, including weather conditions along your route from WeatherAPI.com (primary) or OpenWeatherMap (fallback), and optional live traffic data for Pro subscribers who turn this on - TomTom's Traffic API first, falling back to Google's Routes API if TomTom's isn't available. These providers receive only route coordinates, never your name or account details.
• Suggesting destinations as you type an address or place name - the text you type is sent to TomTom first, falling back to Google Places if needed, to return matching suggestions.
• Showing a destination brief - weather, nearby road-incident reports, and nearby hospitals, police stations, and hotels - when you pick a destination, before route planning runs. The destination's coordinates are sent to TomTom (traffic incidents and points of interest), OpenStreetMap's Overpass service (points of interest), and the weather providers above.
• Resolving an address or a map coordinate to a place name, and the reverse - using OpenStreetMap's Nominatim first, then TomTom, then Google as further fallbacks.
• Processing your Xignal Pro subscription and wallet top-ups
• Sending transactional communications (e.g. password-reset codes, Pro billing receipts)
• Serving ads to free-tier (non-Pro) users through Google AdMob - see Advertising below

We do not sell your data.

Community features

Communities are interest-based groups inside the App, separate from the incident map. Community owners and admins can see the membership list, review join requests, and review posts that members report; they cannot see anything about you beyond what's visible in the community itself.

If a community is private, joining requires an owner or admin to approve your join request, including any reason you provide. If a post is removed by a moderator for violating our rules, the author is notified along with the reason given.

Escalating a post to a public incident report makes that content - and the escalating member's identity, subject to their Anonymous Reporting setting - visible in the public incident feed, in the same way as an ordinary report.

Data sharing

We share data only with the following service providers, strictly to operate the App and this Site. None of them are permitted to use your information for their own advertising purposes.

We disclose information to these providers only as needed for them to perform the service listed. We may also disclose information where required by law, to protect the rights or safety of any person, or to investigate suspected fraud or abuse of the App or this Site. We will notify you where legally permitted to do so.

Analytics & cookies

On this Site

This Site uses Google Analytics (GA4) to understand, in aggregate, how many people visit and which pages they use. Analytics is off by default. The first time you visit, a banner asks you to choose "Accept all" or "Necessary only"; Google Analytics only loads if you choose "Accept all", and your choice is remembered on this device. Choosing "Necessary only" means no analytics script ever runs in your browser.

What Google Analytics receives, when enabled:

• The page you're viewing (path only - we deliberately strip query strings before reporting a page view, so a value like the one-time token in an unsubscribe link, or a pre-filled coin amount, never reaches Google)
• Referring site, device/browser type, and approximate (city-level) location, derived by Google from your IP address
• How long you spend on the Site and which links you click

What it does not receive: your name, email address, account ID, or anything else that directly identifies you. We do not send Google a User ID, we have not enabled Google Signals or ad personalisation, and we do not use Analytics data for advertising. Per Google's own documented handling of GA4 traffic, your IP address is used transiently to derive that city-level location and is not logged or stored by Google Analytics. We do not sell or share analytics data with any other party.

Cookies this Site sets:

You can change your choice at any time by clearing this Site's data in your browser settings, which will show the banner again on your next visit. Most browsers also let you block third-party cookies entirely, or you can use Google's own Analytics opt-out browser add-on. This Site does not run advertising cookies and does not perform cross-site tracking.

In the App

The App uses a different tool - Google Analytics for Firebase, described in Diagnostic data above - not this GA4 property, and not cookies (mobile apps don't use them; Firebase identifies app installs with its own device-level identifier instead). It currently runs by default, unlike this Site's cookie-gated Analytics - we don't yet have an in-app setting to turn it off. See Advertising below for the separate data AdMob collects to serve ads.

Advertising

Free-tier (non-Pro) use of the App includes ads served by Google AdMob, shown as native ad cards in the incident feed and clearly labelled "Ad." Xignal Pro subscribers see no ads at all - upgrading removes this data collection entirely. Ads are currently only shown on Android; the App isn't yet available on iOS.

What AdMob receives:

• Your device's advertising identifier (Android's "Advertising ID"), device and OS information, and approximate location derived from your IP address
• Standard ad-serving data - which ad was shown, and whether you tapped it

What it does not receive: your Xignal name, email address, or account ID.

We do not currently run a separate in-app consent flow for ad personalisation, so AdMob serves ads under Google's default handling, which can include personalising them using your device's advertising identifier. This is different from this Site's Google Analytics (see Analytics & cookies above), where we have deliberately not enabled ad personalisation or Google Signals. To limit ad personalisation for the App, use your device's own setting (Android: Settings → Google → Ads → "Delete advertising ID" or "Opt out of Ads Personalization"), or upgrade to Xignal Pro to remove ads entirely. See Your rights below for what this means under US state privacy laws specifically.

Business partner data

Some organisations - for example insurers, logistics companies, and government agencies - access Xignal incident data through our Business API to build safer products and services. Before any incident data is shared with a business partner, we remove all information that could identify you: your name, email, account ID, device information, and internal scoring details are never included. Partners receive only the incident type, severity, status, location and time, any attached media, and a general "verified reporter" flag.

We reserve the right to use, analyse, aggregate, and license de-identified and anonymised data derived from incident reports and app usage - including making it available to business partners and researchers - to the extent permitted by applicable law, including the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and equivalent legislation in other countries where the App operates. We do not share your personally identifiable information with business partners.

Permissions

Depending on your device, the App may ask for the following permissions, each requested only when a feature that needs it is used:

• Location (while using the App) - required for the incident map, routing, and tagging report locations.
• Location (background) - optional; only requested if you turn on Background Location in Settings, for proximity alerts while the App is closed.
• Camera - to take a photo or video for an incident report or community post.
• Photo library - to attach an existing photo or video.
• Microphone - requested alongside camera access on some devices for video capture; we do not currently use it independently of video recording.
• Notifications - to deliver push alerts.

You can review and revoke any of these at any time in your device's system settings. Revoking location access will limit or disable the incident map, routing, report tagging, and SOS.

Notifications

We send push notifications through Expo. You can turn the following categories on or off individually in Settings → Notifications: nearby incidents (including being asked to confirm a report near you), route alerts, report verification (updates on your own reports - surfaced, confirmed, disputed, cleared, or resolved), and a weekly summary (off by default). SOS alerts, comments and @mentions on your content, and account-security notices are sent regardless of these settings, as we treat them as safety-critical or account-critical. Uninstalling the App or clearing notification permissions in your device settings will stop all push notifications.

Data retention

We retain your account information for as long as your account is active. Incident reports and community posts you create are retained as part of the Xignal safety dataset even after you remove them from your own view - deleting a report or a comment removes it from other users' view but retains the underlying record, disassociated from you, for platform integrity and the anonymised dataset described above.

We do not currently apply an automatic deletion schedule to SOS event data, location trails, or your last recorded location - these are retained until you delete your account or contact us to request deletion. Route history you save is capped at your 20 most recent routes and can be deleted individually or in full at any time from the App.

When you delete your account (Settings → Account → Delete account), it is deactivated immediately and permanently: you can no longer sign in, your profile and reporting history stop being visible to other users, and it is excluded from every part of the App and Site from that moment on. Some content you contributed - such as comments - is retained but permanently disassociated from your identity, consistent with how it is handled for other deleted accounts. The underlying account record is then retained, inactive, for a limited period - to resolve any pending disputes, comply with financial and legal record-keeping obligations tied to Pro billing history, and prevent immediate re-registration abuse - after which it is erased. You can request it be erased sooner by emailing legal@xignalhq.com.

Data security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS) between the App and our servers, hashed storage of authentication tokens, and rate-limiting on sensitive endpoints. Signing in on a new device automatically ends your session on your previous device. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

International transfers

Xignal is built for Africa: XignalHQ Technologies Ltd is based in Nigeria, and that is where our primary operations and decision-making sit. Even so, some of the service providers listed in Data sharing above - including Clerk, Cloudflare, Google, TomTom, PostHog, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Sentry, and tawk.to - process data on infrastructure located outside Nigeria, including in the United States and the European Union (TomTom and PostHog's EU hosting are both based in the Netherlands), as part of how those services work. Your data may therefore leave Nigeria to reach these providers even though you are using the App or this Site from within Africa. Where this happens, we rely on the provider's own compliance mechanisms (such as Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent safeguard recognised under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023) and select providers with appropriate security and confidentiality commitments.

Your rights

Xignal is built for Africa. XignalHQ Technologies Ltd is a Nigerian company, and our primary data protection obligations are under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA). Because Xignal is available and growing across the continent, we aim to honour equivalent rights for users in other African countries with their own data protection laws - for example South Africa's POPIA, Kenya's Data Protection Act 2019, and Ghana's Data Protection Act.

Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your account and personal data
• Object to, or ask us to restrict, certain processing
• Receive a copy of your data in a portable format
• Withdraw consent (for example, for location access, push notifications, or analytics cookies) at any time, without affecting anything we did before you withdrew it
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority, in addition to (not instead of) contacting us directly

Xignal is not designed, marketed, or offered for use outside Africa. If you nonetheless access the App or this Site from a jurisdiction with its own privacy law - such as the EU/UK's GDPR, or a US state privacy law like the CCPA/CPRA - we will honour the rights it grants you to the extent it applies to you. In every case, regardless of where you access Xignal from, we do not sell personal information.

On sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, as that term is used in US state privacy laws: this Site does not do this - see Analytics & cookies above. The App's free tier is different - Google AdMob serving ads under its default, potentially-personalised handling (see Advertising above) can fall within what these laws call "sharing." You can opt out of this specifically by upgrading to Xignal Pro (no ads at all), by using your device's ad-personalisation setting, or by emailing legal@xignalhq.com to request it.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at legal@xignalhq.com. We will respond within 30 days, and may ask you to verify your identity first (for example, by confirming the email address on your account) before acting on a request, so that we don't hand over or delete someone else's data by mistake. You can also delete your account directly from the app under Settings → Account → Delete account.

Children's privacy

Xignal involves location sharing, community interaction with other users, and an SOS feature intended for genuine emergencies, so it is not directed at children. You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your country if higher, to create an account. We do not currently verify your age at sign-up; by creating an account you confirm that you meet this requirement. Because of this age requirement, the App is not directed at children, and we do not apply Google's child-directed treatment to the ads described in Advertising above. If we learn that a child has created an account or provided us with personal data, we will delete it - contact us at legal@xignalhq.com if you believe this has happened.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the App changes. If we make material changes, we will notify you in the App or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use the App after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

For privacy questions, data requests, or concerns, contact us at legal@xignalhq.com.

For general app support, visit our support page.