Privacy Policy (Datenschutzerklärung)

This Privacy Policy explains how ZeroTrace (Selda Karakus, Köln, Germany) collects, uses, and protects personal data when you visit our website, use the dashboard, or purchase ZeroTrace hardware and firmware.

Controller within the meaning of Art. 4 No. 7 GDPR is Selda Karakus, trading as ZeroTrace, Alte Brühler Straße 127, 50997 Köln, Germany, admin@zerotrace.pw.

The use of cookies and similar technologies on our website is described separately in our Cookies Policy.

• Visitors browsing zerotrace.one or zerotrace.pw subdomains
• Dashboard users with an account on our authenticated services
• Customers purchasing hardware, firmware, or licenses
• App users pairing with and controlling ZeroTrace hardware from the mobile app
• Support contacts communicating with us by email

ZeroTrace is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided data, contact us so we can remove it.

• Account data: email, username, hashed password, session tokens
• Order data: billing/shipping address, order history, invoice numbers
• Payment data: processed by Stripe; we only receive a payment confirmation, never card details
• Support data: messages, attachments, and logs you choose to share
• Technical data: IP address, user agent, timestamps, abuse-detection signals, rate-limit logs

• Art. 6(1)(b), performance of a contract (orders, accounts, licensing)
• Art. 6(1)(c), legal obligations (tax law, packaging law, etc.)
• Art. 6(1)(f), legitimate interests (security, fraud prevention, abuse detection)
• Art. 6(1)(a), consent (cookies and similar, where required)

• Operate the dashboard, licensing, and delivery functionality
• Process orders, issue invoices, and prevent fraud
• Handle customer support and warranty claims
• Secure the Service (logging, rate-limiting, abuse monitoring)
• Comply with German tax, commercial, and packaging-law obligations

We use the following processors under Art. 28 GDPR contracts:

• Stripe Payments Europe Ltd (Dublin, Ireland; further sub-processing by Stripe, Inc. in the United States), payment processing. Transfer to the US is covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification and Stripe's Standard Contractual Clauses.
• DHL Paket GmbH (Bonn, Germany), physical shipment. Shipping address and contact details are shared so the parcel can be delivered.
• Hosting / infrastructure providers (located primarily within the EU/EEA), operation of the dashboard and licence services.
• Vercel Inc. (San Francisco, USA), content delivery and hosting of the website and, only if you opt in via the cookie banner, privacy-friendly product analytics (Vercel Web Analytics). Vercel Web Analytics is cookieless, measures aggregate page views, and does not build cross-site profiles or sell data. Vercel is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and we additionally rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46 GDPR). If you decline analytics, no analytics script is loaded at all.

We do not sell personal data and do not transfer data to third parties for advertising.

Where data is processed outside the EU/EEA, primarily by Stripe for card-payment processing and by Vercel for content delivery and optional analytics, we rely on a combination of: (i) the EU-US Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision where applicable, (ii) Standard Contractual Clauses under Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR, and (iii) additional safeguards as required by case law (Schrems II). Copies of the SCCs may be requested at admin@zerotrace.pw.

• Encryption in transit (TLS) on all endpoints
• Password hashing using modern algorithms (e.g., argon2 / bcrypt)
• Least-privilege access and security monitoring
• Automated retention and cleanup (see Section 10)

We retain data only as long as needed for the purpose collected:

• Server / access logs (IP, user agent, timestamps): up to 14 days for security and abuse-prevention purposes (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), then anonymised or deleted
• Sessions & auth tokens: deleted at expiry
• Desktop licenses: 3 hours from creation
• Atlas agents / cooldowns: 14 days
• Webhook content: 30 days
• Notifications: until read, max 60 days
• Messages & reactions: 90 days
• Invoices, contracts, and tax-relevant records: 10 years (§147 AO)
• Account data: retained while the account exists; deleted on request subject to legal hold

Backups are infrequent and used only during maintenance, deleted records are not recoverable.

The ZeroTrace mobile app (iOS/Android) is the companion app for pairing with and controlling ZeroTrace hardware. It is built to keep your data on your phone: there is no ZeroTrace account, no cloud sync, and no analytics or telemetry. We do not receive your captured data, location, photos, or device logs.

Permissions the app requests, and why

• Bluetooth (BLE): to discover, pair with, and control your ZeroTrace devices and to receive the wireless observations they capture. Bluetooth communication happens directly between your phone and your device.
• Location (while in use): during a war-drive ("Drive"), to stamp each captured device with the position where it was heard strongest and to draw your route on the map. On Android, location access is also a system prerequisite for Bluetooth scanning. Location is used only while a drive is running, never in the background.
• Camera: only to scan a license-key QR code when activating a device. The frame is processed on-device to read the key; no images are captured, stored, or transmitted.
• Photos / media library (write-only): only when you tap "save" to export a route card, drive image, or GIF to your gallery. The app does not read, scan, or upload your existing photos and does not access photo location metadata.

Data stored on your device

• App settings, paired devices, saved scripts, and theme/unit preferences.
• War-drive sessions — the captured observations (a device's Bluetooth address, advertised name, signal strength, vendor, and the GPS coordinates and time of its strongest sighting) and your route track — saved as files in the app's private storage.
• Any WiGLE or WDGoWars API tokens you choose to add (see below).

All of this stays on the device. You can delete drive sessions, remove tokens, and clear the in-app diagnostic log at any time; uninstalling the app removes it. None of it is synced to ZeroTrace.

Optional uploads to WiGLE / WDGoWars (your own accounts)

The app can publish a finished drive to the wardriving platforms WiGLE (wigle.net) or WDGoWars (wdgwars.pl). This is strictly opt-in and never happens unless you act:

• You paste your own API token/key for the service. It is stored only on your device, is never embedded in the app, and is never sent to ZeroTrace.
• Only when you tap Upload — or enable auto-upload for finished drives — does the app send that session's observations as a standard WiGLE-format CSV (device address, name, time, signal strength, latitude/longitude, accuracy) directly from your phone to the service's API, authenticated with your token. The app may also read back your own public account statistics from those services using the same token.
• These uploads go to your own account on a third-party service. ZeroTrace is not a party to the transfer and does not receive or process the uploaded data; that service's own privacy policy and terms govern it.

Map tiles

The drive map loads background tiles from a third-party map CDN (CARTO basemaps, rendered from OpenStreetMap data, no account or API key). As with any online map, this discloses the map area you are viewing and your device's IP address to the tile provider. No ZeroTrace identifier is attached.

Diagnostics

For troubleshooting, the app keeps a small, fixed-size diagnostic log on the device (shown in the in-app Logs screen). It is capped, overwrites the oldest entries first, and is never transmitted off the device — consistent with our no-logs principle.

Lawful use

War-driving records wireless identifiers broadcast by nearby devices, which can constitute personal data under the GDPR. You are responsible for using the app — and any uploads you make — in line with the law applicable to you. The app is built to minimise: it runs on-device, flags randomised (private) Bluetooth addresses, bounds how much it retains, and uploads nothing without your action.

Legal bases (Art. 6 GDPR): providing the app's core functionality rests on Art. 6(1)(b) (performance of the contract); access to Bluetooth, location, camera, and photos is enabled by the device permissions you grant at the operating-system level; optional WiGLE/WDGoWars uploads rest on your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time by removing the token or disabling auto-upload.

ZeroTrace does not carry out automated individual decision-making, including profiling, that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR.

Our systems use automated rules for fraud and abuse prevention (e.g., rate limiting, anomaly detection, payment-risk signals supplied by Stripe). These rules may flag a session or order for human review but do not, by themselves, deny goods or services without a manual review step.

• Access, request a copy of your data (Art. 15)
• Rectification, correct inaccurate data (Art. 16)
• Erasure, request deletion (Art. 17), subject to legal retention
• Restriction, limit processing (Art. 18)
• Portability, receive your data in a portable format (Art. 20)
• Objection, to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21)
• Withdraw consent, at any time, with effect for the future (Art. 7(3))
• Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, competent for us: Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen (LDI NRW), Düsseldorf

To exercise rights, contact admin@zerotrace.pw.

Privacy questions and requests can be sent to admin@zerotrace.pw.

ZeroTrace is currently a sole proprietorship without employees regularly engaged in large-scale processing and is not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (Art. 37 GDPR / §38 BDSG). The owner, Selda Karakus, handles privacy enquiries directly.