Privacy notice

The short version

ChargeAlong (chargealong.io) keeps as little about you as it can. Reading the site needs nothing from you. Posting a review needs no account. Adding photos needs only an email address. There is no advertising, no analytics and no tracking across other sites, and we never sell or share what we keep for anyone else's use.

When you read the site

Our servers see what any web server sees: your IP address, the page you asked for including anything in its address, your browser's user agent and the time. These go into server logs, which are kept for at most 30 days and then deleted. We use them to keep the site running and to deal with abuse.

If you use your location to find chargers nearby, your browser asks you first, and the position is rounded to about 100 metres before it leaves your device.

The trip planner

The start and end of a trip are part of the address of the plan, so they are in the link if you share it, and in our server logs for up to 30 days. As you type a street address, your browser sends what you have typed to Locio, the address service that suggests matches, which sees your internet address too. Our server asks Locio again to plan from an address. Beyond those logs, neither of us keeps the addresses you look up.

What we keep

• A random session. The first time you post, your browser gets a random token in a cookie. We keep a scrambled copy of it, and a random pseudonym such as Calm Wombat, so your reviews appear under the same name. We know nothing else about the session.
• What you post. Whether a site worked, your rating, your comment, the pseudonym it was posted under, and when. A review appears straight away. A review hidden by moderation or by readers' reports is no longer shown but is kept; one a moderator deletes is gone for good.
• A scrambled form of your internet address. To limit how much one person can post, each post keeps a one way code made from your address with a key that changes every day. Your address itself is never stored, and the code cannot be turned back into it or matched with another day's.
• Photos, if you add them. Every photo is copied into a new, smaller image before it is kept. Everything else in the original file is removed, including the location your phone recorded and the camera details. Photos are checked before anyone else sees them.
• What you tell us about a charger. A suggested fix or a missing charger keeps what you wrote, where you put the pin, and your email address if you gave one. We use that email only to ask about that fix or charger, and delete it once we have decided. When you use your location, your phone's position is used only to place the pin; only where you put the pin is sent.
• Your email address, if you make an account, used to send you sign in codes, and your agreement that photos you add are licensed CC BY 4.0. That is all an account holds: no real name, no profile, no password.
• A message you send. The contact form sends us your name, email address and message as an email, together with the internet address it came from, so we can deal with abuse. We keep it as long as it takes to answer you.

Cookies and what your browser keeps

There are no advertising or analytics cookies. These are all there are:

• ca_reviewer holds your random session, for a year, once you post.
• chargealong_session keeps you signed in, for up to 90 days, if you make an account. Signing in also sets short lived cookies that protect the form against cross site requests.
• ca_account tells this browser to show "Your account" instead of "Sign in", for 90 days. It holds nothing else.
• ca_moderator is set only for our moderators, for a day.

These stay in your browser and are never sent to us: chargealong.theme, your light or dark choice; ca:mastodon-instance, the Mastodon server you last shared a charger to; ca_fix: and ca_photos: entries, that you already sent a fix or photos for a charger, looked at for 30 days; and ca_charger_draft, a draft of a missing charger including any email you typed, for 7 days. Clearing your site data removes them.

Who else is involved

• Cloudflare sits in front of the site, so every request passes through it and it sees your internet address. It runs Turnstile, the check that a person rather than a script is posting, and forwards email sent to our address to our mailbox.
• DigitalOcean hosts our servers, database and photo storage, in Sydney.
• Resend delivers the sign in code emails and messages from the contact form.
• Locio suggests and looks up street addresses in the trip planner.
• OpenFreeMap serves the map tiles, so your browser fetches them directly, and it sees your internet address and which part of the map you are looking at.

Some of these process data outside Australia, including in the United States. Each is bound by its own terms to use it only to provide its service.

How long we keep things

• Server logs: at most 30 days.
• Your account and photos: until you delete the account.
• Reviews, and the daily code kept with them: until you delete your account or a moderator deletes them.
• An email given with a fix or a missing charger: until it is decided.

Delete your account and what you posted

Delete your account from your account page. That removes your email address, your photos and the reviews posted from sessions linked to your account, straight away. Fixes and missing chargers are not tied to an account; ask us to remove one.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to stop using it, and object to how we use it. Use the contact form. We answer by email within 30 days, at no cost, and you do not need to give a reason. If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Union, you can also complain to your data protection authority.

Children

The site is not meant for children, and we do not knowingly keep anything about a child.

Changes

If this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it. The rules for posting are in the terms of use.