Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal data Foamies collects, why, who it is shared with, and the rights you have. It is written to be read, not endured.
1. Who is responsible for your data
Foamies is operated by Lorène Bergougnoux and Théa Bailly, its founders. Foamies is not yet incorporated as a company: the founders act as joint controllers of your data.
For any question, or to exercise your rights: foamiesclub@gmail.com.
2. What we collect, and why
To create and maintain your account
- Email address, to identify you, log you in, reset your password.
- Password (encrypted, never readable by us), to secure your access.
- Google or Apple sign-in, if you use it, to log you in without a password.
- Date of birth, to verify you are at least 18. It is never shown to anyone. You may choose to display an age range on your profile (*Settings → My age*): others then see "25-34", never your date of birth. This is off by default.
- Username, to identify you to other surfers.
To make the app work
- Your location (city and coordinates), to show you nearby surfers, spots and professionals, and the weather in your area. If you allow access to your position, the app updates the town on your profile when you move well away from it, so that the surfers around you really are around you. That town is visible on your profile. You can pin a town by hand at any time: it then stops moving, and your position is no longer read. Refusing location access has the same effect.
- Your profile, photo, bio, level, frequency, languages, tribe.
- Your sessions, date, spot, conditions, photos, notes.
- Your boards, your friendships, your likes and comments, to bring your Club to life.
- Your private messages, to chat with the members of your Club.
- The spots you create, to enrich the catalogue, or keep your spots private.
- The spots you declare you surf, so other surfers can find you. This list is public: it appears on your profile and on the page of each of those spots. You build it yourself, spot by spot, and you can remove any of them at any time.
- Photos you suggest for a spot, to illustrate public places. They are not published straight away: our team reviews them, and the accepted ones join the spot's gallery, visible to every registered surfer. We record who suggested each photo, for moderation; that name is never shown next to the image.
- Your device's notification token, to send you notifications, only if you accept them.
For safety and moderation
- The text of blocked or reported messages flagged by our moderation filter, to protect users from harassment and hateful content.
- Your reports and blocks, to let you protect yourself, and our team to act.
- Your bug reports, to fix the app.
On what legal basis
Most of this processing is necessary to provide the service you ask us for (performance of the contract between us). Precise location, notifications, showing your age range and your declared spots rely on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. Safety and moderation rely on our legitimate interest in maintaining a safe space.
> What we do not do. Foamies contains no analytics tool, no advertising tracker, no advertising identifier. We do not sell or rent your data. We do no advertising profiling.
>
> The app ships a crash-reporting tool, currently switched off. If it is switched on, it will send us technical information only — device type, app version, where in the code the error happened — never the contents of your messages, sessions or photos.
What you write freely
Your bio, your session notes, your comments and your messages are free-text fields. Do not write sensitive information there (health, opinions, beliefs, sexual orientation), nor information about other people without their consent.
3. Who sees your sessions
You choose who can see your sessions, in Settings → Who sees my sessions. Three options:
| Setting | Who has access |
|---|---|
| Only me | you alone. Nobody else, not even your buddies. |
| My buddies | only the surfers you have added. |
| Everyone | every surfer signed up to Foamies. |
Every account starts on "My buddies", including those created before this setting existed. Going public is therefore always a decision you make yourself.
The setting applies to all your sessions at once, the ones you already logged included, and to what comes with them: photos, comments, likes and tagged surfers. It takes effect immediately, in both directions.
A public session shows the place, date, time, conditions, your photos and your board. Bear that in mind if you always surf the same spot at the same hours. Two protections hold whatever the setting:
- Your secret spots are never named. A session logged at a private spot shows without its name, to everyone but you.
- The rest of your account does not become public. Your boards stay with your buddies, your messages stay private, and your email address, date of birth and precise coordinates are readable by nobody but you.
Everyone's setting is shown as a label on their profile, so you can tell at a glance who sees what.
3 bis. Who sees your spots
The spots you declare are visible to every registered surfer: on your profile, and on each spot's page, where your name and picture appear among the surfers who go there.
That is the point of the feature, and it is why there is no visibility setting: a private list of places to find you would serve no purpose. You keep control another way — nothing is there until you put it there, and removing a spot takes it out of both places immediately.
We never publish when you go. No schedule, no dates, no "seen recently". A spot is a preference; a spot with a time attached would be a meeting point, and that is not what we are building.
A secret spot can never be declared: it stays yours alone. Someone you blocked, or who blocked you, does not see you in any of these lists.
We ask for your agreement once, before your first spot, and record it together with the version of the wording you read.
What we do not track. We do not record your movements. There is no history of your positions: a single town is stored, the last one known, and each update replaces the previous one. We know neither where you have been nor when.
4. Data about other people
You can tag other surfers in your sessions and post photos in which they appear. You are responsible for this: make sure you have their consent.
A spot photo shows a place, not people. Do not suggest an image in which someone is recognisable without their consent — we reject the ones that reach us, but we cannot guess them before you send them.
If someone posts content about you without your consent, you can report it directly in the app (the "…" menu on the content concerned), or write to us at foamiesclub@gmail.com to request its removal.
5. Who receives your data
We rely on technical service providers. None of them may use your data for their own purposes.
| Provider | Role | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | database, authentication, photo storage | European Union (Frankfurt) |
| Resend | sending our emails (confirmation, reset) | European Union |
| Expo | push notifications | United States |
| Google | place search, maps; Google sign-in if you use it | United States |
| Apple | app distribution, maps, Apple sign-in if you use it | United States |
| Open-Meteo | weather and sea conditions | European Union |
The core of your data (account, profile, sessions, messages, photos) is hosted in the European Union. Some providers (Expo, Google, Apple) are based in the United States; data transmitted to them is transferred under their contractual data-protection commitments.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account and its content, for as long as your account exists.
- If you delete your account, everything is deleted immediately and permanently: profile, sessions, spots, photos, boards, messages, friendships.
- The text of messages blocked or reported by moderation, kept for a maximum of 12 months, then deleted automatically.
- A photo removed from a spot's gallery disappears from the app immediately. The file itself stays in our storage until the server's periodic clean-up; it is no longer linked to any spot or profile.
7. Your rights
At any time, you can:
- Access and retrieve your data, *Settings → Export my data* gives you everything we hold, in a machine-readable format.
- Correct your information, from your profile. *(The email address cannot be changed in the app: write to us.)*
- Delete your account, *Settings → Delete my account*. Immediate and permanent.
- Withdraw your consent to notifications, location or showing your age, in the app's or your phone's settings.
- Object to processing, or request its restriction, by writing to us.
Write to us at foamiesclub@gmail.com. We reply within one month.
If our reply does not satisfy you, you can contact the CNIL (www.cnil.fr), the French data-protection authority.
8. Minors
Foamies is reserved for adults (18 and over). Your date of birth is requested at sign-up and verified. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we delete it. If you are a parent and believe your child has created an account, write to us at foamiesclub@gmail.com.
9. Security
Your data is hosted in Europe. Access is restricted at the database level: your precise coordinates, your email and your date of birth are not readable by any other user. Other surfers see a distance, your city, and — only if you turned it on — your age range. Your private messages are only readable by their recipients.
One point we would rather tell you plainly: the photos you post (profile, sessions, boards, spots) are technically accessible to anyone who has their web address, even without an account. We are moving this toward restricted access. In the meantime, do not post a photo you would not want to leave the app.
10. Changes
We will inform you of any significant change in the app. The version of this policy is recorded with your acceptance, so we always know which text you consented to.