Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect when you use Ping the World ("PTW", "the Service"), why we collect it, how we use it, and what rights you have over it. It applies to the website at pingtheworld.app and to the PTW mobile and web applications operated by PTW SIA.
Short version: We collect as little as possible to run the Service. We do not sell your data, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not build a profile of you. The content of your messages stays inside PTW and the systems that moderate, translate, and deliver them — nothing else.
1. Who We Are
Ping the World is operated by PTW SIA, a company registered in Latvia (EU). For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), PTW SIA is the data controller of your personal data.
You can contact us at any time about privacy matters at [email protected].
2. What We Collect
We collect the minimum data needed to let you sign in, send and receive messages, and keep the Service running safely. We group it into five categories.
2.1 Account information
When you create an account, we collect:
- Your email address (required for sign-in, verification, and essential service messages).
- A hashed version of your password. We never store the password itself.
- Your account status (active, suspended, or deleted) and timestamps for when the account was created and last active.
2.2 Your preferences
In your account settings you can choose:
- Your preferred language, which determines how messages are translated for you.
- Your message lifetime — how long an unread ping remains in the system before it expires.
- How often you would like to receive a ping that you can reply to (for example: daily, every week, monthly). You can change this at any time.
- Whether you want to receive email notifications when you receive a ping or a reply to one of your pings. This is off by default and you can turn it on or off at any time.
2.3 Optional location information
PTW includes a personal map that shows the places where your pings travelled to and came from. This is entirely optional. If you want your pings to appear on other users' maps, you can choose one of three levels of detail:
- Country only — only the country you have chosen is shared.
- City only — a city you have chosen is shared, without coordinates.
- City with coordinates — a city you have chosen together with approximate coordinates.
You choose what you enter. We do not detect your real location from your device or IP address for this feature — it is based solely on what you type into your settings. You can change it, remove it, or leave it blank at any time.
How location appears to other users. If you enable location sharing, the country, city, or coordinates you have entered will be visible on the recipient's map when they receive a ping from you, and on the sender's map when you reply. No other user sees your email, your account details, or anything else about you — only the location level you have chosen to share. If you leave location blank, your pings do not appear on anyone's map.
2.4 Message content and metadata
When you send or receive a message, we process:
- The text of your message (and any reply), up to the length limit shown in the app.
- The detected source language and the target language used for translation.
- The translated version of the message, if translation was needed.
- The moderation result (approved or rejected) and, where rejected, the reason.
- Delivery metadata — when the message was sent, when it was delivered, how many delivery attempts were made, and whether it was replied to, ignored, or expired.
- The optional location information of the sender and recipient, where either has chosen to share it (see section 2.3).
Beyond optional location, we never share identifying information between sender and recipient. No name, email, age, gender, account details, or other identifying attribute is ever exposed to another user.
2.5 Technical and session data
- A session identifier stored in a strictly necessary cookie on your device. See our Cookies Policy for details.
- Basic technical information automatically sent by your browser or device when you use the Service, including IP address, approximate time of request, user agent, and error logs. We use this for security, fraud prevention, and debugging — not for advertising.
We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party behavioural tracking tools of any kind. For the aggregate, cookieless website analytics we do run, see section 2.7 below.
2.6 Payment information (paid tier only)
If you subscribe to the paid tier, your payment is processed directly by our payment processor (Stripe). We do not see or store your full card number, CVV, or bank details. Stripe provides us with a payment token and the minimum billing information we need to manage your subscription, issue invoices, and comply with tax rules — such as your country of residence for VAT purposes and the last four digits of your card for support queries.
2.7 Aggregate website analytics
We measure aggregate traffic to our website and app — page views, the referring website, approximate country derived from your IP address, and your browser and operating system — using Umami, an open-source analytics tool we host ourselves on our own EU infrastructure. This helps us understand which pages people read and how they find PTW.
Umami sets no cookies, assigns no identifier that persists across your visits, and shares no data with any third party. Your IP address is used only to derive an approximate country and is not stored as part of the analytics record. No personal data is collected, and no profile of you is built.
3. Why We Use Your Data and Our Legal Bases
Under the GDPR, we must have a lawful basis for each purpose for which we process your personal data. Ours are:
| Purpose | What this involves | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Providing the Service | Creating your account, authenticating you, delivering messages, respecting your frequency and lifetime settings, storing your preferences. | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)). |
| Moderation | Reviewing every message before delivery to enforce our Community Guidelines and protect users. | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — protecting users and the integrity of the Service. |
| Translation | Translating messages when sender and recipient speak different languages. | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)). |
| Map and optional location sharing | Displaying the city, country, or coordinates you have voluntarily entered on your own map and, where you have chosen to share them, on the maps of people you exchange pings with. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — you can withdraw at any time by clearing your location or changing the sharing level. |
| Email notifications | Sending email alerts when you receive a ping or a reply, if you have turned this on. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — you can withdraw at any time in your settings. |
| Website analytics | Measuring aggregate, anonymous traffic to our website and app to understand usage and improve the Service. | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — understanding aggregate usage with no impact on your privacy. |
| Security and abuse prevention | Detecting and preventing fraud, abuse, and circumvention of the Service. | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) and, where applicable, legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)). |
| Payments and billing | Processing subscription payments and meeting tax and accounting obligations. | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)). |
| Service communications | Sending essential emails such as email verification, password resets, and material changes to this Policy or the Terms. | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
| Legal compliance | Responding to lawful requests from authorities and defending legal claims. | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) and legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
We do not use your personal data for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you. Automated moderation decides whether a message is delivered, but this affects the message — not your legal status — and every rejection is explained to you.
4. Who We Share Your Data With
We share personal data only with a small number of trusted service providers ("sub-processors") who help us run the Service. Each one is bound by a written data processing agreement and may only use your data on our instructions.
| Provider | What they do for us | Where they process data |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner | Hosts the PTW application, database, and our self-hosted website analytics. | European Union (Germany/Finland). |
| Anthropic (Claude API) | Provides the language model used for message moderation and translation. | United States. Messages are sent to Anthropic only for moderation and translation, and are not used by Anthropic to train models. |
| Stripe | Processes subscription payments and handles VAT. | European Union and United States. |
| Mailgun | Sends essential service emails and, if you turn them on, email notifications about received pings and replies. | European Union (EU region). |
We do not sell your personal data. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing networks. Beyond the optional location information you have chosen to share, we do not disclose any identifying information about one user to another user under any circumstance.
We may disclose account data to law enforcement or other authorities when we are required to do so by applicable law, or when we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of a person.
5. International Data Transfers
Our primary infrastructure is in the European Union. Some of our sub-processors — notably Anthropic and parts of Stripe — are based in the United States, which means some of your personal data is transferred outside the EU/EEA.
Where we transfer personal data outside the EU/EEA, we rely on transfer mechanisms recognised under the GDPR, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. You can request a copy of the safeguards in place by writing to us at [email protected].
6. How Long We Keep Your Data
We keep personal data only for as long as we need it for the purposes described above.
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Account information and preferences | For as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, we delete or anonymise this information within 30 days, except where we are required to retain specific records for legal reasons. |
| Optional location information | For as long as you keep it in your settings. You can clear it or change the sharing level at any time, which removes it from future pings. Location attached to past pings is deleted together with the pings themselves. |
| Message content | Messages are ephemeral. Each message is deleted once its lifetime has expired (default 72 hours, configurable in the app) or once the exchange is complete and the configured lifetime has passed. Rejected messages are not delivered and are retained only briefly for abuse-prevention purposes. |
| Moderation logs | We keep minimal moderation records (moderation result and reason, without the original text) for up to 12 months to identify patterns of abuse and protect users. |
| Session and technical logs | Security and technical logs are retained for up to 90 days, then deleted or anonymised. |
| Payment and billing records | Retained for the period required by applicable tax and accounting law (typically 5–10 years in the EU). |
7. Your Rights
Depending on where you live, you have rights over your personal data. We honour these rights regardless of whether the law in your country requires us to.
7.1 Rights under the GDPR (EU / EEA / UK)
- Access — ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Erasure — ask us to delete your data. This is also available through account deletion in the app.
- Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your data while a question is resolved.
- Portability — ask for your data in a machine-readable format, where technically feasible.
- Objection — object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent — where we rely on consent (for example for optional location sharing or email notifications), you can withdraw it at any time in your settings.
- Lodge a complaint — with your local data protection authority. In Latvia, this is the Data State Inspectorate (Datu valsts inspekcija, dvi.gov.lv).
7.2 Rights under California law (CCPA / CPRA)
If you are a California resident, you have the right to:
- Know what personal information we collect about you and how we use it.
- Request access to and a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Request deletion of your personal information.
- Request correction of inaccurate personal information.
- Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and limit the use of sensitive personal information.
- Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights.
We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA, and we do not use sensitive personal information for any purpose beyond what is strictly necessary to operate the Service.
7.3 How to exercise your rights
To exercise any of these rights, write to us at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days (or the period required by your local law, whichever is shorter). We may ask you to verify your identity before acting on your request, to protect your account.
Exercising your rights is free of charge, except where requests are manifestly unfounded or excessive, in which case we may charge a reasonable fee or decline the request, as permitted by law.
8. Security
We take the security of your data seriously. Measures we use include:
- Passwords are never stored in plain text — we store only salted hashes.
- All connections to the Service are encrypted in transit (TLS).
- Our session cookie is HTTP-only and cannot be read by JavaScript or third-party scripts.
- Access to production systems is limited to the small number of people who need it, and is logged.
- Our sub-processors are bound by written data processing agreements and security commitments.
No system is perfectly secure. If we ever become aware of a data breach that affects your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law.
9. Children's Data
Ping the World is not intended for children. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account and use the Service. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.
If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us at [email protected] and we will delete the account and any associated data.
10. Anonymity Between Users
Anonymity between users is a core design principle of PTW.
- We never share your name, email, age, gender, account details, or any other identifying attribute with another user.
- No user profiles, avatars, or bios exist.
- No social graph is built or maintained.
- Recipients receive only the text of a message and, where needed, its translation.
The one exception is the optional location you choose to share. If you turn on location sharing in your settings, the country, city, or coordinates you have entered will be visible to the other person in the exchange on their map. You decide whether to share anything, and at what level of detail. You can turn it off at any time.
We retain account information (such as email, session, and preferences) as described in this Policy, but this data is never exposed to other users.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you via the app or by email at least 14 days before the changes take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top of this Policy always reflects the most recent version.
12. Contact
For any questions about this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please write to us at [email protected].
PTW SIA, Latvia, EU.
PTW SIA · Latvia, EU · pingtheworld.app