Privacy Policy

Last updated: 21 October 2026 · applies to the FREQ app (iOS and Android) and this website.

Who is responsible

Controller under the GDPR: Luka Veselinovic, Nordwestbahnstraße 91/39, 1200 Vienna, Austria — support@freqconvoi.com.

The short version

FREQ does not sell data and shows no ads.
Your dot on the map is shown only to the members of your running convoy. Beyond that, your location goes to map, search, routing and price services when you use them, and rounded to our own services for weather, places and charging points — and with "friends nearby" as well as speed-camera and hazard reports, an entry sits in the database that other drivers can read. The details are in the table below.
Background location: As long as you are signed in, FREQ keeps locating you while the screen is off or you use another app — so that speed-camera alerts and navigation keep running. Your location is evaluated on your device; it only reaches our servers in a convoy, when you search for "friends nearby" and for routes (details in the table and under "Recipients"). On Android a permanent notification "FREQ is active" shows this. It ends when you sign out or close FREQ.
In a convoy you also share your battery level (the others see a sign when it is nearly empty — you can turn this off) and your hard braking: if you brake hard from 60 km/h or more, everyone on your convoy's radio gets the notice "Hard braking in the convoy" — without your name and without your location (you can turn this off). The battery level ends with the convoy; hard-braking events are not stored at all.
The radio is an open channel, not a push-to-talk key. Once you are on a convoy's radio, your microphone is open and the others hear you — even with the screen off. "Quiet" or muting ends that immediately. Outside a convoy the microphone is off.
Conversations are never recorded or stored — they pass live through the voice server and are gone afterwards.
The app never listens in secretly. So that you can call hands-free in a convoy ("Call Anna"), FREQ recognises on your phone, while the radio is on, whether you say a name or a command such as "Quiet". This recognition runs only on your device: on iPhone with Apple's on-device speech recognition, on Android (version 13 or newer) with Android's on-device speech recognition. Neither your audio nor the recognised text is stored or sent to us or anyone else. Only what you trigger, such as a call to a convoy member, goes to the convoy. You can turn this off in Settings under "Radio & microphone" with "Call by voice".

What the app processes

Data	Purpose	Where
Account: name, e-mail, photo of your Google account; plus creation and last sign-in time, IP address and device identifier	Sign-in and your in-app profile. Others see your radio name, not your Google name: during setup the app suggests your Google name as your radio name, and you can change it. For the radio and "friends nearby" our server only uses the radio name the app sends — never the name from your Google account.	Google Firebase Authentication (Google Ireland Ltd. / Google LLC) — also processed in the USA
Location, speed and heading — also in the background, as long as you are signed in	Navigation and speed-camera and hazard alerts on your device, also while the screen is off; convoy members see your dot on the map	On device. For the alerts the app downloads: speed-camera datasets of the countries it needs, and reports for the box you are in and the eight around it (about 11 km each) from the Firebase Realtime Database — Firebase learns the countries and boxes, not your exact location; depending on the country also fixed cameras from OpenStreetMap via Overpass (location rounded to about 100 m). In a convoy via Firebase Realtime Database (Belgium, europe-west1), deleted when the convoy ends.
Trip log (FREQ Premium only, off by default): start and end time, distance, start and end place and the line driven for each trip — no speed, no fuel consumption	Viewing your trips and exporting them yourself through the share menu (GPX, CSV)	Only on your device, never on our servers. For the place names, the start and end of each trip go to Photon (komoot, Germany), rounded to about 100 m. Switch off and delete: Settings → Trip log.
Map view: tilt, zoom (near or far), 3D buildings on or off and the time of the last change	So that your map looks the way you set it up, also on a new phone	Firebase Realtime Database (Belgium, europe-west1), under your account. Only your own account can read and change it, other users cannot. It is deleted with your account.
"Friends nearby": your location rounded to about 11 metres, with identifier, radio name and time	Finding friends around you while you search	Firebase Realtime Database; this entry is readable by signed-in FREQ users
Search terms, destinations and (mostly rounded) location on queries	Address search, routing, fuel stations, parking, food, fuel prices	External services, see "Recipients" below
Voice (radio)	Live transmission to convoy members	Self-hosted LiveKit voice server (Hetzner, Germany); no recording
Call by voice: what you say on the radio, only to recognise names and commands	Calling and controlling the radio hands-free ("Call Anna", "Quiet")	Only on your device (Apple's or Android's on-device speech recognition, never through a server); not stored. On by default, can be turned off under Settings → Radio & microphone.
Friends list, online status and convoy membership	Inviting friends, forming convoys, join requests	Firebase Realtime Database (europe-west1); online status only while you are online
Notifications: device token, platform, app language and a random identifier for this installation	Invitations, friend requests and "a friend starts a convoy" reach you with the app closed	Firebase Realtime Database and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (USA); delivery runs through our Cloudflare service
Crash reports: device model, OS version, technical trace	Finding and fixing bugs	Google Firebase Crashlytics (also USA) — only after you say yes; the app asks at first start, changeable any time under Settings → Privacy
Reports: mobile speed cameras, hazards (police, traffic jam and roadworks, accident and breakdown), reports about other users	Warnings for other drivers; abuse prevention. Anyone can report a speed camera; only drivers with FREQ Premium see reported cameras and are warned about them.	Firebase Realtime Database. Not anonymous but pseudonymous: others see the report without your name. A speed-camera report is stored under a random identifier; which account filed it is stored separately and readable only by you and the operator. For reports about users your identifier is always stored. Retention: see "Retention".
Frequent camera spots: place (to about 1 m), day and heading of expired speed-camera reports — no identifier and no account	Showing places where mobile cameras stand again and again (reports on at least 3 different days), also on days without a report; shown with FREQ Premium only	Firebase Realtime Database. Only our server reads the entries per day; once a week it combines them into a list (place, heading, number of days, last day). Several reports on the same day at the same spot are one entry; reports that other drivers marked as "no longer there" count too. A report deleted early (withdrawn or removed by moderation) leaves no entry.
Requests to our own service (radio ticket, notifications, reports, "friends nearby", weather, account deletion) including sign-in token and IP address	Operation, abuse prevention, rate limiting	Cloudflare Workers (Cloudflare, Inc., global network, also USA)
Map requests (IP address, requested tiles); the app also sends an identifier: "FREQ", the app version, iOS or Android and a link to this website	Rendering the map, also when downloading offline maps. OpenFreeMap's usage rules require the identifier so that the service recognises FREQ; it contains nothing about you	OpenFreeMap / OpenStreetMap tile services
Community meets: the list of meets; when your route leads to a meet, a "going" entry with your identifier and the time	Showing car meets near you and counting how many are going	Our own server at Hetzner collects the dates from treffeninfo.de and carnation.at and puts them into the Firebase Realtime Database; the app reads them only there — the two sites learn nothing about you. Only our server can read the "going" entry; others only ever see the number, never who. It is deleted when your route ends or the connection drops, at the latest after one hour without a refresh.
Battery level in a convoy: your phone's battery level in percent and whether it is charging — only while you are in a convoy	If the admin drops out, FREQ uses it to pick a new admin automatically, preferring a phone with a full battery. The others also see a small battery sign on your profile picture and get a short, silent hint when your battery reaches 15 % and 5 % and your phone is not charging — so you can plan a charging stop in time	Firebase Realtime Database (europe-west1), only in this convoy's entry, which only its members can read; deleted as soon as you leave the convoy. With "Hide my battery" (Settings → Privacy & legal → In a convoy) FREQ shows your battery to no one and stops sharing whether your phone is charging; only the battery level itself stays in the entry to pick the admin.
Hard braking in a convoy: only the event "hard braking" with a random identifier — no location, no heading, no path, no name. The braking is detected on your phone from its GPS speed alone (from 60 km/h, a drop of at least 25 km/h within 3 seconds at most) — FREQ uses no motion or acceleration sensors for this	All members of your convoy who are on the radio hear a short warning tone and see "Hard braking in the convoy" for a few seconds — without your name, without a distance, without a place. The random identifier only makes sure the same notice does not appear twice	Only while you are on a convoy's radio: through the data channel of our voice server (LiveKit, Hetzner, Germany) to the phones on that convoy's radio. Not stored — neither on the server nor in a database. With "Share my hard braking" (Settings → Privacy & legal → In a convoy; on by default) you stop sending; you still get the others' warnings.
Planned rides: title, departure time, destination and optionally a meeting point (place and label), your radio name as the planner; for each invitee the radio name, whether invited from the friends list or by link, and the answer (yes, maybe, no) with its time; after the start, the convoy's identifier	Arranging rides with friends. 15 minutes before and at departure the app itself shows a reminder while it is open — nothing extra is sent for this. One tap takes you into the convoy with the destination already set	Firebase Realtime Database (europe-west1). Only the planner and the invitees can read it — every invitee also sees the names and answers of the others. Anyone who has the ride's link or QR code can add themselves; share it only with people who are meant to come. Deleted 24 hours after departure, or earlier if the planner deletes the ride.
Weather and weather warnings along the route: for the warnings, sections of your route as rectangles (about 50 km of road each, rounded outwards to 0.01°); for the weather, points of your route about every 25 km (rounded to about 1 km) with the time you will be there	Showing the weather at the time you pass and official warnings (e.g. black ice, storm, thunderstorms) on your route (shown only, never announced)	Only our service at Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., also USA). It checks your sign-in, fetches warnings and forecasts itself from the official weather services (see "Recipients") and sends you the result. The phone does not ask any weather service directly — they learn neither your IP address nor whom the request comes from. Our service does not store your route points and writes neither points nor account into its logs. Only the warnings per country (Cloudflare Workers KV) and the forecast per place (two hours at most) are cached, neither linked to you.
Places, closures, entrances and rest areas from FREQ's own files: which map tiles (about 13 × 13 km each) the app loads — around you, around your search circle, along your route or at your destination — including IP address	Fuel stations with details (open now, payment, automated pumps), parking, food, car washes, rest areas and truck stops for the break suggestion, pass and winter closures on your route, and garage and building entrances as a precise destination point. When searching fuel prices, the app uses them to add opening hours and payment options from OpenStreetMap to official stations	Our own server at Hetzner (Germany). The files themselves contain no data about you. If our server does not answer, the app falls back to Overpass for fuel, parking, food and car washes (location rounded to about 100 m).
Live charging points: which map tiles the app loads (around your search circle) including IP address	Showing whether a charging point is free or busy and what it costs — currently in Finland, France, Lithuania, Germany, Latvia, Greece and Luxembourg	Our own server at Hetzner (Germany). It fetches status and prices itself from the countries' public data portals (under the EU AFIR regulation); the portals do not see you. Charging stations without live data still come from Open Charge Map.
Fuel prices: the centre of your search circle, rounded, including IP address	Showing official prices per station; in Austria, France and Spain the official opening hours come in the same answer	Directly at the country's official source: Austria E-Control (rounded to about 100 m), Germany Tankerkönig.de with data of the German Market Transparency Unit for Fuels (about 1 km), France data.economie.gouv.fr (about 100 m), Spain MITECO (only the province). Italy: from our Firebase database, which only learns an area of about 25 km. In other countries FREQ shows stations without prices.
Webcams: none	Showing where public pass and border webcams of foto-webcam.eu are	The locations are stored in the app; FREQ loads nothing from foto-webcam.eu and shows no pictures. If you tap "View picture on www.foto-webcam.eu" while standing still, the camera's page opens in your browser — an ordinary website visit, for which the operator's privacy policy applies.
Offline maps: which area you download, including IP address	Showing the map without internet	The tiles come from OpenFreeMap, as for the normal map (see map requests), and afterwards sit only on your device; they contain no data about you.
"Avoid motorways": whether the switch is on, together with start, destination and heading of the route request	Calculating a route without motorways; in a convoy the admin's choice applies to everyone	Our own routing server at Hetzner (Germany), currently only within Austria. In a convoy the choice is stored with the convoy destination in the Firebase Realtime Database and deleted with the convoy.
Break suggestion: how long you have been driving without a break	Quietly suggesting a break after the time you set (2 hours by default). It is only a suggestion — FREQ does not detect tiredness	Only on your device. For rest areas and fuel stations ahead, the app loads places as described above. If you set a break as convoy admin, it is shared like any convoy stop.
Speed limit and preview ("70 in 400 m"): points of your route for the next few kilometres, accurate to about 1 m	Showing the road's speed limit and the next change	Overpass servers of the OpenStreetMap community

No additional data is needed for: the motorway shield and exit number (they are already in the routing server's answer), the button that briefly shows everyone in the convoy (it only shows the dots the convoy shares anyway), and "Open until …" with the public holidays behind it (the app works both out on your device from the opening hours it has loaded).

Recipients

Depending on use, location, destination or IP data also reach:

Photon/komoot (Germany): address search, with your current location for nearby results; place names in the trip log.
Nominatim/OpenStreetMap Foundation (United Kingdom): turning an address into coordinates.
Routing servers: for routes within Austria up to 150 km first our own server at Hetzner in Germany, otherwise and as a fallback the public servers routing.openstreetmap.de (FOSSGIS e. V.) and router.project-osrm.org. They receive your location or the start, your heading, a waypoint and the destination.
Overpass (servers of the OpenStreetMap community): fixed speed cameras and, as a fallback, fuel, parking, food and car washes (location rounded to about 100 m); points of your route for the speed limit and its preview.
Fuel prices: E-Control (Vienna), Tankerkönig.de (Germany), Ministère de l'Économie via data.economie.gouv.fr (France) and Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico (MITECO, Spain).
Open Charge Map: charging stations.
OpenFreeMap: map tiles, also for offline maps.
Our own server at Hetzner (Hetzner Online GmbH, Gunzenhausen, Germany): voice server (radio and hard-braking notice), routes in Austria and "avoid motorways", places, closures, entrances and rest areas, live charging points; it also collects the community meets and counts the "going" entries.
Our service at Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA): radio ticket, notifications, reports, "friends nearby", account deletion, and weather and weather warnings.
GitHub, Inc. as the host of this website.

No data about you reaches the bodies whose data FREQ only obtains through our own servers: the official weather services GeoSphere Austria (Vienna), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Offenbach am Main, Germany), EUMETNET – MeteoAlarm (managed by GeoSphere Austria) and MET Norway (Oslo, Norway) — they only receive requests from our service with rounded points not linked to you; the charging data portals; treffeninfo.de and carnation.at. foto-webcam.eu receives nothing from FREQ either; only when you open a camera page there in your browser does the operator's privacy policy apply. The full list of sources with licences is in the app under Settings → Privacy & legal → Sources and licences, and in the Imprint.

What stays on your device only

FREQ keeps the following only in the app storage of your device; we have no access to it:

your profile (radio name, picture, vehicle icon, identifier) and your settings — except the map view, which is stored with your account (see the table),
home, work, favourites and recent destinations,
learned routes (start, destination, route, average duration, number of trips) — "Learn routes" is on by default and can be switched off under Settings → Privacy & legal,
the trip log (see the table), including the backup of the trip in progress,
the route you last drove (destination, waypoint) and the convoy you were last in, so that FREQ can continue after a restart or crash — both for at most 30 minutes,
for the vignette notice, the current trip with one checkpoint (time and place) and the countries of the trip,
the break timer and cached places (6 hours at most),
speed-camera datasets and offline maps; they contain no data about you.

Transfers outside the EU

Part of the processing happens outside the EU:

USA: Google (Firebase Authentication, Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging), Cloudflare, GitHub. The basis is the adequacy decision on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1795 of 10 July 2023); EU standard contractual clauses under Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR apply in addition.
United Kingdom: OpenStreetMap Foundation. The basis is the European Commission's adequacy decision for the United Kingdom.

A copy of the standard contractual clauses is available on request at the e-mail address above.

Legal bases

Processing is based on the user agreement (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — sign-in, convoy, radio, navigation), on legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) — abuse prevention and operational security), and, where the app explicitly asks you, on your consent (Art. 6(1)(a); for crash reports additionally § 165(3) Austrian TKG 2021): location, microphone, crash reports and speed-camera warnings in countries requiring opt-in. You can withdraw any consent at any time in the settings.

For the new features: weather and weather warnings, closures, places and fuel-station details, fuel and charging prices, offline maps, "avoid motorways", the speed-limit preview, the break suggestion, planned rides, community meets, call by voice, and the battery level and hard-braking notice in a convoy serve the performance of the user agreement (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) — they run because you use the feature; the convoy is a feature you start yourself. The app identifier sent to OpenFreeMap is based on legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): the usage rules of the free map service. You can object at any time (Art. 21 GDPR, e-mail above).

Reports and automatic suspension

If three different accounts report the same account within 30 days, it is suspended automatically and provisionally — without prior human review, for at most 7 days. You see the reason in the app and can object by e-mail at any time; the case is then reviewed by a human. Stored for this are the reporter's identifier, the reported account, the reason and the time.

Retention

A convoy's position data is deleted when the convoy ends; a server job cleans up orphaned convoy rooms. The app shows speed-camera reports for 3 hours; our server deletes them, together with the link to your account, after about 8 hours. Hazard reports expire without confirmation after 1 hour (police), 1.5 hours (accident and breakdown) or 2 hours (traffic jam and roadworks), with confirmations after 3, 4 or 6 hours at the latest; our server deletes them with their answers and the reporter entry about 6 hours after the report. Entries for frequent camera spots are kept for 365 days. Your account and friends list remain until you delete your account (in the app settings or by e-mail). Crashlytics retains crash reports for 90 days. Data kept only on your device stays until you delete it, delete your account or uninstall FREQ.

For the new features: FREQ deletes your battery level in a convoy as soon as you leave the convoy; our server cleans up orphaned rooms. Hard-braking notices and the route points for weather and weather warnings are not stored; the receiving phones keep the random identifier of a hard-braking notice for 60 seconds at most, only to spot duplicates. Our server deletes planned rides 24 hours after departure, with their invitations and answers; the planner can delete them earlier at any time. FREQ deletes the "going" entry for a community meet when your route ends, at the latest after one hour without a refresh.

Server logs

When our services are accessed, the providers technically process IP address, time and type of request and log this briefly — for secure operation and against abuse (legitimate interest, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Our Cloudflare service never logs sign-in tokens or route points, only error codes; Cloudflare keeps these logs for 3 days. Firebase Authentication: a few weeks (according to Google). Our services at Hetzner (voice server, routing server, places and charging points, community meets): 7 days at most.

Signing out and deleting your account

Signing out: FREQ leaves a running convoy, ends your online status and the notifications to this device, and switches off background location. On the device FREQ deletes your profile (radio name, picture, vehicle icon, identifier), the remembered route, the convoy you were last in and the trip of the vignette notice. Trip log, learned routes, recent destinations and your other settings stay on the device; you delete them in the settings or with your account.

Deleting your account: in the app under Settings → Account → "Delete account", or by e-mail. FREQ leaves a running convoy and deletes on our servers your online status, your friends list, your block list, your inbox, your speed-camera and hazard reports, your reports about others, your notification data, your map view, your planned rides (for other people's rides, your place and your answer), reports about you and any suspension, and finally your account. Requests and invitations you just sent to others expire there by themselves and are deleted after about a day. Only once the account is deleted does FREQ delete all FREQ data on this device — including the trip log with the trip in progress, the learned routes with the recording in progress, your friends' pictures and the generated AI icons — and reset all settings to factory defaults, including your radio name and your consent to speed-camera alerts in Germany. Offline maps contain no data about you and stay until you uninstall FREQ. FREQ cannot delete what friends saved on their phones (your name, for example), nor the e-mails we received about reports.

Your rights

You have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection (Art. 15–21 GDPR), and the right to complain to the Austrian data protection authority (dsb.gv.at). Contact the e-mail address above for any of these.

This website

This site is served by GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc., USA). Technically necessary server logs (IP address) occur at GitHub; the site itself sets no cookies and embeds no trackers.