Privacy policy
This policy explains what data Ephemeria processes, why, with whom, for how long, and how to exercise your rights. It describes what the app actually does.
1. Who is responsible
The data controller is EPHEMERIA, 148 rue de la Pompe, 75116 Paris, France (details in the legal notice).
- For any question about your data or to exercise your rights: privacy@ephemeria.app
- For anything else: support@ephemeria.app
We have not appointed a data protection officer, as this is not required for our activity. privacy@ephemeria.app is our single point of contact for data protection.
2. The short version
- Ephemeria is only for students aged 18 and over with a university email address.
- No advertising, no selling or renting of data, no advertising profiles, no third-party analytics or tracking SDK.
- Everything is scoped to your university: students at other institutions cannot see you.
- One usage measure only: one line per day you open the app (your account ID and the date). No advertising ID, no IP address, no session length, no screens viewed.
- Your photo library is read on your phone: a photo is only sent if you choose to send it.
- You can download your data and delete your account from the app at any time.
3. Data, purposes and legal bases
The legal bases are those of Article 6 GDPR: contract (needed to provide the service you ask for), legal obligation, legitimate interest (balanced against your rights; you can object) and consent (which you can withdraw at any time).
| Data | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account: university email address, account ID, university (derived from your email domain), account status, sign-up date. An 8-digit sign-in code sent by email, valid for 1 hour. | Create your account, sign you in without a password, check you are a student at a covered institution. | Contract |
| Age: date of birth. | Check that you are 18 or over. This is a declaration: we do not ask for ID documents. | Contract (eligibility condition) and legitimate interest |
| Profile: first and last name, degree level, programme or specialisation, expected graduation year, interests, career industries, bio, theme and language. | Show your profile to students on your campus; suggest communities and events related to your choices. | Contract |
| Acceptance of the terms: version accepted and date (server time). | Prove what you agreed to and when. | Legal obligation and legitimate interest |
| Events: events you create (including the map location), public or private “Going” responses, invitations, reminders. | Run your campus events. | Contract |
| Attendance: either the scan of your ticket (scanning account, server time) or your self-confirmation (time of your declaration). The source is always kept: a declaration is never recorded as a scan. | Create your stars and open access to an event’s memories. | Contract |
| Tickets and payments: order (event, ticket type, price and currency fixed at order time, payment, refund and dispute statuses, Stripe technical identifiers), ticket and its QR code, transfers (from whom, to whom, when), answers requested by the organiser (for example a meal choice) and requested documents. Your card details are entered on Stripe’s payment page: we never receive them. | Sell and deliver your ticket on behalf of the association, handle refunds, transfers and disputes, keep accounting records. | Contract; legal obligation (accounting) |
| Photos and memories: photos you send to a Nebula (the photo and the time it was taken), your La Minute photo (taken in the app, with the capture-session time), event recaps, your “this is me, hide it” requests. | Build the event’s album, published at 11:00, once the event is over; protect the people photographed. | Contract; legal obligation for removal requests |
| Your Sky, the Class Sky, In common: computed from your confirmed attendance. The copy placed in the Class Sky carries no identity. | Show your Sky, your class’s anonymous sky and, on a profile, the number of events you shared. | Contract |
| Messages: private messages (text, images, places you choose to share), event and community chats. | Let you talk with other students. | Contract |
| Content: posts, comments, kudos, marketplace listings and their photos, housing listings and attestations, in-person handoffs and disputes, class channels, notes and deadlines, communities, associations (memberships, roles). | Run these features. | Contract |
| Passport (trust record): attendance, completed handoffs, disputes and the level of evidence. | Let students know whether someone actually turned up or completed an exchange. | Legitimate interest |
| Safety and moderation: reports, blocks, moderation decisions and their reasons, appeals. Text refused by the automatic filter is not stored. | Protect the community, handle reports, meet our obligations as a host. | Legal obligation (French LCEN, EU Digital Services Act) and legitimate interest |
| Usage measure: one line per day you open the app while signed in (account ID and date, Europe/Paris time zone). At sign-up, one line “an account was created at this university on this day”, anonymised if you delete your account. | Know whether students come back. Nothing else is measured. | Legitimate interest |
| Notifications: your device’s notification token, if you allow notifications. | The La Minute signal, the single notification when someone names a constellation containing an event you were at, and event reminders scheduled on your phone. | Consent (through your phone, withdrawable in its settings) |
| App updates: each time it opens, the app asks Expo whether a corrective update exists. This request carries the IP address, platform, app version and a random technical identifier specific to the installation. | Deliver security and bug fixes quickly. We do not use this data to measure usage. | Legitimate interest |
| Support: the emails you send us. | Answer you and handle your requests. | Legitimate interest; legal obligation for GDPR requests |
| Universities not yet covered: the email domain and the number of attempts. No address, no name. | Know where to open next. | Legitimate interest (no personal data) |
| Technical logs: IP address, date and time, request, at our hosting provider. | Security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting. | Legitimate interest |
4. What stays on your phone
- Photo library: after an event, the app can find on your phone the photos taken during the event (by time and, when available, the photo’s location). This sorting happens on your device. Nothing is sent until you tap “send”, and you can deselect photos. Photos are re-encoded before sending: their metadata, including GPS location, is not transmitted; only the time the photo was taken is.
- Location: used only while the app is open, to centre the map on you. It is stored only if you choose to share a place in a chat or to put a pin on an event. Never in the background.
- Camera: used only when you take your La Minute photo or scan a code (ticket, marketplace handoff).
- Sign-up answers: your answers to the sign-up questions stay in the app’s memory until your university email is verified.
- Session: your sign-in session is kept in your phone’s secure storage.
5. Who sees what
- Students at your university: your name, your profile fields (programme, level, graduation year, interests, industries, bio), your posts, listings and events, your public “Going” responses and your Passport badge. On the profile of a student you shared at least one verified event with, the number of events in common. Never your email or your date of birth.
- Students at other universities: nothing. This is enforced by the database, not just hidden on screen.
- People at an event: the Nebula’s photos, published at 11:00, once the event is over, to the people allowed to open the album. Each photo carries its author’s name.
- The organising association of an event you sign up for: your name, your ticket, your attendance, the answers it asked for and the payment or refund status. Its dashboard (L’Observatoire) only shows aggregate figures, never names.
- The Class Sky: anonymous by construction; nobody can find themselves or anyone else in it.
- The Ephemeria team: only when needed (support, moderation, security, legal obligation).
- Authorities: on lawful request, within the limits of the law.
When you buy a ticket, the organising association is the seller. Through its Stripe account it receives the information needed for the payment and for its accounting obligations, and it is responsible for how it uses it. Stripe processes your payment data under its own privacy policy (stripe.com/privacy).
6. Processors and transfers
We use providers who process data on our behalf, on our instructions and under contract (Article 28 GDPR).
| Provider | Role | Data | Location and safeguards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase, Inc. | Database, authentication, file storage, server functions | All service data | Data hosted in the European Union (Ireland, Amazon Web Services, eu-west-1 region). US company: any access is covered by the safeguards below. |
| Resend, Inc. | Sending sign-in emails | Email address, email content (the code) | Sent from the European Union (eu-west-1). US company. |
| Expo (650 Industries, Inc.) | Routing notifications; corrective app updates | Notification token, notification content; IP address, platform, app version, installation technical identifier | United States |
| Apple (APNs) and Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) | Delivering notifications to your phone | Device token, notification content | Under their terms |
| Stripe | Ticket payments on behalf of the association | Data entered on the payment page, amount, email address | Stripe Payments Europe (Ireland); independent controller for its own obligations |
| Google Maps (Android) and Apple Maps (iOS) | Displaying maps | IP address, map area displayed; your location if you show it on the map | Under their terms |
| Host of the ephemeria.app website | Hosting this website | Technical logs (IP address) | See the legal notice |
Where a provider may access data from outside the European Union, the transfer is covered by the European Commission’s adequacy decision (EU-US Data Privacy Framework) where the provider is certified, and otherwise by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. You can get a copy at privacy@ephemeria.app.
7. Photos and image rights
- Only post a photo of an identifiable person if they agree. This also applies to photos in listings, posts and messages.
- Nebula and La Minute photos stay sealed, including for their author, until 11:00, once the event is over. They are visible only to the people allowed to open the album.
- Recognise yourself in a photo? In the album, a single “this is me, hide it” action hides it immediately on your phone and blocks it on the server while the request is reviewed. We cannot erase an image that another device has already displayed or copied.
- No access to the album? Email privacy@ephemeria.app with the event, the date and what identifies the photo. We review the request within 72 hours, without showing you other photos or the attendee list.
- We use no facial recognition and no automatic identification of people in photos.
- Screenshots: on Android, capture is blocked on album screens. On iOS it cannot be prevented; photos are blurred during screen recording and, when this feature is active, a screenshot taken in a Nebula writes your name and the time into it, visible to the people who were there.
- Listing and post photos are stored at an address that cannot be guessed but is public: anyone with the link can open it. Deleting a listing or post does not immediately remove the photo from our servers; it is removed with your account, or earlier on request to privacy@ephemeria.app. Images in private messages are only accessible to the members of the conversation, through links that expire after one hour.
8. Retention
| Data | Period |
|---|---|
| Account and profile | Until you delete your account. An account inactive for 3 years is deleted, after a warning email. |
| Date of birth | Life of the account |
| Sign-in code | 1 hour |
| Private messages | Until they or your account are deleted |
| Event chats | Deleted automatically 24 hours after the event ends |
| Nebula, La Minute and recap photos | As long as the album exists; your photos are deleted with your account |
| Listing and post photos | Until your account is deleted, or earlier on request |
| Class notes removed by moderation | Access ends immediately; files deleted after 30 days (appeal period) |
| Attendance | Life of the account. After account deletion, the events you attended stay recorded under an anonymous identifier, with your campus and, if one of them was scanned, your class year; they are visible to no one and only feed the Class Sky’s anonymous counts |
| Orders, payments, refunds | 10 years (French accounting obligation, Article L123-22 of the Commercial Code). After account deletion they are linked to an anonymous key, no longer to you. |
| Usage measure (one line per day opened) | 13 months, then deleted; deleted immediately with your account |
| Reports and moderation decisions | Life of the account, then kept without your identity |
| Passport (trust record) | Life of the account, then kept without your identity, so the other party’s history is not rewritten |
| Notification tokens | Until you sign out, delete your account or your phone invalidates them |
| Support emails | 3 years after the last exchange |
| Technical logs | At most 28 days |
| Domains of universities not yet covered | No limit: they contain no personal data |
9. Account deletion and export
You can delete your account at any time from the app (Settings → Delete my account), or by email if you no longer have the app. The request takes effect immediately (signed out, profile hidden, access revoked) and erasure is completed within 30 days, usually within minutes. All details are on the Delete your account page.
You can also download a copy of your data as a structured file (Settings → Your data → Download my data).
10. Your rights
You have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection (in particular to processing based on legitimate interest), the right to withdraw consent at any time, and the right to give instructions about what happens to your data after your death.
To exercise them, email privacy@ephemeria.app from your account’s address. We may ask you to confirm your identity. We answer within one month, which may be extended by two months for a complex request (we would tell you).
You can lodge a complaint with the French data protection authority (CNIL) at any time: www.cnil.fr/fr/plaintes, or 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, France; or with the authority of the EU country where you live.
11. Security
- Access rights are enforced by the database itself (row-level security): a modified app cannot see more.
- No passwords: you sign in with a code sent to your university email.
- Traffic is encrypted (HTTPS). Private files (message images, class notes, albums) are only reachable through temporary links.
- Team access to data is limited to what is necessary.
If a data breach puts you at risk, we notify the CNIL and, if the risk is high, we tell you.
12. Cookies and trackers
This website uses no cookies and loads no external resources (even the fonts are hosted here). The app uses no advertising ID, no trackers and no analytics SDK. It only keeps on your phone what it needs to work (your session, your preferences). Stripe’s payment page, opened in your browser, may set its own cookies needed for payment security, under Stripe’s policy.
13. Minimum age
Ephemeria is only for people aged 18 and over. Sign-up refuses a date of birth under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we delete it. You can tell us at privacy@ephemeria.app.
14. Automated decisions
Ephemeria makes no fully automated decision that produces legal effects or similarly significantly affects you. A filter blocks certain words when you post; if you think it got it wrong, email support@ephemeria.app. No advertising profiling.
15. Changes
If this policy changes significantly, we tell you in the app before the change takes effect. The version date is at the top of this page.