Privacy Policy

Last updated: 11 May 2026

This policy describes how GroundTruth ("we", "us", "the platform") collects, uses, shares, and protects your personal data when you use our mobile or web applications. It is written to comply with Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) and follows the broader international privacy principles set out in the EU GDPR.

By using GroundTruth you agree to this policy. If you do not agree, please do not sign up or continue using the service.

1. Who we are

GroundTruth is operated from Accra, Ghana. You can reach us about anything in this policy at privacy@mygroundtruth.app.

2. What data we collect

2.1 Data you give us directly

• Phone number (Ghana E.164 form, e.g. +233551234567) — used to identify your account and to receive one-time verification codes.
• Display name (optional). You choose what to show to other users. Your real name is never made public unless you explicitly opt in to share it with a specific connection.
• Ghana Card photo (one image). Required to unlock features that require identity verification — filing a dispute, founding a group, applying as a verifier. We use it only to confirm you are the holder of the named ID. The image is encrypted at rest and never shown to other users.
• Plot data — boundary coordinates, plot name, optional photos, soil / vegetation / terrain notes. These are the records of your land that you want preserved on the platform.
• Endorsements, disputes, contact requests you create or receive.
• Contacts you pick: when you tap the contact-picker icon on a phone-number input, your operating system shows you your contact list. We receive only the single phone number you tap — never your full contact list.

2.2 Data we collect automatically

• Approximate IP and device type for diagnostics, abuse prevention, and rate-limiting.
• Anonymous app-usage telemetry — which screens you visit, which actions you take. Used to prioritise what to build. Never linked to your real identity in our analytics tools.
• GPS location only while you are actively walking a plot's perimeter. Captured corners are saved to your plot; the continuous GPS stream is discarded after the walk ends.

2.3 Data we do not collect

• We do not access your photo library, contacts, calendar, microphone, or files except through the explicit, in-the-moment OS pickers that you trigger.
• We do not track your location in the background.
• We do not store, share, or sell your full contact list.
• We do not use third-party advertising trackers.

3. How we use your data

• To run the service — sign you in, verify your identity, render your plots, deliver endorsement and contact requests.
• To surface community trust signals — compute the trust score on each plot based on endorsements, verifier badges, dispute history, and Ghana-Card verification status.
• To prevent abuse — detect spam, brute-force sign-in attempts, and harassment patterns.
• To improve the product — anonymous, aggregate telemetry tells us which features need work.

4. What we share, and with whom

4.1 The public projection

Every plot has a public projection visible to any signed-in GroundTruth user: the plot's name, boundary polygon, acreage, region, trust signals, and the owner's display name (only if the viewer is a connected contact — otherwise "verified owner"). This is intentional — community-visible plot records are the product's reason for existing.

4.2 Cross-reveal rule

Your real name and phone number are never made public. They become visible to one other specific user only when both of you accept a mutual contact request. We call this cross-reveal: the connection happens by deliberate, bilateral consent.

4.3 Witness phones (disputes)

When you file a dispute and include a witness phone number, that number is stored to help us reach the witness if necessary. It is never returned to any other user, never reverse-looked-up against existing accounts, and never used to send marketing or notification messages without that witness's explicit, separate consent.

4.4 Service providers

We use a small number of trusted vendors to operate the service. They receive only the data they need for their specific job and are contractually bound not to use it for anything else:

• Google — "Sign in with Google" (you choose whether to use it). Google never sees any of your GroundTruth data; we only receive your Google email and display name when you sign in.
• Africa's Talking (or equivalent SMS gateway) — delivers your one-time verification codes via SMS.
• Cloud infrastructure providers (e.g. AWS, Hetzner, Cloudflare) — host the application, store your data, deliver web content. These providers see encrypted data in transit and at rest; they do not access the contents.

4.5 We do not sell your data

We never have, never will, sell or rent your personal data to data brokers, advertisers, or anyone else. We don't run ads against your data.

4.6 Legal requests

We will only disclose your data in response to a valid Ghanaian court order or a request from a Ghana Lands Commission investigation that is legally compelling. We will notify you of such a request unless the order itself prohibits notification.

5. How long we keep your data

• Active accounts: data is retained as long as your account exists.
• Plot records under active dispute: preserved indefinitely even if you delete your plot — the platform tombstones rather than hard-deletes, so the disputer retains their evidence trail. The plot displays as "removed by owner" but the record stays for the duration of the dispute.
• One-time codes: consumed on use; expired codes are deleted within 24 hours.
• Account deletion: when you delete your account, your personal data is removed within 30 days, with exceptions for plots under active dispute (see above) and records we are legally required to retain.

6. Your rights

Under Ghana's Data Protection Act 2012 and similar laws abroad, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct — update inaccurate data in your profile, or ask us to correct anything you cannot edit directly.
• Delete — request deletion of your account and personal data, subject to the retention rules in §5.
• Object — opt out of any non-essential processing (e.g. analytics telemetry).
• Port — request your data in a machine-readable format (JSON export of your plots, endorsements, and basic profile).
• Complain — lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission of Ghana if you believe we have violated this policy.

Email us at privacy@mygroundtruth.app to exercise any of these rights. We respond within 30 days.

7. Security

We protect your data with industry-standard measures: encrypted connections (HTTPS / TLS), encrypted storage for sensitive fields (Ghana Card photos, access tokens), strict access controls on who at GroundTruth can see what, and audit logs of every action that touches personal data.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs, we will notify affected users and the Ghana Data Protection Commission within 72 hours of discovery, in line with international best practice.

8. Children

GroundTruth is for adults aged 18 or older. Land ownership and transactions in Ghana are reserved for adults; the platform mirrors that. If we learn we have collected data from a person under 18, we will delete it.

9. International users

The platform is operated for Ghanaian users and is hosted on infrastructure that may be located outside Ghana. By using GroundTruth you consent to this international data transfer, under contractual protections that match Ghana's Data Protection Act requirements.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product evolves. We will post the new version with a fresh "last updated" date and, for material changes, notify you in-app and by email.

11. Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: privacy@mygroundtruth.app