Privacy policy

Who this is

My Lovely Car is a car maintenance app and the website at thelovelycar.com. In data-protection terms it is the controller of the data described below.

If anything here is unclear, or you want a copy of your data or want it deleted, write to the address at the end. A person reads that mailbox.

Your account

To sign in at all, the app stores:

• Your name and email address.
• A one-way hash of your password — never the password itself, and it cannot be reversed back into one.
• Your language, timezone and whether you prefer kilometres or miles.
• The date you registered and the date you last signed in.

What you record about your cars

This is the substance of the app, and all of it is data you chose to enter:

• The car: brand, model, year, engine, fuel, transmission, colour, the name you give it, and optionally its plate number and VIN.
• When you bought it and the odometer reading at the time.
• Every maintenance record: what was done, the date, the odometer reading, what it cost and in which currency, where it was done, and your notes.
• Files you attach to a record, such as a photograph of a receipt or an invoice.
• Odometer readings you enter, with their dates — these are what the distance reminders are calculated from.

A plate number and a VIN identify a vehicle, and through it sometimes a person. Both are optional: the app works without either, and you can clear them at any time.

Notifications

To send a reminder to your phone, the app stores a notification token issued by your device, along with the platform and the app version, and a log of what was sent and when. The log exists so the same reminder is not sent to you twice, and so you can see in the app what you have already been told.

Delivery goes through Firebase Cloud Messaging, which is operated by Google. Google receives the token and the text of the notification — the item, the car name and the date — because that is the message being delivered. It does not receive your account, your history or your costs.

Turning notifications off in your phone settings, or signing out, stops this. Removing the app removes the token.

What the server writes down by itself

Ordinary web server logs: the IP address a request came from, the time, the page or endpoint, and the browser or app version. They exist to find faults and to spot someone trying to break in, they are not joined up with your account, and they are kept for a short period and then deleted.

What is never collected

Explicitly, so there is no ambiguity:

• No advertising identifiers, and no advertising.
• No analytics or behavioural tracking, in the app or on this website.
• No location or GPS data. The app never asks for the permission.
• No contacts, calendar, microphone or camera roll. The camera is used only if you take a photograph of a receipt yourself.
• No third-party fonts, scripts or embeds on this website — it loads nothing from anyone else, so no one else learns that you read it.

Why any of it is held

Your account and your records are held so the app can do the one thing it is for: keep your history and tell you when something is due. That is the contract between us, and none of it is held for any other purpose.

Server logs are held because running a service securely requires them.

Who else sees it

Two parties, and no others:

• Google, through Firebase Cloud Messaging, and only the notification described above.
• The company hosting the servers, which holds the database and the file storage on our behalf and may not use them for anything else.

Nothing is sold. Nothing is shared with advertisers, data brokers or insurers. If a law or a court compels disclosure, we comply only to the extent compelled, and tell you unless we are forbidden to.

How long it is kept

Your records are kept while your account exists, because a maintenance history is only worth having if it is long. You can delete any single record, or any car, at any time, and a car you mark as sold keeps its history without generating any further reminders.

When you delete your account, everything above is deleted: cars, records, attachments, odometer readings, device tokens and the notification log. Backups roll off within thirty days, after which it is gone from those too.

What you can ask for

Whatever your country grants you, and at minimum all of these:

• A copy of everything held about you, in a form you can read and import elsewhere.
• Correction of anything wrong.
• Deletion of your account and everything in it.
• An explanation of anything in this policy that is not clear enough.

Ask by email and expect an answer within thirty days. There is no charge.

How it is protected

Traffic between your device and the server is encrypted in transit. Passwords are hashed, not stored. Access to the app is by a token tied to your device, which you can revoke by signing out. Administrative access to the database is limited to the people who maintain the service.

No service can promise it will never be breached. If one happens and it affects you, you will be told what happened, what was taken, and what to do about it — without waiting to be asked.

Children

The app is for people who own or maintain a car and is not directed at children. No account is knowingly created for a child under 13, and if one is brought to our attention it is deleted.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who sees it, the notice goes out in the app before the change takes effect — not quietly, and not only as a new date at the top of this page. The date at the top tells you when it last changed.