Privacy Policy

1. Data Controller

The person responsible for data processing in connection with the Geofency app and this website is named in our Imprint:
Hilmar Herbel, Esswurmstr. 21, 81371 München, Germany
Email: info@geofency.com

2. Core Principle: Processing Happens On Your Device

Geofency is deliberately built so that we see as little of your data as possible. We do not operate our own server on which your places, visits, health data, or photos are stored or evaluated. Processing happens locally on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. Where syncing between your own devices is needed, we exclusively use your private iCloud account — we as the provider have no access to this data.

Geofency contains no analytics or tracking SDK and no advertising. There is no tracking, in the sense of the GDPR or applicable EU/German digital-services law, that would make you identifiable across apps or websites.

3. Location Data

Geofency's core function is detecting when you arrive at or leave a place you've marked (geofencing). To do this, the app continuously processes your device's location data, even while running in the background or when closed.

• Purpose: Automatic arrival/departure detection, time tracking per place, and the basis for charts, the diary, and home automation.
• Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performing the service you requested) and/or your consent via the iOS location permission (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can revoke at any time in iOS Settings.
• Storage location: Exclusively on your device and, if you enable it, in your private iCloud account, so your places sync between your own devices. We have no access to this.

4. iCloud Sync

If you use iCloud sync in Geofency, your places, visits, and tags are synced between your devices via Apple's CloudKit service. Device-specific settings, including notifications, webhooks, and calendar export, stay on each device. The synchronized data lives in your private iCloud database; Apple processes it there as our data processor under Art. 28 GDPR. We ourselves cannot access your private iCloud database. Apple's own privacy policy also applies.

5. Health Data (Workouts, Sleep, Steps)

With your permission, Geofency reads workout, sleep, and step data from the Health app to display it alongside the places you visited in the diary. This data is processed and displayed exclusively on your device. Geofency does not write any data back to the Health app and does not transmit any health data to us or to third parties.

6. Photos From Your Library

With your permission, Geofency shows photos and videos from your photo library that match a visited place by time or location, and files them into the diary automatically. Access is read-only — Geofency never modifies, deletes, or uploads any photos. You can filter which albums/time ranges are considered in Settings.

7. HomeKit & Home Automation

If you link a place to HomeKit, Geofency triggers a scene of your choice when you arrive or leave. This is handled by Apple's HomeKit framework on your device or home hub; we receive no data from this.

8. Contacts

With your permission, Geofency accesses your contacts locally to give places friendly names automatically (e.g. "Anna's Office") and to import/export addresses. This data never leaves your device.

9. Motion Data & Calendar

Motion data (e.g. walking, cycling, driving) is evaluated locally to include it — only if you've set up a webhook-based home automation — as part of the webhook payload (see section 10). Calendar access is used exclusively to export time-tracking entries into a calendar of your choice, if you request it; this too stays local to your device or your chosen calendar account.

10. Webhooks & Classic Home Automation

If you set up your own webhook in Geofency (e.g. for Home Assistant, IP-Symcon, FHEM, or IFTTT), the app sends the necessary data directly from your device to the URL you entered when you arrive at or leave a place. This transmission goes exclusively to the service you configured yourself — not to us. We have no insight into this transmission and no influence over how the service you chose handles the data. Please review that service's privacy practices before setting up a webhook.

11. Map Data, Place Information & Wikipedia

To show a place's opening hours, photos, ratings, map imagery, or a street-level preview (Look Around), Geofency requests this information directly from Apple Maps/MapKit; this request, including your IP address, is transmitted to Apple. When Geofency displays a matching Wikipedia article for a place, a request is made to the Wikimedia Foundation's servers. The privacy policies of Apple and the Wikimedia Foundation apply accordingly. If you use the share function to open a place in Google Maps, Bing Maps, or HERE, that provider's own privacy policy applies from that point on.

12. In-App Purchase (Optional Tip)

The optional purchase to support ongoing development is handled entirely through Apple's in-app purchase system (StoreKit). Payment data is processed exclusively by Apple; we receive neither payment nor account details, only an anonymous confirmation of the purchase.

13. Diagnostics & Crash Reports

Geofency itself contains no third-party analytics or crash-tracking software. If you've enabled sharing diagnostic data with developers under iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements, Apple may provide us with anonymized crash reports. This is controlled entirely through your iOS system settings.

14. Contacting Us by Email

If you contact us by email (e.g. for support or feedback), we process your sender address and the content of your message solely to handle your request (Art. 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR). We delete this correspondence once it is no longer needed to handle your request, unless legal retention obligations require otherwise.

Before continuing to email, the app previews your message together with the app version, operating system, and device model. You can optionally include a diagnostic report with the app language and the status of tracking requirements and iCloud sync. The report contains no location history, place names, coordinates, webhook URLs, or credentials. The displayed message is passed to your mail app and is sent only when you send the email.

15. Retention Period

Your places, visits, tags, and device-specific settings remain stored locally until you erase local data or uninstall the app. If sync is enabled, places, visits, and tags are also stored in your private iCloud account. Uninstalling the app or using Erase All Data in Backup Settings does not remove this iCloud copy. Erase iCloud Data in iCloud Settings removes the cloud data and turns sync off on all devices, but keeps their local data. To remove both copies, erase iCloud data first, then erase local data on each device. Exported backups and files remain wherever you choose to keep them (e.g. the Files app, your own cloud storage) until you delete them separately. Calendar events and data sent to webhook services also need to be managed separately.

16. Your Rights

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights regarding personal data that we actually have access to (typically only what you've sent us by email, see section 14 — your location, health, and photo data is technically held exclusively by you):

• Access to the data we hold about you (Art. 15 GDPR)
• Rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR)
• Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR)
• Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
• Data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
• Objection to processing (Art. 21 GDPR)
• Lodging a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, e.g. the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht)

For all data that lives exclusively on your device or in your private iCloud account, you exercise these rights most effectively directly in the app or in your iOS/iCloud settings — for example by deleting a place, resetting the app, or disabling individual permissions.

17. Changes to This Policy

We update this privacy policy whenever data processing changes due to new Geofency features or legal requirements. The current version is always available on this page.