Privacy Policy

1. General

Protecting your personal data is important to us. This privacy policy explains which personal data is processed when you use this app and our web application, and for what purposes.

2. Controller

Mathias Vogler
Dr.-Külz-Str. 35
14542 Werder (Havel)
Germany
Email: privacy@vomatic.com

3. Anonymous / pseudonymous use (access token)

When you first start the app — and likewise when you create a collection in our web application or sign in there — a randomly generated access token is created on the server and assigned to your account. This token acts as a pseudonymous identifier so that your data (e.g. objects and photos) can be attributed to your account and the cloud features can be provided.

The token contains no directly identifying information such as your name or email address. However, because it is permanently assigned to an account, it is treated as personal data.

In the app the token is held in the device’s protected storage; in the web application it is held in a cookie (see section 9). On our server it is never stored in the clear, only as a cryptographic hash.

Legal basis: performance of a contract or pre-contractual measures pursuant to Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

4. Optional email address & verification

You may voluntarily add an email address to your account. To verify it, we send you a confirmation code by email. Verification unlocks additional features, in particular recovery of your account, use of the app on several devices, and synchronisation of your data.

Legal basis: performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).

5. Sharing and inviting team members

Once you have verified your email address, you can invite other people by their email address to share your content/collections. The recipient's email address you provide is processed solely to send the invitation and to provide the sharing feature.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing collaboration features (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

6. Stored content

The app stores the content you record, to the extent necessary to provide its features. This includes in particular collections, objects, photos, descriptions, categories, custom attributes and shares.

Metadata in photos (EXIF, XMP, IPTC): uploaded photos are stripped of their metadata as they arrive on the server. The entire metadata area is removed — in particular GPS coordinates, the time of capture, the device and camera model, serial numbers, authorship details and embedded thumbnails. Only the colour profile (ICC) is kept, because correct display depends on it; the image data itself is carried over unchanged. A file whose structure cannot be determined with certainty is rejected rather than stored.

An earlier version of this notice said photos were stored unchanged, metadata included, and undertook to tell you here in advance if we ever began to evaluate that data. Both are superseded by this version: the metadata is removed, and the location a photo was taken at is — where present — read out before removal and stored as a find location. See the next paragraph.

Find location of objects: you can record where you found an object. This is stored as a record of its own, comprising the name of the place, its coordinates, their accuracy, and where they came from. The possible sources are:

• your own input — a name, a point placed on the map, or one of your saved find sites;
• your device's location when you explicitly request it (“use my current position”);
• your device's location at the moment of capture, when you take a photo with the app's camera and have granted the app location permission — this case happens without a separate prompt;
• the metadata of a photo you pick from your gallery, read out before that metadata is removed.

If you have not granted the app location permission, no coordinates are collected from your device; every other feature remains available. You can change or entirely delete a stored find location at any time.

Visibility to guests: because the metadata is removed on upload, an image file shared through guest access no longer contains any location details. Whether guests see the exact coordinates of your objects is your decision: by default they do not — all they see is the name of the place — and you can change this in the sharing settings. Independently of that, your saved find sites are shared individually; that per-site decision takes precedence and holds in both directions. Your notes on a find site always stay private.

Deleting an object deletes its find location with it, and deleting a photo deletes its image file (see section 10).

Legal basis: performance of a contract pursuant to Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

7. Hosting and processors

We use the following service providers, who process personal data solely on our behalf and on our instructions. We have concluded a data processing agreement (DPA) pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR with each of them.

Hetzner Online GmbH, Germany
Purpose: hosting our servers and databases
Server location: Germany

Resend, Inc., USA
Purpose: delivery of verification and invitation emails
Data processed: recipient email address, time of dispatch and delivery status

Transfer to the USA: email is delivered through a provider based in the USA. The transfer is safeguarded by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR). Despite these safeguards, access by US authorities cannot be entirely ruled out. You can avoid this transfer by not adding an email address to your account — the app is fully usable without one.

8. Communication, server log files, audience measurement & contacting us

Encryption: the app communicates with the server exclusively over encrypted HTTPS/REST connections (TLS).

Server log files: when our servers are accessed — both by the app and by visits to our website — technical data is processed automatically (IP address, time of access, requested address, HTTP status code, referring page, browser or app identifier, operating system, error messages). This serves the secure and stable operation of the application as well as detecting and repelling attacks (legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). These log files are deleted automatically after 7 days. This data is not combined with other data sources.

Audience measurement on our website: on our website we use Umami, analytics software that we host ourselves on our own server in Germany. No data is transmitted to third parties. We record the page requested, the referring page, browser and operating system type, device category, screen size, language setting, and the country derived from the IP address. The IP address itself is not stored; it is processed only briefly in order to determine the country and to distinguish one visit from another. No user profiles are created, and this data is not combined with any other data — in particular not with your account in the app. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a data-minimising analysis of how our offering is used (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Audience measurement without cookies, no cross-site tracking: the measurement works without cookies and stores nothing on your device, so consent under § 25 TDDDG is not required. You may nevertheless object to it at any time: in your browser’s local storage for this website, create the entry umami.disabled with the value 1. If your browser sends the “Do Not Track” setting, no measurement takes place either. For the strictly necessary cookies set by our web application, which have nothing to do with audience measurement, see section 9.

Contacting us: if you write to us by email or via a contact form, your details are stored in order to handle your enquiry and in case of follow-up questions (legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR or Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

9. Cookies in the web application

Our web application sets three cookies. All three are strictly necessary in order to provide the service you have expressly requested, so consent under § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG is not required for them. We set no cookies for analytics, profiling or advertising, and no data is passed to third parties. The mobile app uses no cookies at all.

• ammodia_token — holds the access token described in section 3 and keeps you signed in, so that you do not have to sign in again on every visit. Lifetime: 400 days. The cookie is httpOnly, so it cannot be read by JavaScript in the browser, is set to SameSite=Lax, and is transmitted over HTTPS only.
• ammodia_pending — bridges the sign-in between requesting the confirmation code and entering it. For that purpose it holds the email address you entered and, when you are creating a new collection, the provisionally issued access token. Lifetime: 30 minutes; httpOnly as well. It is deleted once you are signed in.
• ammodia_lang — stores the language you chose (German or English). It is only set when you explicitly switch languages. Lifetime: 400 days.

You can delete these cookies at any time in your browser settings. Deleting ammodia_token merely signs you out — your collection is unaffected. When you sign out, we delete the cookie ourselves and additionally invalidate the corresponding token on the server.

An earlier version of this notice stated that no cookies were set. That statement concerned the audience measurement on our website, which still works without cookies; in its general form it is superseded by the introduction of the web application. Section 8 has been clarified accordingly.

Legal basis: § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG and Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of a contract).

10. Account deletion and retention period

Personal data is stored only for as long as is necessary to provide the app's features or as required by statutory obligations.

Account deletion: you can delete your account yourself in the app at any time (Account → Delete account). Alternatively, an informal email to our support address is enough.

Consequences of deletion: in every case your stored email address, the access of all your devices and any outstanding confirmation codes are permanently removed, unless statutory retention obligations apply. If you are the only person on your collection, its objects, photos and attribute definitions are deleted too. If other members share the collection, it stays with them: objects and photos belong to the collection rather than to one person, and are not associated with your name.

11. Your rights and right to lodge a complaint

You have the following rights regarding the personal data concerning you:

• Right of access (Art. 15 GDPR)
• Right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR)
• Right to erasure (Art. 17 GDPR)
• Right to restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
• Right to data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
• Right to object to processing (Art. 21 GDPR)

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority about our processing of your personal data (e.g. with the data protection commissioner of your federal state).

12. Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy so that it always complies with current legal requirements, or in order to reflect changes to our services in the privacy policy (e.g. when introducing new features).