Privacy Policy

INMARK NET COMPUTER SYSTEMS LTD is the data controller for the Plans? app. For any question about your data, or to use any of the rights below, email privacy@plansbymakao.co.ke.

• Account details: your first name, email address and password. Passwords are stored only as a secure hash, so no one at Plans? can read them.
• Your WhatsApp number, if you add one to host plans, and whether you’ve confirmed it.
• Profile details you choose to add: the town or city you’re based in, your interests and a profile photo.
• What you do on Plans?: plans you create, edit, join or leave, messages you send in plan chats, reports you make, and when you last opened each chat.
• People you block, plan alerts you turn on (“tell me when there’s a plan like this”), and whether you went to a plan, if you answer “Did you go?”.
• Sign-in information: when you sign in we record your IP address and browser type with your session, to help keep your account secure. When you create an account, we check which country your connection comes from, because Plans? is only offered in Kenya. We don’t store that country.
• Notifications: which emails and notifications you’ve chosen to get and, on each device where you turn notifications on, the delivery address your browser creates for it and the browser type.
• App installs: whether you saw, accepted or dismissed the prompt to add Plans? to your home screen, and the first time the installed app is opened on a device. These come with a random ID stored on that device and its platform (iPhone, Android or computer), not your account, name or email.
• How you found Plans? and how you use it: the link or campaign that brought you (campaign tags or the name of the referring website, such as Instagram), a random visit ID, the country your connection comes from, your device type and screen size, which parts of the home page you see and what you tap, and whether you open a plan, tap Join or start signing up.
• Error reports: if something goes wrong, a technical report with the page, browser and error details. It doesn’t include your messages or password.

We don’t collect your precise location, your contacts or any payment details.

• To provide Plans?: to create your account, show you plans, let the people on a plan coordinate in its chat, send service emails such as password resets, send the WhatsApp code that confirms your number, and tell you about your plans by email and notification as described below. We do this because it’s necessary to provide the service you signed up for.
• To keep members safe: to review reports, remove content, suspend accounts that break our Terms of Use, and prevent abuse such as spam, repeated failed sign-ins and throwaway accounts. This includes confirming that each WhatsApp number is linked to one account, limiting new hosts to one upcoming plan with a “New host” label, and automatically holding a plan or person reported by several different members until our team reviews it. We do this in our legitimate interest in a safe community, and to meet our legal obligations.
• To improve Plans?: to fix errors, understand which features are useful and how many people install the app, in our legitimate interest in running a reliable service. If you joined our waitlist first, we link your account to your waitlist entry (by email address or WhatsApp number) to see how many people join from it; only our team sees this. We also measure which of our own campaigns and links bring people to Plans?, and whether they go on to join or make a plan. If you create an account within 7 days of visiting through a campaign link, or from Instagram, TikTok or WhatsApp, we note that on your account. Only our team sees this.
• To suggest things you might like, using the interests you choose to share. Now and then, when a plan in your city that fits your interests still needs people, we may send you a notification about it (at most one a day, and you can turn these off).
• To count which plans actually happened, using “Did you go?” answers. Other members see only how many people said they went, never who.

We don’t share your data with advertising platforms, use it to target ads, or sell it. The only automatic decisions we make about you are the temporary safety holds described above. They’re always reviewed by a person on our team, and you can ask us to review one by emailing privacy@plansbymakao.co.ke.

• Account emails: we email you about your account, such as password resets, codes to confirm a new email address, and a notice to your old address when your email changes. You can’t turn these off while you have an account.
• WhatsApp: we only message you on WhatsApp to send the code that confirms your number.
• New plans for you: plan alerts you turned on, someone you went to a plan with planning again, and the occasional plan that fits your interests and needs people. You can turn these off in Profile → Notifications, and remove alerts in Profile → Plan alerts.
• After a plan: a “Did you go?” question, by notification and email (sent with your plan reminder settings).
• Plan emails: tips when you publish your first plan, and ideas for sharing it if nobody has joined a day later; and, unless you turn them off, an email when a plan you’re going to is cancelled or its time or place changes, and a reminder a couple of hours before the plan starts.
• Push notifications: only on devices where you’ve turned them on. You choose which kinds you get: new messages, someone joining a plan you host, changes to your plans and reminders.

You can turn any plan email or notification off at any time in Profile → Notifications, or turn notifications off for a device in its settings. The link at the bottom of every plan email takes you there. We don’t send marketing emails from the app.

Other members can see your first name, your profile photo and the plans you host or join, and a “New host” label on your plans until one of them has taken place. People on the same plan can read your messages in that plan’s chat. When someone reports a message, our team reads it and the messages around it in that chat, to decide what to do. Your email address, WhatsApp number, city and interests are never shown to other members. Plan pages can be opened by anyone with the link, including people without an account: they see the host’s first name and photo and how many people are going, but not who else is going. People you block aren’t told.

We use a small number of service providers to run Plans?. They process data only on our instructions and for these purposes:

• Vercel, to host the app
• Turso, to store the app’s database
• Cloudinary, to store and resize profile photos, and to check automatically that a new profile photo shows a face. It only detects that a face is there; it doesn’t identify who it is
• Resend, to send account and plan emails
• WaSender, to send the WhatsApp message with the code that confirms your number
• Your browser’s or phone’s push service (for example Apple, Google or Mozilla), to deliver notifications to devices where you’ve turned them on. Notification contents are encrypted, so the push service can’t read them
• Upstash, to protect sign-in and other features from abuse, using short-lived counts linked to an IP address or account
• Sentry, to receive error reports
• Google (Google Maps Platform), to find places when you search for one while making a plan. We send only the words you type, not your name or account details. Google’s Privacy Policy applies to that search: https://policies.google.com/privacy

We may also share information when the law requires it, or when it’s necessary to protect someone’s safety.

Some of these providers store or process data outside Kenya, for example in the European Union or the United States. When that happens, we rely on the safeguards permitted by the Data Protection Act, including the providers’ contractual commitments to protect personal data.

• Your account and profile, including your WhatsApp number: for as long as your account is open.
• Confirmation codes (WhatsApp and email): they expire after 10 minutes and can only be used once.
• When you delete your account: we immediately remove your name, email address, WhatsApp number, photo, city, interests, plan alerts, blocks and sign-in details, and cancel any upcoming plans you host. Messages you sent stay in their chats, shown as from “Deleted”, so the conversation still makes sense to the others in it.
• Reports and moderation records: for as long as we need them to handle the report and protect our community.
• Sign-in sessions: they expire after 14 days.
• Notification delivery addresses: until you turn notifications off, sign out on that device, reset or change your password, delete your account, or the device stops accepting them.
• Install records: only as long as we need them to understand how Plans? is used, then deleted or anonymised.
• Visit and usage records: only as long as we need them to understand how Plans? is used and which campaigns work, then deleted or anonymised. When you delete your account, we keep only which campaign or channel it came from, as an anonymous count, and remove the link to your visits.
• Error reports: kept for a limited period by Sentry, then deleted.

Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to be told how your data is used, to access it, to correct it, to have it deleted, to object to how we use it, to ask for a copy in a portable format, and to withdraw consent where we rely on it.

You can edit your profile and delete your account yourself in Profile. For anything else, email privacy@plansbymakao.co.ke. We’ll respond as quickly as we can, and within the time limits set by law. If you’re not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner at odpc.go.ke.

Plans? uses encrypted connections, stores passwords only as secure hashes, limits who on our team can access personal data, and limits repeated attempts to sign in. No online service can be completely secure; if a breach affects your data, we’ll notify you and the Data Protection Commissioner as the law requires.

We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in, and one first-party cookie that remembers, for 7 days, the campaign or website that brought you to Plans?, so we can tell which of our campaigns work. A second cookie lasts only a few minutes while a campaign link opens. Your browser also stores a visit ID for the current tab and a few preferences on your device, such as whether you’ve dismissed the install prompt, your recent pages so Back works, and an unfinished plan so you don’t lose it while signing up. It also stores the random device ID we use to count app installs. We don’t use third-party advertising or tracking cookies, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel or session recording, and nothing about your visits is sent to advertising platforms.

Plans? is for adults aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; if we learn that we have, we’ll delete it.

We’ll update this page when our practices change and show the date at the top. If a change materially affects you, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

INMARK NET COMPUTER SYSTEMS LTD, operator of Plans? by Makao Email: privacy@plansbymakao.co.ke