Pebble Privacy Policy
The short version
We don't ask for your name, email address or phone number, and we don't want them. When you install Pebble we generate a random ID for that installation, and everything we store is attached to that ID rather than to you.
We use your answers to a ten-question personality questionnaire, plus what you tap on in the app, to suggest places and events we think you'll like. You can ask us to show you, send you or delete everything we hold about you — section 8 explains how, and the one limit that comes with not having an account.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The controller of your personal data is:
1887 SE Milport Rd
Milwaukie, OR 97222
United States
Privacy contact: pebble.scheduler@yahoo.com
2. What we collect
A random installation identifier
When you first open Pebble we generate a random identifier and store it on your device. We use it to keep your questionnaire results and preferences associated with you between sessions. It is not derived from your device's hardware identifiers, your phone number, or anything else about you, and we cannot use it to learn who you are.
The identifier belongs to the installation, not to your device or to you. If you delete Pebble and install it again, a new identifier is generated, and we have no way to connect it to the previous one. Your earlier questionnaire answers and history are left behind, no longer associated with any installation, and are deleted with the rest of the test data as described in section 7. A fresh install starts with no history and an empty questionnaire.
We do not collect: your name, email address, phone number, postal address, date of birth, payment details, contacts, photos, microphone or camera data, or location. Pebble has no user accounts and no sign-up.
Your personality questionnaire answers
Ten answers on a scale of 1 to 7, and the five trait scores we calculate from them (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience).
How you use the app
Which venues and events you view, save, dismiss or tap through to; which filters and categories you use; and basic session information such as screens opened and time of use.
Technical and diagnostic data
When the app contacts our servers, those servers record standard technical information: the app version, the operating system version, and details of any error that occurred. This information stays on our own systems.
3. Why we use it, and our legal basis
We rely on a different legal basis depending on what we are doing:
| What we do | Why | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Score your questionnaire and show you your results | It is the service you asked for | Art 6(1)(b) — performance of a contract |
| Rank and personalise venue and event suggestions | It is the core function of the app | Art 6(1)(b) — performance of a contract |
| Measure how the app is used — how many people open it, how many complete the questionnaire, which suggestions get tapped | Understanding whether the app works, and improving it | Art 6(1)(f) — our legitimate interests |
| Record errors and performance problems | Finding and fixing faults | Art 6(1)(f) — our legitimate interests |
| Improve how we match people to venues and events | Developing the service you are using | Art 6(1)(f) — our legitimate interests |
| Keeping the service secure and preventing abuse | Protecting the service and its users | Art 6(1)(f) — our legitimate interests |
| Complying with legal obligations and responding to lawful requests | We have to | Art 6(1)(c) — legal obligation |
We do not rely on your consent for anything, and Pebble asks you for no permissions beyond confirming your age. Everything above is either necessary to provide the app you asked for, or rests on our legitimate interests in running and improving it. In reaching that conclusion we took account of how little we hold: no name, no contact details, no account, and no precise location. You have the right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests — section 8 explains our position on individual requests.
We do not deliberately collect or use any special category data under Article 9 GDPR. Our venue and event catalogue excludes categories that would reveal religious or philosophical beliefs, political opinions, sexual orientation, health, racial or ethnic origin, or trade union membership, and we do not use such categories as inputs to your profile.
4. How our suggestions work
We want you to understand this rather than take it on trust.
The questionnaire. Pebble uses the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), a brief research measure of the five-factor model of personality, published by Gosling, Rentfrow & Swann (2003) in the Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528. We score it exactly as its authors specify: five of the ten items are reverse-coded, and each of the five traits is the average of two items.
What it can and cannot tell you. TIPI is deliberately very short. Its own authors describe it as somewhat less reliable than longer personality inventories and recommend it where a very brief measure is needed. Your scores are a rough sketch, not a precise or clinical assessment. They are not a psychological diagnosis and should not be treated as one.
How we use the scores. Each venue and event in our catalogue is tagged with characteristics such as how social, how energetic, how novel or how structured it is. We compare those tags against your trait scores and against the things you have previously saved or dismissed, and rank suggestions accordingly. The calculation is a fixed set of rules and arithmetic. Pebble does not use generative AI to produce your results or your recommendations.
Nothing is decided about you automatically. We do not make any decision with legal or similarly significant effects for you by automated means. Your scores never affect your access to Pebble, what it costs, or what you are permitted to do. They only affect the order in which suggestions appear.
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for advertising. We use a small number of service providers who process data on our instructions:
- Hosting and database. Vultr (The Constant Company, LLC), data centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Referral links
Some links in Pebble are referral links, and a venue or organiser may pay us a commission if you book after following one. Such a link identifies Pebble as the referrer and nothing more: it does not carry your installation identifier, or any other value specific to you. We are not told who followed a link, only that someone did.
Following any link out of Pebble takes you to someone else's website, where their own privacy policy and their own cookies apply. We have no control over what they collect.
We may also disclose data where we are legally required to, or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
6. Where your data is stored, and international transfers
Your data is stored on servers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, inside the European Union.
We are established outside the European Union, and we access that data from outside the EU in order to run and support the app. Our hosting provider is also incorporated outside the EU.
7. How long we keep it
Pebble is an early test version, and we have not yet put automated deletion schedules in place. Rather than quote retention periods we do not yet enforce, here is what actually happens:
- We keep the data described in section 2 for as long as the current testing phase runs.
- We will delete all test data when that testing phase ends.
- We do not currently run automated processes that age out or delete data on a fixed schedule. When we introduce them, we will set out the periods in this section.
- If you ask us to delete your data, we will do so — see section 8 for how to ask, and for the limits that apply.
- Our hosting provider takes backups of our systems. Data you have asked us to delete may remain in those backups for a period afterwards, until they are overwritten in the normal backup cycle.
8. Your rights, and how to use them
If you are in the EU or the UK you have the right to: access your data; have inaccurate data corrected; have your data erased; restrict how we process it; receive it in a portable format; object to processing based on our legitimate interests; and not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects (we do not make any such decisions — see section 4).
Why we cannot look you up
Pebble holds no name, email address or account for you, and it does not show you the random identifier your data is stored under. That means that if you write to us, we have no way to connect your message to the data held under that identifier — and we will not ask you for your name, email address or identity documents in order to try, because that would mean collecting more personal data about you rather than less.
What this means in practice
We are not currently able to act on individual requests for access, correction, deletion, portability or restriction, because we cannot tell which records are yours. Instead:
- All data from this testing phase will be deleted when the phase ends, as described in section 7.
- You can stop any further collection at any time by uninstalling the app. Because the identifier belongs to the installation, uninstalling also leaves your existing data unassociated with any installation, and reinstalling starts you fresh rather than restoring it.
- You can still write to us at the address in section 1. We will explain what we hold in general terms even where we cannot locate your individual records.
Complaints
If you think we have handled your data wrongly, please tell us first — but you have the right to complain to a data protection authority regardless. You can complain to the authority in the country where you live or work. In Estonia this is the Data Protection Inspectorate (Andmekaitse Inspektsioon, www.aki.ee).
9. Storage on your device
Pebble stores two things on your device: the random installation identifier described in section 2, and your app settings. Both are necessary for the app to work, and we store them on that basis.
We place no analytics, advertising or tracking technology on your device, and we store nothing there that is not needed to run the app.
10. Age
Pebble is for adults. You must be 18 or older to use it, and we ask you to confirm this before we collect anything. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will delete it. If you believe a minor has used Pebble, please contact us at the address in section 1.
11. If you are in the United States
Depending on where you live, you may have rights under your state's privacy law, including the right to know what we collect, the right to have it deleted, the right to have it corrected, and the right not to be treated differently for exercising those rights. The position set out in section 8 applies equally here: because we hold no name, email address or account, we are generally unable to connect a request to the records held under a particular installation identifier.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are used in California and other state privacy laws. We do not use your data for targeted advertising of any kind.
12. Pebble is in beta
Pebble is currently an early test version. Features change frequently, and we may reset or delete test data when a testing phase ends. If we do that, your questionnaire answers and history go with it. This policy may change more often than it will once Pebble is generally available.
13. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect.