Privacy Policy
Effective Date: April 13, 2026 · Last Updated: July 14, 2026
1. Introduction
ActuBene ("we", "our", "us") is an 18+ social platform that lets users share and celebrate acts of kindness.
We are committed to protecting your personal data and being transparent about how we collect and use it.
By registering for or using ActuBene you confirm that you are at least 18 years old and that you have read
and agreed to this Privacy Policy.
2. Data We Collect
2.1 Account Data
- Full name (first name, last name)
- Email address
- Age confirmation — a yes/no confirmation that you are 18 or older at sign-up. We do not collect or store your date of birth.
- Gender (optional)
- Profile photo (optional)
2.2 Content You Create
- Posts (text, photos, videos) that you share on the platform
- Causes: title, category, description, goal amount, an optional event date and time, an optional location
(approximate city and country, plus a free-text location detail you may add — e.g. a street, neighbourhood or venue —
which is public), cover photo, and any friends you tag as participants;
cause signup records (who signed up, when, and whether they discovered it through a reshare); and
optional, self-reported participation details the cause owner may add (an estimated time each participant
contributed and a confirmed participant count), used to show volunteer hours the cause mobilised in reports
- Deeds (acts of kindness you log): deed type, category, associated charity or good cause, attached photos
or videos, tags, an optional time spent (volunteer hours) you choose to record, and whether the deed is
shared publicly or kept private. You may also log a deed as your contribution to a cause you have joined;
this links the deed to that cause and attributes the time you record to it in your own impact reports and,
if you choose to enable it, your Public Impact Profile. These individually logged hours form part of your
own record and are not shared with the cause owner as individual data — cause owners only ever see
aggregate figures
- Comments, reactions, and tags on other users' posts, causes, and deeds
- Reshares of posts, causes, and deeds, including any caption you add
- Direct messages (DMs) including text, photos, videos, voice notes, and files
- Group chats: messages, photos, videos, voice notes, and files shared in group conversations
2.3 Technical Data
- Expo Push Notification Tokens (to deliver push notifications to your device)
- Device type and operating system
- Device identifier (collected solely for ban enforcement)
- IP address and approximate location (country/city level, derived from IP)
- App usage logs (pages visited, features used, timestamps)
2.4 Approximate Location Data (optional)
When you use the "Use my location" feature while creating or editing a Good Cause, the app requests
permission to access your device's approximate location only (we request coarse, city-level
location and do not request precise GPS). This data is:
- Collected only when you explicitly tap the button — never collected automatically or in
the background.
- Resolved to a city and country so others can discover causes in the same area — we do not store or display
your precise street-level position.
- Stored on our servers alongside the cause record.
- Visible to other users who browse or search causes.
- Removable at any time by editing the cause and clearing the location.
You may still add a more specific spot (e.g. a street, neighbourhood or venue) yourself as free text if you
want participants to know exactly where to go. If you do not tap the button, no device location data is
collected. You can deny the location permission at any time in your device settings.
2.4a Calendar Access (optional)
When you tap "Add to calendar" on a cause you have joined, the app requests permission to access
your device calendar solely to create that event entry (and to remove it again if you unjoin the cause or
tap to remove it). We never read, collect, or transmit your other calendar events — the event is written
directly on your device and no calendar contents are sent to our servers. If you never use the feature, no
calendar access is requested. You can deny or revoke the calendar permission at any time in your device
settings.
2.5 Data You Provide Voluntarily
- Charity verification submissions
- Deed logs and impact data
- Friend connections and follow relationships
- Cause signup actions
- User reports and bug reports
- Account-verification requests, including any justification, corporate email, role, or links you choose to provide. We review these manually to decide whether to grant verification (which is required to create causes).
2.6 Organisation Account Data
ActuBene offers dedicated Organisation Accounts for companies, universities, charities, nonprofits, and other organisations. If you create or join an Organisation Account:
- An organisation's impact totals (deeds, causes, and volunteer hours) reflect only the activity the organisation itself logs — for example a cause it runs and the hours it records. Individual members' own deeds and causes count toward their personal stats and the platform-wide global totals, not the organisation's totals, so a member's activity never inflates the organisation's numbers.
- Your posts, deeds, and causes remain governed by your own privacy settings. The organisation account can see your content under the same visibility rules that apply to any mutually connected user — only content you choose to share with friends or publicly.
- You control whether each post, deed, or cause is visible to organisations. When creating or editing an item you can keep it from all organisations, or — if you belong to more than one — choose which organisation(s) may see it. Content you hide from an organisation is excluded from that organisation's feed and from its aggregate totals.
- Invite links issued by an organisation may record how many registrations occurred through each link. This count contains no personal data beyond what you provide at registration.
2.7 Impact Report Data
When you choose to generate an Impact Report from the Impact tab, we process the following:
- A snapshot of your selected activity (causes created, deeds logged, total volunteer hours, causes you joined — including the volunteer hours you personally logged toward those causes) for the chosen time period.
- Per-cause participation: participant counts (live sign-up counts while a cause is open, or the owner-confirmed number once it is closed) and the volunteer hours the cause mobilised. Hours and confirmed-participant figures are self-reported by the cause owner and are shown as aggregate numbers only.
- This snapshot is stored server-side as a verification record, linked to a unique token-protected URL.
- The token-linked verification page is publicly accessible — no login is required — so anyone with the link can view it. Only share your report link with people you intend to show your impact data to.
- Sign-up counts shown in reports and on verification pages are aggregate totals only. The identities of users who signed up to your causes are never included in any exported file or on the verification page.
- Verification records expire automatically after 30 days, after which the snapshot is permanently deleted from our servers.
2.8 Public Impact Profile
You may optionally enable a Public Impact Profile — a permanent, always-current web page of
your impact that you can share, for example on a CV, a job or university application, or LinkedIn. It is
off by default. When you enable it:
- A page is published at a unique, unguessable link (e.g. actubene.com/p/<token>) that anyone
with the link can view without logging in. Unlike an Impact Report, the page is computed live
from your current activity rather than from a stored snapshot, so it stays up to date as you contribute.
- You choose exactly which sections are visible (headline totals, causes you joined, causes you
created, deeds, category breakdown, cities) and can change this at any time.
- Sign-up counts are shown only as aggregate totals; the identities of users who signed up to your causes are
never shown on the page.
- You can refresh the link at any time — which immediately stops the previous link from working,
including anywhere you have already shared it — or turn the profile off, which immediately takes
the page down. Deleting your account also removes the page.
- When you share your profile link, a preview image (your name, a headline of your impact and your
verified badge — all public, aggregate information) may be generated for the link preview and then cached by the
third-party platform you share it on (for example LinkedIn or Slack).
- You may choose the time window shown on your profile (all time, this year, this month, or a custom date range).
- You are responsible for choosing what to make public and for where you share your link.
2.9 Sharing to Other Apps
ActuBene lets you share an image card to other apps and services — for example when you tap
"Share to other apps" on one of your deeds, causes, or posts, or when you tap "Share" on your
"Month of Good" / "Year of Good" recap. When you do this:
- We generate the image on our servers in memory, on demand. The image is not stored
on our servers.
- A recap image contains only your own aggregate totals (such as your number of deeds and causes,
your volunteer hours, your top category, and your streak). A deed or cause image contains the title, category,
and any time spent of your own item. The identities of users who signed up to your causes are
never included.
- The generated image, together with any accompanying text and a link to actubene.com, is handed to your device's
native share sheet. You choose which app or person to send it to (e.g. WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn,
Messages).
- Once you share content to a third-party app or service, that content leaves ActuBene and becomes subject to that
third party's own terms and privacy policy. We have no control over how they handle it. Only share content you are
comfortable making visible outside ActuBene.
3. Why We Collect Your Data
| Purpose |
Legal Basis |
| Account creation & authentication |
Contract performance |
| Age confirmation (18+) |
Legal obligation / Legitimate interest |
| Transactional emails (confirmation, password reset) |
Contract performance |
| Push notifications |
Consent (opt out any time in device settings) |
| Approximate (city-level) location (cause discovery) |
Consent (only when you tap "Use my location") |
| Organisation aggregate statistics |
Legitimate interest |
| Improving the app and fixing bugs |
Legitimate interest |
| Preventing fraud, abuse, and illegal content |
Legal obligation / Legitimate interest |
| Generating and verifying Impact Reports |
Consent (you generate the report voluntarily) |
| Generating share images for sharing to other apps |
Consent (only when you tap "Share") |
4. Data Sharing
We do not sell your personal data. We share data only with:
- SendGrid (email delivery)
- Expo / EAS (over-the-air app updates and push notification delivery)
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) – Android push notifications
- Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) – iOS push notifications
- DigitalOcean (backend server hosting)
- Cloudflare (DNS, content delivery, traffic security, and media storage via Cloudflare R2)
All third parties are contractually required to process data securely and only for the purpose we specify.
5. Data Retention
- Account data: retained for as long as your account is active.
- Deleted account: all personal data permanently deleted within 30 days.
- Push tokens: immediately invalidated when you log out or delete the app.
- Backup copies may be retained for up to 90 days after deletion for disaster-recovery purposes.
- Impact Report verification records: automatically deleted 30 days after the report is generated.
- Public Impact Profile: generated live from your current data — no separate snapshot is stored. Turning the profile off, refreshing its link, or deleting your account removes the page immediately.
6. Your Rights
Depending on your country of residence, you may have the right to: access, correct, or delete your personal
data; object to or restrict processing; and data portability.
To exercise any right, contact us at [email protected].
7. Children and Underage Users
ActuBene is strictly for users aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we
discover that a user is under 18, we will immediately suspend and delete their account and all associated
data. To report a suspected underage user: [email protected].
8. Security
We use HTTPS/TLS encryption for all data in transit, hashed passwords (bcrypt), and restricted database
access. Despite these measures, no system is 100% secure; we encourage you to use a strong, unique password.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. We will notify you by email or in-app notification at least 14
days before any material change takes effect.
10. Contact
ActuBene · [email protected]