Privacy Policy

RailMate Bangladesh ("RailMate," "we," "our," "us") operates a mobile application and companion website to help travelers plan Bangladesh Railway journeys. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have over it. If you don't agree with this policy, please don't use the app or website.

1. Information we collect

a. Information you provide directly

• Account information: display name, and either an email address or phone number, used to create and secure your account.
• Profile picture (optional).
• Community contributions: delay/crowding/condition reports, comments, votes, and any photos you attach to a report.

b. Information collected via device permissions

Each of these is requested only when the relevant feature is used, and the app remains usable without granting them (the specific feature is simply unavailable).

• Location — to show nearby stations and, where available, your position relative to a route. We do not store a history of your location.
• Camera and photo library — to attach a photo to a community report.

c. Automatically collected information

• Crash and error reports — device type, OS version, and app state at the time of a crash, used solely to fix bugs. Contains no message content or personal profile data.
• Usage analytics — which screens and features are used, in aggregate, tied to an anonymous identifier rather than your name, email, or phone number.
• Advertising identifiers (free tier only) — used by our ad provider to serve and measure ads. Not used on RailMate Pro, which is ad-free. You can reset or limit ad tracking in your device's OS settings.

d. Payment information (RailMate Pro)

Subscription purchases are processed by Google Play Billing or Apple's StoreKit, and managed through RevenueCat. RailMate does not receive or store your card number or other payment credentials — only whether your subscription is active and when it renews.

2. How we use your information

• Create, secure, and manage your account.
• Provide train search, schedules, fares, and route information.
• Operate community reporting — publishing reports, comments, votes, and trust scores.
• Show your approximate location on a map for nearby-station and route features.
• Send push notifications you've configured (departure reminders, delay alerts).
• Serve and measure ads on the free tier.
• Process and manage RailMate Pro subscriptions.
• Diagnose crashes and understand feature usage to improve the app.

3. How we share your information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only in these situations:

• With other users: your display name, profile picture, and community contributions (reports, comments, votes) are visible to other users. Your email and phone number are never shown publicly.
• Aggregated data (B2B): we may license route- and train-level delay/crowding aggregates (e.g. "average delay on this route this week") to business partners. These are statistical summaries only — no individual report, user ID, or row-level data is ever included.
• Service providers listed in Section 4, strictly to operate the app.
• Legal reasons — if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of RailMate, our users, or the public.

4. Third-party services we use

5. Data security

We use industry-standard administrative and technical safeguards — encrypted connections, access controls, and row-level database security scoped to each account — to protect your information. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

6. Data retention & account deletion

We keep your account information for as long as your account is active. You can delete your account at any time from the app's Settings. When you do:

• Your personal information (email, phone number, display name, avatar) is permanently deleted.
• Your community reports and comments are anonymized — the content may remain (so route/delay history stays useful to other travelers), but it's disconnected from your identity.

7. Your rights

Regardless of where you live, you can ask us to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate information (most of this you can also edit directly in-app).
• Delete your account and personal data, as described in Section 6.
• Export a copy of your data in a portable format.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, such as ad personalization.

To exercise any of these, contact us using the details in Section 11. We'll respond within a reasonable time and may need to verify your identity first.

8. Bangladesh & international users

RailMate is built primarily for travelers in Bangladesh and handles data in a manner intended to be consistent with Bangladesh's Digital Security Act. If you're accessing RailMate from outside Bangladesh — including the Bangladeshi diaspora — the rights described in Section 7 are offered to you as well, in the spirit of regulations such as the EU's GDPR, regardless of whether that regulation formally applies to you.

9. Children's privacy

RailMate is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we've collected information from a child under 13, we'll delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. We'll update the "Last updated" date above when we do, and for material changes, we'll notify you in-app.

11. Contact us