swisscheckerPrivacy policy
In short: no account, no ads, no tracking. The app understands your questions on the phone, and no swisschecker server receives your questions or your location. The only thing stored is whether you bought Premium – without a name or email.
1. Who is responsible
Responsible for the swisschecker app and the website swisschecker.ch is swisschecker, email info@swisschecker.ch. The name and postal address of the operator are in the imprint.
2. What stays on your phone
Recent searches, pinned searches (dashboard), the chosen place, language and theme, the free-question counter, offline maps and cached answers are stored on your phone only. They never leave the device and are gone when you delete the app.
3. Requests to the data sources
To answer a question, the app asks the relevant data source directly from the phone. Only what the answer needs is sent – for example a place name, a stop, the start and end of a route or, when you ask about "here", the coordinates of your location. As with any internet access, the source also sees your device's IP address. The requests carry no identifier that recognises you or your phone. How long providers keep their server logs is governed by their own privacy policies.
The sources are mainly federal and other public bodies: swisstopo (maps, places, elevations), MeteoSwiss, FOEN, FSO, SFOE, ElCom, OFCOM, FOH, FOCBS, the Federal Chancellery, LINDAS and opendata.swiss, Zefix, the Swiss National Bank, the SLF and the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich.
In addition there are a few non-governmental services: transport.opendata.ch (timetable), router.project-osrm.org (car routes) and brouter.de (bike and hiking routes), both based on OpenStreetMap and operated in Germany, ich-tanke-strom.ch (charging stations), Meteotest (air quality on behalf of FOEN) and Swissvotes (popular votes). The app loads its typeface from Google Fonts (Google); Google then sees the IP address.
At start-up the app also fetches the current list of sources from config.swisschecker.ch. This request contains nothing about you; it runs through Cloudflare (see section 7).
4. Location
The app only asks for your location if you allow it. It needs it for questions with "here" or "nearby" and then sends the coordinates to the source needed for that one answer. We do not store your location. Without permission the app works too – you type a place instead. You can change the permission any time in the phone's settings.
5. Premium purchase
You buy Premium through Apple's App Store or Google Play. Payment details such as card or account are seen only by Apple or Google, never by us. Their privacy policies apply.
To unlock Premium and restore it on a new device, the app uses the RevenueCat service (RevenueCat, Inc., USA). RevenueCat receives the store's purchase receipt, a random anonymous identifier created by the app, and technical details such as operating system, app version, country and currency. From this RevenueCat keeps the purchase history (which product, when, in which store). This data is not linked to your name or email; we see it only as sales statistics. RevenueCat processes the data in the USA. More: revenuecat.com/privacy.
6. Sharing and links
When you share a question, the link contains the question's text. You choose which app to send it with. If you open a link from the app – to SBB or a data source, for example – that website's or app's terms apply.
7. This website
swisschecker.ch is delivered through Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA). When you visit, Cloudflare processes your IP address and technical details such as browser and time to deliver the page and protect it from attacks. The website sets no cookies, uses no analytics or advertising tools and loads no third-party content. Only your browser remembers your language choice.
8. Email
If you write to us, we use your address and message only to reply. The mailbox is hosted by Infomaniak Network SA in Switzerland. We delete messages once they are no longer needed.
9. Retention and deletion
RevenueCat keeps the purchase history for as long as Premium exists. We delete it on request – how, is explained under Data deletion. Apple and Google keep their own purchase records under their own rules.
10. Your rights
You can ask for access to your data, have it corrected or deleted, and object to its processing. Write to info@swisschecker.ch. You can also complain to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (edoeb.admin.ch); in the EU, to your data protection authority. The basis is the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection; where the GDPR applies, we rely on performance of the contract (Premium) and our legitimate interest in running the app and the website.
11. Changes
If the app changes, we update this policy. The version on this page applies.