Privacy Policy

Effective Date: April 13, 2026  ·  Last Updated: August 19, 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); attendance records (see 2.4b); and optional, self-reported participation details the cause owner may add (an estimated time each participant contributed and, where no one checked in, a participant count they enter themselves), 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.

2.4b On-Site Check-In (attendance)

An organiser may open check-in during their event and display a short code, on screen or on a printed sheet with a QR code. If you choose to check in, we record:

• That you attended that cause, the date and time you checked in, and that it was established by check-in rather than by the organiser confirming you.
• A signup record for that cause, if you did not already have one — people often turn up without having signed up in advance.

Checking in does not use your location. We do not request, collect, or infer your GPS position, and we do not check where you are. The code is the evidence: the organiser only shows it at the event and can close check-in at any time, after which the code stops working.

Checking in is always your choice. You can attend an event and not check in; an organiser may reopen check-in afterwards so you can record it, and otherwise your participation is recorded only if you log it yourself, marked as self-reported rather than confirmed on site. You can ask an organiser to remove an attendance record they hold for you. Your attendance is visible to the organiser of that cause, counts toward your own impact record, and appears in your Public Impact Profile if you have enabled it. Organisers see aggregate attendance figures in their reports; how each participant's attendance was established (checked in on site, or confirmed by the organiser) is shown, but individual participants are never named in any report or verification page.

What joining or checking in makes visible to you. Signing up for a cause, or checking in at one, gives you access to that cause’s post — its description, photos, comments and reactions — even when you are not connected to the organiser on ActuBene. This is limited to the specific causes you joined: it never gives you access to the organiser’s other posts, deeds or profile content. It also means the organiser’s name and account become visible to you, and you may choose to follow them or send a connection request.

What it makes visible about you. The organiser of that cause sees your name in their participant list, along with whether your attendance was recorded and how. Other participants do not see your attendance, and no report ever names you.

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. Cookies, Tracking and Advertising

We do not track you, and we show no advertising. ActuBene carries no analytics, no advertising SDKs, no tracking pixels and no social-media plugins — on the website or in the app. We do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or share your data with advertisers.

Our website sets no cookies when you browse it. A single strictly-necessary security cookie is set only if you submit a form — for example when you report a public page — and it exists solely to protect that submission against cross-site request forgery. It stores nothing about you and is not used to recognise you afterwards. All images and files on our pages are served from our own servers, so simply visiting does not tell any third party that you were here.

Our app does not use cookies. It stores a sign-in token on your device so that you stay signed in between sessions, and it keeps a small amount of local data (such as cached images) to work quickly and offline. Signing out or deleting the app removes these.

Links to other services. If you follow a link to the App Store, Google Play or another website, that service receives your request and applies its own privacy policy. We have no control over what they collect once you leave our page.

Your controls. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Because the only cookie we set is a security one, blocking it will prevent our forms from being submitted, but nothing else.

If this ever changes — for example if we introduced analytics or advertising — we would update this policy and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before any such technology is used. We would not do so quietly.

10. 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.

11. Contact

ActuBene  ·  [email protected]