This policy explains what the Vapurİst app for Android ("the app") does with information. The app is developed and published by BasatWorks. Questions: info@vapurist.com
Vapurİst is not an official app of Şehir Hatları, Turyol, Dentur Avrasya or the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB). Sailing times are compiled from the timetables the operators publish.
In short
- No account is needed; we do not ask for your name, phone number or e-mail.
- No ads. No analytics, tracking or advertising libraries are used.
- Your location is used on your phone only and is never sent to us.
- Notice notifications are delivered by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging. For this, Google gives your phone a random notification ID; that ID never reaches us. You can turn notifications off in Settings.
- We do not sell anything about you or share it for advertising.
1. Location
If you allow it, the app uses your location to show the piers nearest to you, to work out the walk to a pier, and to show where you are: on a Bosphorus tour's map when you turn on "Follow the tour", between the piers of the sailing you are on when you turn on "Follow the boat".
- Your location is processed on your phone only; it is not sent to us or to any other server, and it is not stored. The one exception is directions you tap for (section 2, "Directions").
- Location is taken while the app is open and when you ask for it: once when you ask for nearby piers; every few seconds while "Follow the tour" is on in the tours page or "Follow the boat" on a sailing, stopping when that page leaves the screen or you turn it off. The app does not use location in the background.
- Location comes from the Google Play services location service on your phone, which is covered by Google's own privacy policy.
- You do not have to allow it. Without it, you can use the whole app by choosing a pier from the list, and you can withdraw the permission at any time in your phone's settings.
2. Internet connections
The app connects to the internet only as described here, and to Google for notifications (section 3). No identity, account or location information of yours is sent with the requests below.
Timetables and notices. The app downloads sailing times and the operators' cancellations and notices from our own data site. While the app is open it checks for notices about once a minute. As with any web server, your phone's IP address, the time of the request and the general type of app/device (user agent) may be written to the technical logs of our hosting provider (Hostinger). We do not use these logs to identify or follow you; they are kept only to run and secure the service, for the hosting provider's standard period.
Maps. Maps are drawn with map images from OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org). When you open a map, the images for the area on screen are downloaded from that server, which receives your IP address and the area shown. Your location is not added to these requests.
Directions. When you tap a station to see the walk to it, your phone's map app (for example Google Maps) opens with the start of the walk and the station's position. The start is normally the pier. If you have allowed location and are less than a three-minute walk from the pier, the start is your current position, and in that case your location is passed to that map app. When you tap "Directions" on a sailing or on a pier on the map, only the pier's position is given to the map app; it works out where to start by itself, and your location is not passed on by us. From there, that app's privacy policy applies.
3. Notifications
The app can show the operators' cancellations and notices as notifications. You choose what arrives in Settings → "Notice notifications": every notice (the default), only the piers of your saved journeys, or off. On Android 13 and later your permission is also needed to show notifications.
Notifications are delivered by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging:
- When the app is first opened, Google gives this installation on your phone a random ID and a notification token. They do not contain your name, phone number, e-mail or advertising ID.
- Depending on your choice, the app subscribes to "topics": one topic for every notice, or one topic for each pier in your saved journeys (for example Kadıköy). These subscriptions are kept on Google's servers together with that ID.
- When we publish a notice, our data site hands it to Google to "send to these topics". Your notification token and the topics you follow never reach us; we do not know who receives a notification.
- A notification carries only the notice's title, the number of sailings cancelled or skipping a pier, and the names of the piers concerned.
- Google processes this information to deliver notifications, under its own terms and possibly on servers outside Turkey: https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy
- If you turn notifications off, your topic subscriptions are removed. When you uninstall the app, the ID and token are no longer used, and Google deletes them within its own period.
4. What you write to us
The "Report", "Report a problem" and "Write to us" buttons open your phone's e-mail app with a filled-in draft. The app sends nothing by itself; you send the e-mail, and you can see and change it before you do.
If you send it, we receive:
- what you wrote and your e-mail address,
- for a sailing report: the sailing's date, route and line, and the app and timetable versions,
- for a problem report: the app and timetable versions, your phone's model and Android version.
Your location is not added to these e-mails. We use them only to answer you and to fix the timetable or the app, and delete them once we no longer need them for that.
5. What stays on your phone
The following are kept only on your phone, in the app's own storage, and are not sent to us:
- your favourite journeys and piers,
- journeys you make often (which journeys you looked at on which days, to suggest favourites),
- your theme and language choice, and whether the introduction was shown,
- your notification choice and the list of topics subscribed to,
- a copy of the downloaded timetable and notices, so the app works offline.
All of this is deleted when you uninstall the app or clear its data in your phone's settings. If Android backup is turned on on your phone, this data may also be included in your Google account's backup, which Google manages according to your account settings.
6. Google Play
When you install the app from Google Play, Google collects installation, update and (if diagnostics sharing is on on your phone) crash information under its own policy, and shows us only aggregated statistics that do not identify anyone.
7. Sharing
We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for advertising or marketing. We pass nothing to anyone other than the service providers described above (hosting, maps, and Google for notifications). If the law requires it, we share only what is required.
8. Children
The app is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone.
9. Security
All connections between the app and our data site are encrypted (HTTPS).
10. Your rights
Under Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK) and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to know whether we hold information about you, to ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and to object. In practice the only personal information we hold is the e-mails you send us. The notification ID is held by Google, not by us; uninstalling the app is enough to retire it. To make a request, write to info@vapurist.com.
11. Permissions
Every permission the app asks Android for, and what it is for. Some are added by the libraries we use (maps, notifications, background work); we list those too.
- Location (approximate and precise): to find the nearest pier and the walk to it, and to show where you are on a Bosphorus tour or on your sailing. Used only if you allow it and while the app is open; no location is taken in the background (section 1). The approximate position does not show your place on a tour or a sailing: it is coarser than the Bosphorus is wide and than the distance between piers.
- Show notifications: for notice notifications (section 3). During the closed test, the evening reminder for testers is shown with it too.
- Internet and network state: to download timetables, notices and maps, to receive notifications, and to fall back to the copy on your phone when there is no connection.
- Wi-Fi connection information: requested by the map library (MapLibre) to follow the connection state. Our own code does not use it.
- Receive notifications (Google Firebase Cloud Messaging): to receive notice notifications from Google.
- Run at startup: to set scheduled work (refreshing the home screen widget, the test reminder) up again after the phone restarts; added by the background work library (WorkManager).
- Briefly keep the phone awake, and foreground service: requested by the notification and background work libraries to keep the phone awake briefly until a task finishes. The app does not start a service that keeps running.
- Android's internal security permission (
DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION): stops other apps from sending the app's own internal messages. It asks you nothing and gives access to no data.
Not requested: contacts, camera, microphone, photos and files, SMS and calls, calendar, drawing over other apps, the advertising ID.
12. Changes
If we change this policy, we publish the new version on this page with a new date. If the change is significant (for example, if the app starts collecting new information), we will also say so inside the app.
13. Contact
BasatWorks E-mail: info@vapurist.com