Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Orbi is a chat and event messaging app operated by Anna Villebro Rasmussen in Denmark, who is the data controller responsible for your personal data. If you have questions about your data or this policy, contact us at hello@orbichat.io.

2. What We Collect

We collect only the personal data reasonably necessary to provide, secure, and improve the service:

• Phone number
• Username (this does not have to be your real name)
• Profile photo (optional)
• Date of birth (optional)
• Device and security-session information, including browsers you link to Orbi Web (see below)
• Relationships and event activity you create through Orbi
• Your privacy choices, such as who can find you
• Phone numbers from your contacts, if you choose to find friends (see section 4)
• Phone numbers you enter to invite someone to an event
• Support reports, including an email address if you add one to a report on our website
• Limited technical and usage information

Your phone number is required to create an account. Everything else is optional or created as you use Orbi.

We process chat and event content to provide the service. We do not analyze private message or attachment content for advertising, targeting, or commercial statistics. In the future, we may process structured event and activity information, such as event category, broad area, registrations, attendance, and time, to create the aggregate statistics described in section 5.

If you choose to provide your date of birth, your friends can see the day and month, not the year, to enable birthday features.

We may collect limited technical and usage data to improve performance, reliability, and security.

Orbi Web

Orbi Web, at web.orbichat.io, lets you use your chats and events on a computer. You link a browser by scanning a code with Orbi on your phone, and you can remove a linked browser from your phone at any time.

• A linked browser is kept with your devices, with a name such as “Chrome on macOS”, the country it was linked from (looked up from its IP address, as for phones), and when it was linked and last used. Your other devices are told when a browser is linked.
• To open encrypted chats, you enter your backup PIN in the browser. The PIN unlocks your keys inside the browser and is never sent to us.
• Your messages are kept only in the browser’s memory while Orbi Web is open, and are loaded again from our servers the next time. If you choose “Remember this browser”, your sign-in and your keys are stored in that browser, encrypted with a key the browser can use but cannot reveal, until you sign out or the browser is removed. Otherwise nothing stays in the browser after you close the tab. Choose it only on a computer that only you use.
• To protect linking against misuse, we count link attempts per IP address. We store only a scrambled form of the address (a keyed hash), never the address itself.
• Orbi Web loads its code and fonts only from web.orbichat.io and otherwise connects only to our servers, except for GIFs: as in the app, GIF search and the GIFs shown come from GIPHY (see section 9). It uses no analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies. Links you open, such as a place in Google Maps, open on that site. The browser asks before Orbi Web can use your microphone (for voice messages) or your location (to share it).

3. How We Use Your Data

• Create and manage your account
• Provide user-to-user communication
• Allow you to host and join events
• Display birthdays and enable birthday-related features
• Help you find people you know, and let them find you, according to your settings
• Improve service performance and security
• Create privacy-protected aggregate statistics about app, event, and community activity
• In the future, provide organizers and business customers with statistics about their activities and anonymous benchmarks (see section 5)

We do not use your personal data for advertising or targeting. We do not sell personal data, personally identifiable information, user-level activity histories, or access to individual profiles.

4. Finding Friends and Who Can Find You

You choose who can find you on Orbi in Settings.

If you let Orbi use your contacts, the phone numbers in them, not the names, are sent to our servers and checked against Orbi accounts, so we can show which of your contacts use Orbi. The numbers are then discarded; we only remember which Orbi accounts matched. The names and numbers of matched contacts stay on your phone, in its secure storage. While access is on, Orbi checks again about once a day, also in the background. You can turn off Orbi’s access to your contacts in your phone’s settings at any time.

5. Aggregate Statistics

Orbi may create, use, and provide privacy-protected aggregate statistics to event organizers, community operators, partners, researchers, or other business customers. Examples include totals and trends for event interest, registrations, attendance, retention, categories, broad geographic areas, and times. This service is not available yet; this section describes how it will work.

Through the aggregate statistics service, these recipients do not receive personal data, private communications, contact relationships, precise location histories, individual activity histories, or data that is intended to identify a person. We use aggregation thresholds and other safeguards to reduce the risk that individuals can be identified from statistics.

6. Legal Basis for Processing

We process your personal data in accordance with GDPR based on:

• Performance of a contract, to provide the Orbi service
• Legitimate interests, to improve performance, security, and reliability
• Legitimate interests in measuring and developing privacy-protected event and community services, where those interests do not override your rights
• Legitimate interests in helping you find people you know
• Consent, where required by law

7. Data Retention

We retain your data only as long as necessary to provide the service. When you delete your account, your sign-in, profile, friendships, devices, and backup PIN are deleted, except where retention is required for legal or security purposes. Messages you have sent, including photos, videos, and files, stay visible to the other people in those chats, with the username you used. Events you created stay visible to their guests, and your event comments are deleted.

Support reports, including an email address you add to a report, are deleted 180 days after the report was last updated.

A browser linked to Orbi Web that has not been used for 14 days is signed out automatically. Codes for linking a browser are deleted within a day, and the scrambled IP addresses counted against misuse within two days.

Technical and activity information used to produce statistics is retained only as long as reasonably necessary for its stated purpose. Statistics may be retained for longer when they have been aggregated so that they no longer identify individual users.

8. Data Deletion and Control

You can:

• Delete your account at any time
• Delete messages you have sent, remove chats from your list, leave group chats, and delete events you created
• Edit or remove your date of birth in account settings
• Choose who can find you in Settings
• Sign out of Orbi Web, or remove a linked browser from Orbi on your phone
• Request a copy or correction of your data by contacting us

9. Service Providers and International Transfers

Orbi is built in Denmark, and we choose European providers wherever we can. Today, however, it is almost impossible to run a modern mobile app entirely on European services. Push notifications on iPhone and Android can only be delivered through Apple and Google, the apps are distributed through their app stores, and for some services, such as sending SMS codes or connecting calls, reliable European alternatives are limited. We want to be open about which providers we use, where they are based, and what they receive.

We use a small number of service providers to run Orbi and this website. They process data on our behalf and only for the purposes described below. We have data processing agreements with them or rely on their standard data processing terms.

In encrypted chats, the content of messages is end-to-end encrypted: text, photos, videos, voice messages, files, polls, shared locations, link previews, and GIF links. Audio calls are end-to-end encrypted too. Other information is encrypted in transit but not end-to-end encrypted, such as who is in a chat, chat names and profile photos, message timestamps, reactions, poll votes, and event details and comments. When you view a shared location or a GIF, the map or GIF is loaded from Google or GIPHY, and a link preview may be fetched through our servers.

Hosting in the European Union

• Nhost (Sweden): hosts our backend, including the database, file storage, sign-in, and server functions. This data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany, on infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services.

Providers based in the United States (in the app)

• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging: delivers push notifications. Receives your device's push token and the notification. For encrypted chats, the message preview is itself end-to-end encrypted, so Google cannot read it; the notification may include the sender's username and profile photo link, and the group's name and photo. Other notifications may include usernames (for example friend requests and incoming calls), event titles and event comments, the device type, app version, and country for new sign-in alerts, and part of your phone number when it is changed.
• Google Firebase App Check: helps confirm that requests come from a genuine copy of the Orbi app. Uses Apple App Attest on iPhone and Google Play Integrity on Android, and processes device attestation information.
• Google Firebase Crashlytics: collects crash reports so we can fix errors. Receives technical details such as the error, device model, operating system, and app version. We do not attach your name, phone number, or messages.
• Google Maps Platform: shows maps for events and shared locations, and suggests places when you pick a location. When a map or place photo loads, Google receives the area shown and may receive your IP address. Place searches are sent through our servers, together with your location if you allow location access, so that nearby places are suggested first.
• GIPHY: provides GIF and sticker search. When you open the GIF picker or search, GIPHY receives your search terms, IP address, and basic device information. When a GIF is shown in a chat or event, it is loaded from GIPHY, which receives your IP address. We do not send your name, phone number, or any account identifier to GIPHY.
• Twilio: sends sign-in codes by SMS or voice call, verifies phone number changes, and sends an SMS when you invite someone who is not on Orbi to an event. Receives the phone number and the message: the verification code, or for an invitation the first word of your username and a link to Orbi. We are working on replacing Twilio with a European provider.
• LiveKit: provides the servers that connect audio calls. LiveKit receives your IP address and technical call information, such as who is in a call, timing, and connection quality. This call information is stored in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany). Call audio is routed through the nearest available servers without being stored, and it is end-to-end encrypted, so LiveKit cannot listen to it. We are working on replacing LiveKit with call servers located in the European Union.
• Apple: delivers notifications to iPhones through Apple Push Notification service, including incoming call alerts, and provides App Attest. Receives a device token and the same notification content as described for Google above.

To show which country a device signed in from, our own servers look up the country of the device's IP address in a local copy of an IP geolocation database. For this, the IP address is not sent to any other service, and only the country code is stored with the device's session information. IP geolocation by DB-IP.

Providers used on our websites

• GitHub Pages (GitHub, United States): hosts orbichat.io. Like any web host, it receives your IP address and browser information when you visit.
• Cloudflare Pages (Cloudflare, United States): hosts Orbi Web at web.orbichat.io. Like any web host, it receives your IP address, browser information, and which of Orbi Web’s files your browser loads, including the font files needed for the characters shown. It does not receive your messages, which travel directly between your browser and our servers at Nhost.
• Cloudflare Turnstile (United States): protects the support form against spam. It loads only when you open the report form and processes your IP address and browser signals.

Our websites do not use analytics, advertising cookies, or externally hosted fonts. Links to the App Store and Google Play take you to Apple's and Google's own sites, which have their own privacy policies.

Transfers outside the EEA

When a provider processes personal data outside the European Economic Area, we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, and otherwise on standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission. Companies based in the United States may be subject to US laws that allow authorities to request data, even when it is stored in the EU. You can ask us for more information about these safeguards at hello@orbichat.io.

Aggregate statistics recipients

Organizers, partners, researchers, and business customers may receive the privacy-protected aggregate statistics described in section 5. They do not receive personal data or access to individual Orbi profiles through the statistics service.

10. Your Rights Under GDPR

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Correct inaccurate data
• Request deletion
• Object to or restrict certain kinds of processing
• Receive your data in a portable format
• Withdraw your consent at any time, where processing is based on consent
• File a complaint with your local Data Protection Authority

11. Data Security

We implement reasonable security measures to protect your information. While no system is 100% secure, we take data protection seriously and regularly review our practices.

12. Children’s Privacy

Orbi is not intended for children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

If we become aware that such data has been collected, we will take steps to delete it.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes in the app or on this page.

14. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your data is handled, contact us at hello@orbichat.io.