Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 24, 2021

The privacy of your data — and it is your data, not ours! — is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights to your data. If you have any questions or concerns about our policy or our practices with regards to your personal information, please contact us at hello@vorane.com. This policy applies to all products built and maintained by Vorane Studios Limited including Pigeon Shopping (all versions), this website (https://www.vorane.com/) and/or any related services, sales, marketing, or events (we refer to them collectively in this privacy policy as the “Services”).

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:

Identity & access

When you sign up for Vorane Services or fill a form on our website, we typically ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, and maybe a company name. That’s just so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you invoices, updates, or other essential information to fulfill the interest you’ve indicated. We’ve never sold your personal info to third parties, and we won’t use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

Website interactions

When you browse our marketing pages or applications, your browser automatically shares certain information such as which operating system and browser version you are using. We track that information, along with the pages you are visiting, page load timing, and which website referred you for statistical purposes like conversion rates and to test new designs. We sometimes track specific link clicks to help inform some design decisions. These web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account if applicable and you are signed in to our Services. We blind all of these individual identifiers after 30 days. Historically — including within the last 12 months — we have used third-party web analytics software such as Google Analytics.

Anti-bot assessments

We use CAPTCHA services across our applications to mitigate brute force logins and in the website, as a means of spam protection. We have a legitimate interest in protecting our apps and the broader Internet community from credential stuffing attacks and spam. When you log into your accounts and fill specific forms in Pigeon or our website, the CAPTCHA service evaluates various information (e.g IP address, how long the visitor has been on the app, mouse movements) to check whether the data is possibly filled out by an automated program instead of a human. We retain these data via our subprocessor forever because they are used for anti-spam mitigation.

Cookies and Do Not Track

We do use persistent first-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and support some in-house analytics. A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser to help it remember your login information, site preferences, and more. You can adjust cookie retention settings in your own browser. To learn more about cookies, including how to view which cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.At this time, our sites and applications do not respond to Do Not Track beacons sent by browser plugins.

Voluntary correspondence

When you write Vorane with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including the email address, so that we have a history of past correspondences to reference if you reach out in the future.We also store any information you volunteer like surveys. Sometimes when we do customer interviews, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We only do so if you give your express consent.

Information we do not collect

We don’t collect any characteristics of protected classifications including age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or physical and mental abilities or disabilities. You may provide these data voluntarily, such as if you include a pronoun preference in your email signature when writing into our Support team. We also do not collect any biometric data. You are given the option to add a picture to your user profile, which could be a real picture of you or a picture of something else that represents you best. We do not extract any information from profile pictures: they are for your use alone.

How we approach mobile app permissions

We offer build mobile apps as Vorane and for our clients. Our philosophy is to ask for the bare minimum of permissions from you to give you a great app experience with maximum privacy. By default, we have access to the network to ensure the app can connect to and communicate with the Internet. In most cases, we ask for permission just-in-time so that you can decide if you want to grant access to things like contacts, cameras, and calendar. A few exceptions:

For our iOS apps, we’ll ask for permission to use push notifications upon first sign-in.
Android apps do not require permission to send push notifications.

It’s impossible for our apps to try to use a sensitive OS feature without requesting access explicitly from you, so you’ll always know exactly when and what we’re requesting. You will never be required to grant any permission (although a given feature may not work or work well without it).

When we access or share your information

Our default practice is to not access your information. The only times we’ll ever access or share your info are: To provide products or services you’ve requested. We do use some third-party services to run our applications and only to the extent necessary process some or all of your personal information via these third parties. You can view the list of third-party services we use here: Company processors. Having subprocessors means we are using technology to access your data. To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your account to help you with a Support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding. When required under applicable law. Vorane Studios Limited is a Kenyan company and all data infrastructure is entirely cloud-based (See company processors).

If Kenyan law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring we share data, we have to comply. Otherwise, we flat-out reject requests from local law enforcement when they seek data. And unless we’re legally prevented from it, we’ll always inform you when such requests are made. In the event a government authority outside Kenya approaches Vorane with a request, our default stance is to refuse unless the government compels us to comply through procedures outlined in a mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement. We have never received a government intelligence order to share data
If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to share billing-related information. If that happens, we only share the bare minimum needed such as billing addresses and tax exemption information.

Finally, if Vorane Studios Limited is acquired by or merged with another company — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any info about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Your rights with respect to your information

At Vorane, we apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Currently, some of the most privacy-forward regulations in place are the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) in the US. Vorane Studios recognizes all of the rights granted in these regulations, except as limited by applicable law. These rights include:

Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared, or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security, and processing of that information.
Right to Correction. You have the right to request the correction of your personal information.
Right to Erasure / “To be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using Vorane services because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority. To identify your specific authority or find out more about this right, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.
Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request the restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of the sale of personal information. (Again: we never have sold your personal data.)
Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
Right to not be subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object and prevent any decision that could have a legal, or similarly significant, effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited, however, if the decision is necessary for the performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
Right to Non-Discrimination. This right stems from the CCPA. We do not and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights (such as the right “to be forgotten”) may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and directly updating your account information in any of our products(Vorane owned). If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at hello@vorane.com or at Vorane Studios, C4D Lab, 14 Riverside Drive, Nairobi, Kenya. If you are in the EU, you can identify your specific authority to file a complaint or find out more about GDPR, at https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted. For our services, most data are not encrypted while they live in our database (since it needs to be ready to send to you when you need it), but we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest.

Location of site and data

While Vorane Studios is located in Kenya, Our products and other web properties are entirely cloud-based and as such, our data is transferred to these companies’ data warehouses in Europe and the United States. The list of our cloud processors is linked on our Company Processors page. Please note that when setting up our cloud services, we ensure that they are GDPR and CCPA compliant. If you are located in the European Union, the United States, or elsewhere outside of Kenya, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in these data warehouses. By using our Site, participating in any of our services, and/or providing us with your information, you consent to this transfer.

Changes & questions

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at hello@vorane.com and we’ll be happy to answer them!

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0

Dominic Mulinda

Co-founder, Vorane Studios Limited.