Traverse — Privacy Policy (Riders)
Last updated: 19 October 2026
Who we are
Traverse ("we", "us") provides campus ride-sharing for students and drivers at the University of Ghana, Legon.
The data controller is Traverse Mobility App, a business registered in Ghana under registration number BN286110926, of Accra, Greater Accra Region. "Traverse" in this policy means Traverse Mobility App.
Questions, or any request about your data, go to traversegh@gmail.com. We respond within 14 days.
What we collect
When you create an account: your full name, phone number and the school you belong to. We do not ask for an email address; if an older account has one, we keep it until the account is deleted. There is no password — you sign in with a one-time code sent to your phone, so there is nothing for us to store and nothing for you to lose.
Your date of birth, collected for one reason only: Traverse is for people aged 18 and over, and we check that at sign-up. We do not use it for anything else, and we do not use it to profile you.
A record that you accepted these terms: the date and time you agreed, and which version of this policy and the Terms of Service you were shown. We keep this so that we can show what you actually agreed to, and so can you.
To confirm you are really you: a one-time code sent to your phone. We record when it was confirmed.
When you book and take rides: where you were picked up and dropped off, when, how many seats, the fare, which driver, and whether the ride completed or was cancelled. Also any bookings you scheduled in advance.
Money: what each ride cost, and any refund, adjustment or credit recorded against your account. We do not take payment in the app — you pay your driver directly — so we never see or store your card or mobile-money credentials.
Location: the app reads your device location only while you are actively using a map or booking screen, to show nearby campus stops. We do not track riders in the background.
While a driver is coming to collect you, your app sends your position to us every few seconds, so that driver can see where you are standing rather than only the stop your booking was matched to. This begins when you ask for a ride and ends the moment you are picked up — from then on your position is the car's, which the driver's own phone already reports. Only the driver on their way to you can see it; no other driver, and no other rider, can. Each position is held for sixty seconds and then erased, and none of them is written to our database, so there is no record of where you have been for us to keep, export or disclose. If you decline the location permission the ride still works exactly as before — your driver goes to the stop.
Apart from that, there are exactly two times it is sent to us, and you press a button for both: when you send an SOS, and when you tell us none of the listed stops is where you are — that sends the one position so your school can consider adding a stop there, along with anything you typed as a name. That report is kept until an administrator has dealt with it, and is deleted with your account.
Safety features you choose to use: if you add an emergency contact, we store that person's name and phone number, and we send them a message containing your name, phone number and ride details when you press SOS.
We also keep a record that an SOS was raised — who raised it, when, which ride
it was about, and whether your phone had a position at the time. We do not
keep the position itself. Your coordinates go into the message to your
contact and are stored nowhere. The record exists so your school can see that
alarms are being raised and answer questions about them, including yours: if
you tell us you pressed SOS and nothing happened, this is what lets us check.
Your contact's number is stored only in a shortened form such as
+2335***101.
If you book a ride for someone else: we store the name and phone number you give us for that person, and we text them the driver's details and a tracking link so they can find their ride.
Calls with your driver: once your driver has arrived at your pickup, and only while you are on the ride, they can ring you through the app, and you can answer in the app. Neither of you sees the other's phone number. The call goes over the internet through a calling server that we operate, so the app asks for your microphone permission the first time a call comes in. We do not record calls and we do not keep the audio. We keep a record that a call took place — who, which ride, when it started and ended, and whether it was answered. A call cannot be placed once your ride has ended, and one still going at that moment is cut off.
If you save places: we store the pins you drop, under the names you give them. They are yours alone — no other rider ever sees them — and they are deleted with your account.
Device information needed to keep you signed in.
About other people's information
Two features involve someone who may not use Traverse at all — adding an emergency contact, and booking a ride for another person. When you give us someone else's name and number, you are confirming you have their permission to do so. We use those details only for that specific purpose (reaching them in an emergency, or telling them about the ride you booked for them). They can contact us at traversegh@gmail.com to have their details removed.
Why we use it, and on what basis
- To provide the service you asked for — matching you with a driver, pricing and charging the ride, showing your trip history. (Performance of our contract with you.)
- To keep people safe — confirming identities, running the SOS feature, investigating incidents and disputes. (Our legitimate interest in a safe service, and yours.)
- To prevent fraud and abuse — spotting misuse of the first-ride price, credits and refunds. (Legitimate interest.)
- To meet legal and accounting obligations — retaining transaction records. (Legal obligation.)
- To improve reliability — understanding demand patterns by time and route. We use this in aggregate, not to profile you individually. (Legitimate interest.)
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.
Who sees it
- Your driver sees what they need to complete your ride: your name and the pickup and drop-off points. They do not see your phone number; if they need to reach you they ring you through the app, as described above.
- Your school's Traverse administrators can see operational records for their own campus — trips, disputes and credit adjustments. Administrators are scoped to their own school and cannot see another school's riders.
- Service providers who act on our instructions: our SMS provider (Arkesel), our email provider (Brevo), and our push-notification provider (Expo), together with the hosting provider that runs our servers and database. Calls are carried by a calling server we operate ourselves; it passes the audio between the two phones and keeps none of it. There is no payment processor in this list because there is no payment in the app — you settle with your driver directly, so nothing about how you pay ever reaches us. Maps are drawn by Apple Maps on iPhone and by OpenStreetMap on Android; neither receives anything about you from us.
- Authorities, where we are legally required to disclose.
Transfers outside Ghana. Some of those providers process data outside Ghana — for example our email provider's and our hosting provider's servers. Where that happens we rely on the data-protection terms in our contract with that provider, which require them to protect your data to a standard comparable to Ghanaian law and to use it only on our instructions.
How long we keep it
- While your account is open, we keep your account and ride history so the service works, including the record that a call took place. After you delete your account that record no longer identifies you.
- After you delete your account, we remove or scramble everything that identifies you — your name, phone number, email, emergency contact, saved places and any rating comments you wrote.
- One thing is kept for 12 months after you delete, if you had completed a ride: a scrambled code made from your phone number. It is not the number, and nothing else about you is stored with it. We use it for one purpose — to recognise that number if it is used to open a new account, so that the first-ride price cannot be claimed again by deleting an account and signing up afresh. After 12 months it is deleted.
- Financial records survive deletion in anonymised form. We are obliged to keep an accurate record of money that moved, so fare and credit entries remain, but they are no longer linked to a name, phone number or email.
- We keep those anonymised financial records for six years, which is the period Ghanaian company and tax law expects accounting records to be retained. After that they may be deleted entirely.
Your rights
Under Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) you may:
- See your data. The app has a "Download my data" option that gives you everything we hold about you.
- Delete your account. The app has a "Delete my account" option. It works immediately and cannot be undone. We will ask you to first finish or cancel any ride in progress, settle any unpaid fare, and reclaim any remaining credit on your account — so that deleting never silently costs you money.
- Correct anything wrong, from your profile or by contacting us.
- Object to, or ask us to restrict, certain uses.
- Complain to the Data Protection Commission of Ghana if you think we have handled your data wrongly.
Security
Signing in uses one-time codes rather than a password, so there is no password of yours for anyone to steal from us. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to administrative tools is restricted by role and limited to a single school. Payment credentials never touch our servers.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify you and the Data Protection Commission as required by law.
Children
Traverse is for people aged 18 and over and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has created an account, tell us at the address above and we will remove it.
If a participating school enrols students under 18, that school must arrange appropriate consent before those students use Traverse.
Changes
We may update this policy as the app changes. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.