Our Core Privacy Pledge
Dealing with someone's whereabouts is sensitive information. We understand this deeply. It is possible to offer a reputable attendance service that respects user privacy and does only what it says. This is our commitment to every participant and group leader.
What We Never Collect
- No participant accounts: No passwords, profiles, or registrations required from attendees.
- No contact information: We never ask attendees for email addresses or phone numbers.
- No persistent tracking: The app never tracks location in the background or monitors movement.
- No GPS coordinate logs: Raw latitude and longitude coordinates are never recorded or stored on our servers.
- No data selling: We have no advertising IDs, no trackers, and zero ways to contact or identify attendees.
What We Process
- Ephemeral boundary check: Location sensors run for < 1 second strictly when "Check me in" is tapped.
- Presence outcome: Only the verification outcome (e.g., verified present) and timestamp are saved.
- Attendee names: Names entered by participants are only visible to the specific event host.
- Organizer login: Host email and encrypted credentials used solely to manage classes.
The Mobile App: Ephemeral Verification, Not a Tracker
The Youhere app for iOS and Android is not a person-tracker. It never runs in the background monitoring user whereabouts.
- Stays Inactive: The app remains completely dormant until the attendee opens it and explicitly taps "Check me in".
- Under 1-Second Check: When tapped, the smartphone's location hardware activates for less than one second to calculate whether the device is within the event perimeter. Once that instant check completes, location hardware turns off immediately.
- Coordinates Discarded: Raw GPS coordinates (latitude, longitude, and altitude) are evaluated in temporary device memory and never transmitted to or saved on our servers. Only the binary outcome (e.g. "verified") and time of check-in are saved in the host's log.
- Visual Proof: You can verify this behavior yourself: the standard system location arrow icon only appears on the phone screen for a split second at the moment of check-in.
The standard OS location arrow only appears for a brief moment when check-in is initiated.
Core Privacy: Anonymous Attendance Verification
For high-security environments, university research, or strict institutional privacy standards, Youhere offers built-in Core Privacy roster anonymization:
- Hosts can configure event rosters to scramble all attendee identifiers into irreversible cryptographic hashes or randomized pseudonyms (e.g. hashed last names or random 5-letter names).
- Attendees view their private verification hash on their own phone's "Who am I?" screen and privately share it with their instructor or group leader.
- Under Core Privacy, real participant names never exist on Youhere cloud servers, ensuring zero exposure of student or employee identities.
The Website, Organizer Accounts & Security
The Youhere.org website is strictly an administrative portal for event organizers to set up locations and view records. Attendees never need to visit or log in to the website.
- Minimal Account Data: We only collect an email address and secure password hash from organizers to maintain their account and events.
- Payment Security: Subscription and credit payments are processed directly through PayPal. Youhere never sees, processes, or stores credit card numbers or banking details on our servers.
- No Tracking Cookies: We only use a single, essential session cookie (
ci_session) to keep organizers logged in. We do not use third-party advertising cookies, retargeting pixels, or behavioral analytics trackers. - Encrypted in Transit: All communication between mobile apps, the web portal, and our servers is secured using modern TLS / HTTPS encryption.
Compliance & Student Privacy Standards
Youhere is built specifically to meet the compliance requirements of universities, K-12 school districts, medical organizations, and international institutions:
- FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act): Because attendees submit zero personal directory information, and rosters can be fully pseudonymized via Core Privacy, student education records remain strictly confidential and under institutional control.
- COPPA & Minor Protection: Youhere does not collect personal contact information from children or students under 13.
- GDPR & CIPA: Youhere adheres to strict data minimization principles. We collect only what is strictly necessary to log presence, do not profile users, and never sell or monetize attendee data.
Data Ownership, Retention & Deletion
You own your attendance data. Youhere will never claim ownership of attendance logs or rosters created by group leaders.
- Free Data Export: Organizers can export all check-in history to CSV / Excel spreadsheets at any time at no cost.
- Deletion On Demand: Organizers have complete control to delete individual check-ins, entire rosters, event configurations, or their entire account at any time through the admin interface.
- Account Purge: When an organizer deletes a class or account, all associated attendance records are permanently purged from our active database.
Questions & Privacy Contact
If your institution, school board, or legal team needs security review documentation, vendor assessments, or has questions about our privacy architecture, please contact us:
Email: tbensky@gmail.com
Website: https://youhere.org