Privacy policy
PinMatches is an app for finding a sports match near you, joining it and talking to the other players. This page describes exactly what data is collected, why, who it is shared with, how long it is kept and how you can have it deleted.
1. Who processes your data
The data controller is Cyxxon Inc., a company incorporated in Canada under company number 1689304-0.
- Postal address: 302-3810 Rue Adélaïde, Saint-Hubert (Québec) J3Y 4W9, Canada
- Telephone: +1 514 915 6772
- Email: contact@pinmatches.com
As PinMatches is offered to people located in Canada, this processing falls under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, Cyxxon Inc. being a Québec business, under Québec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (CQLR c P-39.1, known as “Law 25”). Residents of Alberta and British Columbia also benefit from the provincial law declared substantially similar to PIPEDA that applies to them.
The person in charge of the protection of personal information, within the meaning of section 3.1 of Law 25, is Adrien Marini, contact@pinmatches.com. Requests for access, correction and withdrawal of consent described in section 11 are addressed to them.
2. Minimum age
PinMatches is restricted to adults (18 and over). The app is not intended for minors and does not knowingly collect their data. If you notice that an account has been created by a minor, write to us at contact@pinmatches.com: the account will be closed and the associated data deleted.
3. No direct identity data
Creating an account asks for a username and a password, nothing else. PinMatches does not ask for your name, your email address, your phone number or your date of birth, and does not access your contacts, your photos, your camera or your microphone.
The username you choose is visible to all users in the players list of the matches you take part in, and to the participants in chat messages: avoid using your real name if you do not wish to be identifiable.
4. Data collected by PinMatches
| Data | Why | Basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Username | Create the account, identify you to the other players | Necessary to provide the service | Lifetime of the account |
| Password | Protect access to the account | Necessary to provide the service | Lifetime of the account |
| Selected sports | Only show matches in the sports you are interested in | Necessary to provide the service | Lifetime of the account |
| Matches created and matches joined | Organise the get-togethers: sport, date and time, number of players, place of the match (latitude and longitude) | Necessary to provide the service | Lifetime of the account, and no more than 12 months after the date of the match |
| Your device's position | Look for nearby matches and centre the map. It is transmitted at the time of the search to work out which matches are nearby | Express consent | Not kept beyond the processing of the request |
| Chat messages | Let the players of a match organise themselves | Necessary to provide the service | 12 months maximum, except where reported or requested by a competent authority |
| Reports and support requests | Handle a reported message or a request sent from the app. A report includes the message concerned, its author and the conversation it belongs to | Legal obligation (moderation) and necessity of operating the service | 12 months from the date they are received |
| Diagnostic logs | Detect and fix failures in the app. They contain the technical detail of the error and the version of the app | Necessary to the proper functioning of the service | Not retained: diagnostic logs are not durably stored and are lost when the service restarts |
| Acceptance of the terms | Evidence that the terms of use have been accepted | Legal obligation | Lifetime of the account |
An important point about location
Two different things are involved, and only one of them is kept:
- Your position is used to display the map and to ask for nearby matches. It is used to answer that request, then it is not kept: PinMatches builds no history of your movements.
- The place of a match you create, on the other hand, is stored — it is the point shown on the map, without which nobody could join you. Do not create a match at your home if you do not wish to disclose its location.
The app asks for the location permission while in use only; it never tracks your position in the background. You can refuse this permission or withdraw it at any time in the Android settings: the app remains usable, but the search for nearby matches no longer works.
Diagnostic logs
When a technical error occurs, the app sends a report to our servers. That report is redacted before it is sent: the account username, the internal identifiers and the geographic coordinates present in the address of the failing request are replaced with a neutral value. The report nevertheless remains linked to your account, since it is sent from an authenticated session.
5. Data that never leaves your device
Three pieces of information are stored locally and are never transmitted:
- your login token and your username, kept in the system's secure storage; automatic Android backup is disabled for the app, so that they are not included in a cloud backup;
- your display language (French or English);
- your list of blocked users: it stays on the device, is sent to nobody, and disappears if you uninstall the app.
Logging out erases the login token and all the data cached by the app (profile, sports, matches, chat history) — useful if the device is shared.
6. Advertising
PinMatches is free and funded by advertising. The ads are provided by
Google AdMob. On that basis, Google receives data from your device
and acts as a separate recipient: the device's advertising
identifier (AD_ID), app interaction information and an
approximate location derived from the IP address. That advertising
identifier is never matched with your PinMatches account by us.
On first launch, a consent form (Google's consent management platform) asks whether you accept personalised advertising:
- as long as that consent has not been given — and if you refuse it — the ads served are non-personalised: that is the app's default behaviour, including if the form fails to display;
- you can change your mind at any time from the app: Profile → “Manage my ad choices”, which reopens the same form;
- you can also reset or delete the advertising identifier in the Android settings (Settings → Google → Ads).
The basis for personalised advertising is your express consent; the basis for non-personalised advertising and for the prevention of ad fraud is the necessity of operating the service. In accordance with section 8.1 of Law 25, identification, location and profiling functions are deactivated by default: advertising stays non-personalised until you have consented to it, and location remains subject to your permission. The processing carried out by Google is described in its own policy: Google — How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.
7. Map
The map background comes from OpenStreetMap, served by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. When the map is displayed, its servers receive your IP address and the coordinates of the area displayed, which is technically necessary to send you the corresponding tiles. See the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy.
8. Recipients
Your data is not sold, rented or transferred to third parties. It is accessible:
- to Cyxxon Inc., to operate the service;
- to the other users, for what you publish voluntarily: every match is public: its sport, place, date and time, and the username of every registered player are visible to all users; your chat messages are visible to the participants of the match concerned;
- to Google (AdMob) and to the OpenStreetMap Foundation, within the limits described in sections 6 and 7;
- to our hosting provider, Microsoft Azure, whose data centres hosting the service are located in Québec (Canada);
- to the competent authorities, where a legal obligation requires it.
9. Transfers outside Canada
The service's data is hosted in Québec, with Microsoft Azure, and Cyxxon Inc. is itself established there: its hosting does not in itself involve any communication outside Québec, nor outside Canada.
A communication outside Canada may however result from the use of Google (AdMob), which processes the data described in section 6 outside Canada. As PIPEDA requires (principle 4.1.3), Cyxxon Inc. ensures by contract that this data benefits from a level of protection comparable to the one described in this policy.
10. Security
- all communications between the app and our servers are encrypted (HTTPS);
- your password is encrypted on the device (RSA OAEP-SHA256) before being transmitted: it never travels over the network in clear text;
- it is then stored as an irreversible cryptographic hash (PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, 600,000 iterations, a unique random salt per account): at no point do we hold your password in clear text, nor in any form that would allow it to be recovered;
- the login token is kept in the operating system's secure storage, out of reach of other apps;
- diagnostic logs are redacted of your identifiers before being sent.
11. Your rights
You have the right of access to the personal information we hold about you, the right to have information that is inaccurate, incomplete or equivocal corrected, and the right to withdraw your consent at any time (in particular for personalised advertising and location).
Section 27 of Law 25, in force since September 2024, adds a right to portability: obtaining, in a structured and commonly used technological format, the computerised information you have provided to us. Sections 28.1 and following finally let you require that the dissemination of a piece of personal information concerning you cease, or that any hyperlink giving access to it be de-indexed, on the conditions they set out.
To exercise them, write to contact@pinmatches.com, or use the message sending feature built into the app: your request is handled by the person in charge of the protection of personal information designated in section 1. We answer within 30 days. As we collect no identity data, the request must be made from the app or state the username of the account concerned.
To delete your account, see the dedicated page: Account deletion.
If you consider that your rights are not being respected, you can file a complaint with the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec or with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
12. Confidentiality incidents
Cyxxon Inc. keeps a register of confidentiality incidents, as sections 3.5 to 3.8 of Law 25 require. An incident means the unauthorised access to, use or communication of personal information, or its loss.
Where an incident presents a risk of serious injury, we promptly notify the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the people concerned, and we take reasonable measures to reduce that risk and to prevent new incidents of the same nature.
13. Cookies and trackers
This website sets no cookies for analytics, advertising or social networks, and contains no third-party script and no JavaScript. The fonts are hosted with the site, so that no request is made to a third party during your visit.
Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, may set a technical cookie named
__cf_bm, which distinguishes a human visitor from a bot and expires after
thirty minutes. It cannot identify you, does not track you across sites and feeds no
analytics: it is therefore strictly necessary to the operation of the
site and does not require your consent. It is the only cookie that may be set during
your visit.
The mobile app does not use cookies. Google's advertising SDK uses equivalent identifiers, described in section 6.
14. Changes
This policy may change. Any change is published on this page, with a new version and a new effective date. As this policy forms part of the terms of use, a change only applies once accepted in the app, as provided in section 14 of the terms.
Version history
- Version 1.0 — — initial version, published with the first version of the app.
- Version 1.1 — — every match is public: the match and the username of each registered player are visible to all users; the mention of a public or private setting is removed; a change only applies once accepted in the app.