Privacy Policy
Version 2026-10-30 · Effective 30 October 2026
In short:
- The app sends only "charger connected/disconnected" with the time, plus your home area (a hexagon of about 0.7 km²), never your live location.
- No names, no accounts, no ads, no trackers, no selling data.
- The public map shows areas, never people, and only once at least five phones in an area agree.
- You can download or delete your data at any time.
PowaOn shows which areas have electricity and alerts people when power comes back or goes off. Phones on the charger act as sensors. This policy explains what we collect to do that, why, how long we keep it, and your rights.
Who is responsible
Eyinsan Odugba, PO Box 56001, Atlanta, GA 30343, United States, is the data controller for PowaOn. For anything about privacy, including your rights below, write to [email protected].
Data Protection Officer: Eyinsan Odugba also acts as PowaOn's Data Protection Officer and can be reached at [email protected].
Laws that apply: the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA) and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission's General Application and Implementation Directive 2025 (GAID) apply to how we handle the data of people in Nigeria, even though PowaOn's operator and servers are outside Nigeria. Where you live elsewhere, your own country's data protection law also applies.
What we collect
| If you use… | We collect |
|---|---|
| The PowaOn app (sensor) | A random install ID (not your phone number or name). Your home area, worked out once from your location during setup; the exact coordinates stay on your phone. The times your phone starts or stops charging from mains power (charging from a computer is ignored). Your phone's brand, to give battery-setting help. The date and version of the terms you agreed to. |
| Telegram bot | Your Telegram chat ID and app language, the areas you follow (from a location you send, or a map link), your alert settings, and your answers to "grid or generator?" questions. |
| WhatsApp bot | Your WhatsApp phone number, the messages you send the bot, the areas you follow (from a location you send, or a map link). We do not read your other chats. |
| SMS alerts (only if offered) | Your phone number, the areas you follow, and a one-time code to confirm the number, kept for 10 minutes. |
| Browser alerts (only if offered) | The push address and keys your browser gives us, your browser language, and the areas you follow. |
| The live map website | Nothing that identifies you: no cookies, no ads, no trackers. Our servers keep short-term technical logs (such as IP addresses) to keep the service secure and stop abuse. |
We never collect your name, contacts, messages to other people, photos, files, or your live location. The app reads your location once, at setup, and does not use it in the background.
Why we use it, and our legal basis
- To run PowaOn: work out whether each area has power, show it on the map and send the alerts you ask for, in your language and local time. Basis: your consent, given when you agree in the app or start a bot.
- To improve detection: learn which areas share a power line, and from your "grid or generator?" answers. Basis: consent.
- To keep PowaOn secure and stop fake data and abuse, using technical logs and rate limits. Basis: our legitimate interest in a reliable, fair service.
- To meet legal duties, if a law requires it.
We do not make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects by automated means, and we do not profile you for advertising.
Who we share it with
We do not sell or rent personal data. These providers process it for us, only on our instructions:
- DigitalOcean hosts our servers and databases in London, United Kingdom.
- Telegram delivers Telegram messages; Meta (WhatsApp) delivers WhatsApp messages; Google Firebase delivers app notifications.
- Termii delivers SMS, only if SMS alerts are switched on.
We publish only combined information that cannot identify anyone, such as area power states and the share of areas with power. We may disclose data if a law or a valid court order requires it.
International transfers
Our servers are in the United Kingdom, so your data leaves Nigeria (and your country, if you are elsewhere in Africa). We transfer it relying on the safeguards the NDPA allows: your consent, and our providers' data processing agreements with standard contractual protections. Telegram, Meta and Google may process message data in other countries under their own terms.
How long we keep it
- Charger events: 90 days. After that they are folded into hourly counts per area (how many phones started or stopped charging), with no install ID, kept up to 3 years for seasonal comparisons; the original events are deleted.
- Daily totals we use to run the service (for example how many phones were active, how many alerts were sent): kept as plain numbers, which identify no one.
- Records of alerts sent to a chat or number: 90 days.
- Install ID, home area and terms acceptance: until you delete them.
- Bot subscriptions: until you send STOP.
- Technical logs: a short time, no more than 30 days (we do not copy them anywhere else).
- Emails to us: up to 2 years after the conversation ends.
Your rights
Under the NDPA (and similar laws elsewhere) you can:
- get a copy of your data: in the app, Privacy & legal → Download my data;
- delete it: Privacy & legal → Delete my data in the app,
/stopto the Telegram bot,STOPto the WhatsApp bot, or see Delete your data; - withdraw consent at any time, the same ways (this does not affect what was done before);
- ask us to correct or restrict your data, or object to how we use it, and move it to another service.
Write to [email protected]. We confirm we have your request within 72 hours and answer it within one month; if we need longer because a request is complex, we tell you why within that month. Using your rights is free. If you are unhappy with our answer, you can complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (ndpc.gov.ng, or its online portal at services.ndpc.gov.ng) or the data protection authority where you live.
Security
Data travels encrypted (HTTPS). Databases accept only encrypted, authenticated connections. Access is limited to the people who run PowaOn, secrets are kept out of the code, and we limit how fast anyone can send data, to stop abuse. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach is likely to put you at risk, we will tell the Nigeria Data Protection Commission within 72 hours of finding out, and tell the people affected within 7 working days (sooner where we can), with what happened and what to do.
Children
PowaOn is for adults. Anyone under 18 may use it only with a parent's or guardian's permission. We do not knowingly collect data from children without that permission; if you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes
When we change this policy, the version and date above change. For a material change we give at least 14 days' notice before it takes effect, on this website and in the Telegram and WhatsApp bots, and the app asks you to agree again before you continue. Changes that only add protections for you may take effect straight away.