Legal · LFPDPPP

Privacy notice

Last updated: September 20, 2026 · Versión en español

Effective: upon publication. This Notice governs the processing of your personal data in the Kuides app and on the kuides.com website; it is published at kuides.com/en/privacy (Spanish original at kuides.com/privacidad) and is accessible within the app (Profile → Privacy). It is issued in compliance with Mexico's Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties (Ley Federal de Protección de Datos Personales en Posesión de los Particulares, LFPDPPP), its Regulations and the Privacy Notice Guidelines. It is written to match exactly what the app does today; if anything changes, this text changes first.

1. Data controller

KUIDES, S.A.S., a Mexican company with tax ID (RFC) KUI260821TZ8, domiciled in Mexico City, Mexico (“Kuides”, “we”, “us”), is the data controller responsible for processing your personal data under this notice.

• Privacy contact / ARCO requests mailbox: [email protected]
• Support and content reports: [email protected]

2. What personal data do we process?

Kuides processes only the data it needs to work. We do not request or deliberately process sensitive personal data within the meaning of Article 3, section VI of the LFPDPPP (for example, health status, genetic information, beliefs, union membership, political opinions or sexual preference), with a single exception that you decide on: the “if something happens to me” card (section 7A), where you can note health data so your circle has it at hand in an emergency; it is optional and is stored only with your express consent. If any other sensitive data were to appear in free text you write, it is handled with the enhanced safeguards the law requires and you may request its cancellation.

Your geolocation is not sensitive data under the law, but because of its nature we handle it with enhanced safeguards (minimization, rounding, limited retention periods and automatic deletion).

What we do NOT collect: your contact list or your call log (guardians and suspicious numbers are typed in by hand; the “Call alert”, if you turn it on, only sees the number that is ringing and sends it as a fingerprint, see section 9A), your blocked-numbers list (it lives only on your phone), your messages, audio, files, browsing history or payment data (there are no in-app purchases today). Place searches are not stored.

3. What do we use your data for? (purposes)

Primary purposes (necessary to provide the service; without them Kuides cannot work):

1. Verify your identity as a real person and grant you access.
2. Display, rank, validate and moderate incident reports on the community map.
3. Calculate routes, your area's risk index (which may combine community reports with open public statistics) and proximity alerts.
4. Operate the SOS (with your “if something happens to me” card, if you fill it in), check-ins and the voice calls you turn on, the Circle (including live mode and location requests), suspicious calls and Lost Pets searches.
5. Prevent fraud and abuse, and provide support.
6. Comply with legal obligations.

Secondary purposes (not essential; you may refuse them without affecting the main service):

7. Aggregate usage metrics to improve the app.
8. Secondary purpose — service improvement and model development: we may use reports, closed or archived Lost Pets pages (including their photos and descriptions) and usage statistics to analyze trends, detect abuse and train or evaluate models that improve the app (for example, to classify categories, detect duplicates or filter inappropriate photos). Whenever possible this is done with data dissociated from your identity. This purpose is not necessary to provide you the service: you can refuse it by writing to [email protected] from your registered email or phone number, without affecting your account.
9. Gamification (points and levels).
10. Informational communications about Kuides news.

To refuse the secondary purposes, send an email to [email protected] stating which purpose you refuse, or turn off the corresponding options in Profile. Your refusal will not be grounds for denying you the service.

4. Consent

By continuing in the app, you accept this Privacy Notice and give your consent for the primary purposes. For features that the law and the app stores require to be handled with special care, we ask for your express consent at the time:

• Geolocation: through the operating system permission, which you can revoke at any time from your phone's settings.
• Circle (background location): before requesting the system permission, the app shows you a screen explaining what is shared, with whom and how to leave; the switch is turned on only if you accept. Live mode is turned on only by you (button or your own SOS); nobody can activate it remotely on you.
• Your guardians' data (third parties): by registering another person's name and phone number, you declare that you have a relationship with that person and their consent to include them and for Kuides to send them alerts if you trigger an SOS, a check-in is not confirmed or you ask for help during a companion call. Kuides uses that data only for that purpose and gives that person a way to silence you (see section 8).
• Lost Pets: by publishing a search you accept that the photo, name, description and corner of the last sighting are made public on the map, on the poster and on the web page (see section 9).
• “If something happens to me” card (health data): it is optional. Before saving it for the first time, the app asks you, on that same screen and separately from the general acceptance of this notice, for your express consent to process that data, which the law deems sensitive; without it the card is not saved. You revoke it at any time by deleting the card (see section 7A).
• Notifications: requested with a prior screen that explains what you will receive.

5. Who do we share your data with?

We do not sell, rent or transfer your personal data to third parties. Kuides shows no advertising and shares no data for advertising purposes.

To operate, we rely on the following providers, under contract and only for the purposes described:

Most of them act as data processors (they process the data on our instructions, without using it for their own purposes). Google may act as an independent controller with respect to the map, place and route queries it receives under its own terms, and the same applies to Meta with respect to the use of WhatsApp; in those cases the flow constitutes a transfer, not a remittance to a processor. Because these providers operate abroad, your data may be processed outside Mexico (mainly in the United States) exclusively to provide you the service described. We make no transfers for marketing purposes. We may disclose data when a competent authority requires it in accordance with the law, or to protect the safety of users or the public.

6. Your content, its ownership and its visibility in the community

All data you provide in Kuides that is not sensitive personal data —reports, votes, photos of places, markers (pins) you place on the map, addresses, alias, Lost Pets pages and any other information you contribute to the community— becomes part of Kuides' databases and is our property: it stays with Kuides and we may use, reproduce and exploit it to operate and improve the Service in accordance with this Notice and the Terms, even if you stop using the app or delete your account (in which case we keep it dissociated from your identity). The public and open-source data Kuides displays is not your contribution and remains subject to its owners' licenses. Sensitive personal data is excluded from the above. By accepting the Terms and Conditions you also accept this ownership. In any case, this does not deprive you of the ARCO rights the law grants you over your personal data (see section 12).

Kuides is a community app: part of what you contribute is visible to other people.

• Your reports are anonymous by default. Your phone number is never shown.
• If you choose not to be anonymous, your alias may appear next to the report, never your number, and the report carries the location exactly as you marked it.
• Anonymous reports are published with an approximate (rounded) location so as not to reveal your exact point. Within the app your location is exact: that is how the map, routes and SOS work.
• Extortion reports are not shown to others as an individual pin and do not generate alerts to neighbors: they are reflected only at the zone level when at least three different accounts report the same thing, so as not to give away who spoke up.
• Caution: as in other community apps, repeatedly reporting an incident very close to your home could allow others to infer where you are. Use judgment when reporting.
• In your circle nobody is anonymous: your alias accompanies your position and your alerts, because these are people you chose.

7. Circle: shared location, live mode and retention

The Circle is optional and only works with people who invite each other by code. While the “Share my location” switch is on:

• At rest, the app takes your location with approximate accuracy (~100 m) every 3–5 minutes or when you move more than ~150 m, even with the app closed (Android shows a persistent notification in the meantime).
• On a trip with navigation, your circle receives your progress about every 12 seconds.
• In “live” mode —which only you turn on, for 15 minutes or 1 hour, or your own SOS for 10 minutes— precise GPS is used about every 10 seconds and, when it expires, it returns on its own to the normal cadence (or turns off completely if the switch was off before).
• Your position, battery level and status (normal, live or SOS) are published. We never promise “real time”: your circle always sees “X min ago”.
• Who sees it: only the members of your circle, who see you just as you see them. Your phone number is not shown.
• What is stored: your last position (with the battery level at that moment), for safety —if someone goes missing, their peers must be able to see where they were— and a trail of the last 30 days of your positions in that circle, which only your circle can read and which the app does not yet display as a route.
• How it is deleted: turn the switch off, leave the circle or ask to be removed: at that same instant your last position and your entire trail in that circle are deleted (if there is no network, the order is recorded and carried out as soon as there is one). Deleting your account also deletes it. Anything older than 30 days is pruned automatically every night.
• Request location: if you are not sharing your position or have had no signal for a while, someone in your circle can ask you for it. The request reaches you as an alert (“Toño is asking for your location”) and is recorded in the circle; your location is shared only if you accept —once or for one hour— and nobody can turn it on remotely. If you muted that person, the request does not reach you as a notification: you see it when you open the app. Without a paid plan, up to 3 requests can be made per day.

7A. “If something happens to me” card (health data)

In Profile, next to your emergency number, you can fill in an optional card with five pieces of information for an emergency: blood type, allergies, medications you take, who to call and where your documents are. They are free-text fields (up to 120 characters each) and, because they concern your health, the law deems them sensitive personal data: that is why they are handled as follows.

• Consent: the card is saved only if you fill it in yourself and expressly accept, on that screen, that Kuides processes that data (section 4). You can leave it empty and the app works just the same.
• Where it lives: encrypted at rest in Kuides' database (Supabase, section 5), linked to your account and under row-level access control: no other account can read it except under the rule below. It does not travel in push notifications or in WhatsApp or SMS messages.
• Who can see it: nobody, except the people in your circle while you have an active SOS (up to 12 hours after triggering it, or until you cancel it) and, if you choose “always my circle” in the “Who can see it” setting, your circle at any time from your person card. You see it on your own SOS screen, so whoever helps you can read it on your phone. Kuides does not send it to emergency services or medical staff, and does not use it for any other purpose.
• How it is deleted: from the card's own screen, at any time, and permanently when you delete your account. It never expires on its own and, being sensitive data, it is never kept dissociated from your identity nor is it part of the content Kuides retains (section 6).

8. Guardians and emergency contacts (notice to third parties and the right to opt out)

A guardian is a person whose name and phone number you register so they receive alerts if you press the SOS button, if a “Did you arrive OK?” check-in expires without a response or if you ask for help during a companion call. If you have “Kuides calls you” turned on, before alerting your guardians about an expired check-in Kuides calls you: if you press 1 (“I am fine”) nobody is alerted; if you press 2 or do not answer within 3 minutes, the alert goes out as usual. Kuides does not verify that this person has agreed before the first alert: that is why each alert explains why they are receiving it and how to stop receiving them.

9. Lost Pets: what is made public

When you publish a search, you decide to make public the animal's data so people can recognize it:

• On the app map, on the “MISSING” poster and on the web page kuides.com/m/CODE (accessible without an account) the photo, name, species, description and approximate corner of the last sighting are shown (coordinates are rounded by design: never your home). The photo is re-encoded without metadata and hosted in a public bucket, because it is the search tool.
• Your phone number never appears. There is no chat and no cash rewards: communication is the “I saw them here!” button, which only sends a point and a time, with no name or phone number. Web sightings come in flagged “unconfirmed” and are rate-limited by a temporary fingerprint (hash) of the IP address, which is deleted after 2 days. Whoever reports a sighting is never exposed to the family or to anyone else.
• Nearby neighbors (~2 km) receive one notification per search, with the animal's name and no exact coordinates; they can turn those alerts off in Profile.
• The search is archived automatically after 30 days if you do not close it; you can close it earlier. The page of a closed search only shows the outcome (“back home” or “this search is closed”), without the photo or description.
• Closed or archived searches are not deleted: they are kept while your account exists (so you can reopen them, review the history, and for the secondary purpose of service improvement).
• If you delete your account, the page, its photos and its sightings are kept dissociated from your identity (without your account, alias or phone number; the search is archived and its public page stops showing the photo and description), as community content and Kuides' property (Terms §7). If you want a search to disappear entirely, delete it from the app before deleting your account or request it at [email protected].

9A. Phone numbers reported by the community (“Suspicious calls”)

Kuides lets you report the phone number from which you received a suspicious call (extortion, fake bank, “prize”, spam) and check whether a number has already been reported by other neighbors.

• What is collected: the reported number in international format (+52…), the label you choose (extortion, bank, prize, spam or other), an optional note of up to 140 characters that is not published, the reporting account and the date. The number is typed or pasted by hand: Kuides does not read your call log or your contacts. Your blocked-numbers list lives only on your phone and is not sent to Kuides.
• Purpose: to warn the community about numbers used for extortion or fraud. The list is a community allegation, not a certification: Kuides does not verify each report.
• Publication rule: a number appears on the list only when it has been reported by at least 3 different accounts in the last 90 days. Only the number, the most frequent label, the report count and the date of the last report are shown; never who reported it or the notes.
• Retention: each report counts for 90 days and then expires; a number with no current reports disappears from the list. Your own reports are deleted earlier if you delete your data or your account (section 10).
• Call alert (Android, optional): if you turn it on, your phone hands the app the number of each incoming call at the moment it rings (Android's call-screening feature). The app computes an irreversible fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of the number and uses that fingerprint —never the number in clear text— to check whether it is on the list. The lookup is not stored in our database or linked to your account; the counter (“it warned you N times this month”) and the last numbers flagged are kept only on your phone. Kuides still does not read your call log or your contacts. You turn it off whenever you want with the switch on the “Suspicious calls” screen; on iPhone the feature is not available.
• Silence calls from the list (optional): if you also turn it on, the phone silences the ringer for calls from numbers reported by 3 or more accounts and from your blocked list. It never rejects them or deletes them from your call log: they still show up as incoming or missed calls and you can call back.
• Rights of the number's holder: if a number is yours, you have the “This number is mine” option in the app (⋯ menu of each number) or the email [email protected]. The number is removed from the list immediately for 90 days, with no proof required. If, after the appeal, new reports accumulate from at least 3 different accounts that had not reported it before, it may be shown again marked “disputed”; a human review decides the final outcome, and you may exercise your ARCO rights under section 12. A number marked “disputed” does not trigger the call alert.
• Responsibility: each report is the responsibility of whoever makes it (Terms §7 and §8). Falsely reporting a number may lead to account suspension and legal liability for the reporter.

10. Retention and deletion

We keep each piece of data only as long as needed for its purpose, per the table in section 2. Deletion upon expiry is automatic (scheduled server tasks): the technical alert log after 48 h, SOS events after one year, check-ins after 120 days, the circle trail after 30 days, opt-out links after 30 days, pet searches are archived after 30 days, and guest (anonymous) accounts are deleted every month once they have gone more than 30 days without use. The “if something happens to me” card and promo-code redemptions do not expire on their own: the card is kept until you delete it from the app or delete your account, and redemptions until you delete your account.

Guests: without an account you can only look at the map; you cannot report, vote, share location, register guardians or publish searches, so we keep nothing of yours except the technical session identifier, which is deleted as stated above.

From the app (Profile → Privacy):

• Download my data delivers a JSON file with everything we keep linked to your account: profile, guardians, reports (with coordinates), votes, echoes and abuse reports, SOS events, check-ins, devices, avoided zones, circle position and trail, memberships, circle messages and invitations, blocks, followed entities, alerts received, pet searches, sightings and found reports, credits, plan, invitation code, billing records, opt-out links issued and your compliance records. For technical logs (SMS, functions, code attempts) the count is delivered.
• Delete my data (without closing the account) deletes what is personal: guardians, your position and trail in the circle, circle messages, check-ins, SOS events, devices, avoided zones, blocks, votes, echoes, abuse reports, follows, alerts received and your usage trace. The content you contributed (reports and pet pages with their photos and sightings) is kept dissociated from your identity. Your account, alias, points, language, circle memberships (without position), credits, plan, invitation code and billing records remain.
• Delete my account permanently deletes everything that identifies you: your account and its phone number or email, your profile, your “if something happens to me” card, guardians, circle (position, trail, messages and invitations), SOS events, check-ins, devices, avoided zones, blocks, participation, metrics, technical logs, your boost credits and the local trace on your phone. The process runs in a single transaction that is verified table by table before the deletion is considered complete; if anything fails, nothing is half-deleted and you can retry. The non-sensitive content you contributed to the community (reports, photos of places, markers, and your Lost Pets pages with their photos and sightings) is kept as Kuides' property, dissociated from your identity, to maintain the area's risk map (see section 6); sightings you marked on other people's searches are kept without your identity. Since reports are already anonymous and use an approximate pin, this unlinking is irreversible and reveals nothing new about you. Deletion in our systems is practically immediate; backup copies are overwritten in their normal cycles (at most 30 additional days). You can also request deletion without the app at kuides.com/eliminar-cuenta.

As a legal record (defense in the event of an audit), we keep a minimal compliance record: an internal identifier, the type of action (you accepted the notice, or requested to export/delete your data or delete your account) and its date. It includes no other personal data and survives as proof that we handled your request, even after your account is deleted.

11. Information security

We apply administrative, technical and physical measures proportionate to the risk: encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS) for all communications, session tokens in the operating system's secure store, row-level access control and encryption at rest in the database (including the “if something happens to me” card), incoming-call lookups by fingerprint (hash) only, rounding of coordinates for anonymous reports and pets, photos without metadata, push alerts without personal data, scrubbing of identifiable data in diagnostics, limits against alert abuse, verified signatures in messaging integrations, and automatic deletion upon expiry. No system is 100% infallible; if a breach affecting your data were to occur, we will notify you as required by law.

12. Your rights (ARCO and others) and how to exercise them

You have the right to Access your data, Rectify it, Cancel it (delete it) and Object to its processing —the ARCO rights under Mexico's LFPDPPP— as well as to revoke your consent and to limit its use or disclosure. If you reside outside Mexico, we also recognize the rights granted to you by your country's law (for example, portability, restriction of processing or lodging a complaint with your local authority, in the case of the European GDPR); exercise them through the same channels. For now we have no designated representative in the European Union.

From the app (the fastest way): Profile → Privacy → Download my data · Delete my data · Delete my account (see section 10).

By email: write to [email protected] stating your request, the phone number or email you registered with and a way to contact you. To protect your account we will verify that you are the account holder (for example, with a code sent to that number). We will respond within a maximum of 20 business days and, if the request is granted, we will carry it out within the following 15 business days, as provided by the LFPDPPP; it usually takes much less.

13. How to limit the use or disclosure of your data

• Revoke the location or notifications permission from your phone's settings whenever you want.
• Turn off the Circle to stop sharing your position (and delete the last position and the trail).
• Turn off alerts to a guardian (per-person switch) or delete them.
• Close a pet search to remove its photo and description from the public page.
• Refuse the secondary purposes (section 3) without losing the service.
• Publish reports anonymously (option enabled by default).
• If you receive alerts as a guardian, silence the person or Kuides (section 8).
• Delete your “if something happens to me” card or leave “Who can see it” set to “only during an SOS” (section 7A).
• Turn off the “Call alert” or call silencing on the “Suspicious calls” screen (section 9A).
• Answer “No” to a location request: nothing is shared (section 7). Turn off “Kuides calls you” in Profile if you do not want automated calls.

14. Tracking technologies

Kuides uses a notification token to send you alerts, a random per-installation identifier solely to prevent abuse, first-party usage metrics with no personal data, and crash diagnostics tools with identifier scrubbing. We use no advertising cookies, advertising SDKs or third-party trackers for advertising purposes, because Kuides shows no ads. This website is static and installs no tracking cookies.

15. International scope

Kuides is offered in every country. Reference-data coverage is complete in Mexico City and partial elsewhere (help points and public statistics in 36 countries); community reports depend on neighbors using the app. The SOS button dials the emergency number of the country the app detects (or the one you set in Profile); Kuides does not replace those services. This notice is governed by Mexican law; the rights of your jurisdiction are honored as stated in section 12.

16. Changes to this notice

We may update this notice to reflect changes in the app or in the law. We will publish the current version at kuides.com/en/privacy (Spanish original at kuides.com/privacidad) and, if the change is significant, we will notify you within the app. The “Last updated” date above indicates the version in force.

17. Minors

Kuides is intended for people 16 years of age or older and is not designed for anyone under that age. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 16. If we detect an account belonging to someone under the minimum age, we may delete it.

18. Data protection authority

If you believe your right to data protection has been violated, you may turn to the competent personal data protection authority. Following the 2025 reform, oversight of the private sector in Mexico falls to the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno (Ministry of Anti-Corruption and Good Government) of the Government of Mexico. If you reside in another country, you may turn to your local authority.

By using Kuides you confirm that you have read and accept this Privacy Notice.