Zenbus Terms Of Service

2022-11-18

The Gist

We (the folk at Zenbus/JOUL) run a service called Zenbus and would love for you to use it.

The main goal is to provide you (and everyone else) with accurate, up-to-date, low-latency real-time public transit info, including the actual vehicle locations (displayed on a map). You may see that info on zenbus.net, our android and iOS apps, or any site, app or service that uses our APIs (many of them standard open-data feeds). Some (very minimal) info inevitably ends-up on our servers, and some (pretty usual) usage stats are shared with analytics services.

We’ll try our hardest to earn your trust, and this starts by not spying on you (nor anyone else) (for instance, as a passenger, your location info is never sent, it stays on your device) or really doing anything you’ve not explicitly agreed to.

The service is and will remain free (as in free beer) for passengers, but we hope to make it freer (as in free speech): we have a lot of plans to make it better, we welcome inputs.

Wherever possible we already provide public open-data feeds, including real-time, without limiting or throttling the access in any way.

Only our (paying) customers have accounts. Quite naturally we store (just enough) info to allow them to securely login, as they are the people actually running the public transit networks (and/or supervising, modelling them, employing bus drivers, etc.). Quite obviously, they are paying us to collect (analyse, display, etc.) data about their public transit networks, which include detailed positions of devices (in vehicles) and other potentially sensitive information. This information may be sent to our servers by direct calls to Zenbus APIs, or by using the Zenbus Driver app. This is always covered by a contract, in addition to this document.

Human Readable Lawyerese

As part of our effort to earn your trust, we’re making these terms of service as human readable as possible.

They should be considered no less binding, even though they might contain traces of humor, which is rumored to dissolve lawyers.

Zenbus terms of service

Last modified: November 18, 2022

Welcome to Zenbus!

Thanks for using Zenbus!

This here is an agreement between you (“you”) and Zenbus/JOUL (“us”, “we”, “our” and you can find us here and here). By using our website or any of our associated services, apps, websites, etc. you agree to be bound by these terms.

That means you should really really read them. If you don’t agree or don’t understand, please don’t use Zenbus!

Severability

We can’t afford an army of lawyers in every country on every planet, and our own lawyer-fu might fall short of perfect. If any clause of these terms is or becomes illegal, invalid or unenforceable in a jurisdiction, it will not affect the validity or enforceability of that clause in other jurisdictions, nor the validity or enforceability of other clauses of these terms, anywhere.

Your stuff is yours

We don’t claim any ownership over anything that belongs to you (please make sure it belongs to you first… anyway it’s your problem, not ours) and you retain all intellectual property rights that you hold on content you submit to us. But (there’s a but), we still need to do things with “your stuff” to make Zenbus work. Here comes the legalese…

By submitting content you accept full responsibility and liability for it, and have verified that you have the necessary rights to grant the following licenses:

So, to be clear: we won’t steal your stuff, but we still need to move it around. To make it clearer: we won’t share, sell or really do anything with your data other than what it takes to make Zenbus work.

This is why we prefer to work with public transit information that is already published under some variant of a public license.

Your privacy (is what we don’t store)

Here is an up-to-date exhaustive list of what we store about you, why and for how long.

Our stuff plays nice

Within the constraints of common sense, common courtesy and trademark law, your are not only allowed but encouraged to link to Zenbus and reuse content we produced in wonderfully creative new ways.

Unless stated otherwise, all Zenbus content is licensed under the CC-BY-SA (yes that includes this page and these terms). Please follow the link to the full license!

DOs and DON’Ts

We have a very broad definition of fair use here at Zenbus/JOUL, but it never hurts to dot the i’s. If you’re not doing any of the following, you are within “acceptable use” of Zenbus.

Thou shalt not:

Note that you’re much welcome to take any measure to disguise, change or obfuscate your identifying information. You’re also encouraged to probe Zenbus for vulnerabilities: if you find any, please contact us before publicly disclosing it (which you also definitely should do).

Paper shield I: warranties & disclaimers (“AS IS” and “no promises” stuff)

Don’t have unreasonable expectations: Zenbus won’t fix your phone’s battery, make your stepmother nicer and spontaneously spawn networks in underground bunkers (yet).

Although we’re working hard everyday to make it even better, as all software, it has bugs.

Some (very few ^^) times it won’t work as expected, or at all, so don’t put yourself in any creatively dangerous situation where your life depends on it.

When in doubt, please check out the FAQ, and if you’re still wondering, come discuss bugs, issues and features…

If you’re still dissatisfied, well… Here it comes… Not our fault, cuz (here is the important part):

Zenbus is provided “as is” with no promises, and without warranties of any kind, to the extent permitted by law. For example, except for places where such warranties are implied, we make no commitment about content, function, purpose, reliability, fitness for a purpose, noninfringement, whatever…

Paper shield II: the return of the vengeance of the limitation of liability rebooted

We know it might seem a bit redundant, but it’s all the rage these days, so please bear with us, we have an important announcement to make: whatever happens, not our fault! And even if it is, you’ll never get more money from us than what you paid us! And now, ladies and gentlemen, in lawyerese:

To the full extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any damages, nor responsible for any losses. “Any” means “any”: for example, loss of use, data, business, profits, revenues… Any financial losses… Indirect, special, consequential, incidental, exemplary, punitive damages…

To the full extent permitted by law, our liability for any claims relating to Zenbus is limited to the amount you paid us to use it.

Support and termination (non-paying users)

We’re here to stay, but nothing is certain. Also, don’t take us for granted, because we reserve the right to change, suspend or terminate Zenbus in pretty much anyway we like. Usually this will be because we roll out a new feature that replaces the previous one, and we’ll try to let you know in advance. In some cases (quality of service, or legal reasons), we might suspend a service outright (for the technically inclined, that means we also can totally kickban the shit out of you, or a range of IPs, whatever).

Of course, you can also stop using our services without so much as a goodbye, though we’d much rather you stay, or at least talk about it.

Support and termination (paying users)

Read your contract.

Changes

We plan to update the services frequently. While major new features will be rolled out at a leisurely pace, minor improvements and bugfixes may be deployed daily: we may revise these terms accordingly (sometimes the “bugfixes” will be purely legal).

Don’t worry: unless we’re bought out by evil aliens (please check this page regularly and see if this sentence disappears), we’ll keep it simple, human readable and will go out of our way to keep you posted about important revisions, or anything that might affect you.

GDPR-compliant privacy notice, this is serious

Just to make sure you’re well-informed, let’s do (again) a quick run-down of the checklist, shamelessly based on the official template.

What data do we collect?

How do we collect your data?

We collect and process data when you:

Because we use google analytics, some info about you that we didn’t collect may be shown to us.

How will we use your data?

We use google analytics.

Also, obviously: the public transit service (APIs, server algorithms, clients) uses the provided transit data, some of which might be sensitive. To be specific we’re talking about vehicle data that might be linked to specific drivers, using additional data that we don’t have and don’t request. In very few cases the ZenbusDriver app might be installed on a personal phone, and our database may thus contain a private phone number (and android-id and other meta-information of the sort). Our contract should cover that. If you’re unsure : don’t provide us with sensitive information! We don’t need it, we don’t want it!

How do we store your data

Connection logs are stored for a month.

Public transit data is securely stored in the datastore and BigQuery.

What are your data protection rights?

Zenbus would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us.

Cookies

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard Internet log information and visitor behavior information. When you visit our websites, we may collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar technology.

Zenbus does not generate specific cookies… but google cloud services and google analytics do, and that’s what we use.

How do we use cookies?

Well, we don’t, but as far as google accounts of paying customers “just work”, it’s thanks to cookies.

Same goes for every user and google analytics, which is how we understand how you use our apps and websites.

What types of cookies do we use?

There are a number of different types of cookies, however, our website uses:

How to manage cookies

You can set your browser not to accept cookies, and you always may remove cookies from your browser. Expect to be logged out if you do. ^^

Privacy policies of other websites

The zenbus.fr website contains links to other websites. Our privacy policy applies only to our website, so if you click on a link to another website, you should read their privacy policy. Yeah, that means all those nice links to and from facebook, twitter, linked-in, etc. are spying on you.

Changes to our privacy policy

Zenbus keeps its privacy policy under regular review and places any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on 28 February 2022.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about our privacy policy, the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to email us.

How to contact the appropriate authority

Should you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that Zenbus has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the CNIL.