2022-11-18
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.
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.
Last modified: November 18, 2022Thanks 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!
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.
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:
You grant us and those we work with (at the moment we use Google App Engine as our cloud provider) a non-exclusive non-transferable license to store, copy (for purposes of redundant storage), modify (for compression and encryption purposes), distribute and display it (as part of the Zenbus APIs).
You also grant us a non-exclusive non-transferable license to use this content to build anonymized statistics as explained below.
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.
Here is an up-to-date exhaustive list of what we store about you, why and for how long.
All the public (or passenger) facing apps and APIs work without login, account, whatever. We only store basic connection logs for up to a month (endpoint, timestamp, IP).
Client/customer accounts are based on google accounts, for security, and nothing more is stored about the persons. Some configuration data is stored, about fleets of vehicles, devices, access rights and the such, never directly linked to a person (a bus driver for instance), but this is sensitive information and we know it.
To reiterate, what we store is what is needed to make the service work, i.e. public transit related information. Behind the scenes this includes some sensitive information, especially when and where statistical analysis is involved: this data is encrypted, subject to secure access, and never shared with any third-party.
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!
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:
violate the law (obviously),
violate the privacy of others,
scan, scrape, crawl Zenbus urls and content instead of using the discovery APIs and such,
call our webservices or take actions that generate unreasonably high resource consumption, deteriorate the user experience of other connected people, or don’t follow our API guidelines and docs,
torture kittens.
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).
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…
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.
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.
Read your contract.
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.
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.
Geolocation data (trajectories) of vehicles, with a high sampling frequency and accuracy, and more generally all the “real-time inputs” of the system (meta-data about what the vehicle is supposed to be doing, occupancy status). We receive such data through the Zenbus Provider API, as used by our own Zenbus Driver app. A valid contract with Zenbus is required.
Technical connections logs (remote connection address, timestamp, endpoint and request parameters, google account when applicable i.e. in the authenticated parts of the zenbus.net website), stored for a month.
Occasionally volontary survey data.
For paying customers, google account id (email address).
Configured (or at least provided) by paying customers, info about devices that provide the real-time location of monitored vehicles (public buses and the like), and info about the vehicles themselves. Except for public identifiers, none of these are made public.
Configured (or at least provided) by paying customers, info about the public transit network (such as routes and schedules).
Actual trips, statistics and statistical models derived (in-house) from the above.
We collect and process data when you:
Use or view our websites, services and apps (zenbus.net, zenbus.fr, Zenbus app, Zenbus Driver app), via cookies and connection logs.
Voluntarily complete a customer survey or provide feedback.
Upload and/or edit it (paying customers on the zenbus.net website or its APIs).
Because we use google analytics, some info about you that we didn’t collect may be shown to us.
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!
Connection logs are stored for a month.
Public transit data is securely stored in the datastore and BigQuery.
Zenbus would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:
The right to access – You have the right to request Zenbus for copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.
The right to rectification – You have the right to request that Zenbus correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request Zenbus to complete the information you believe is incomplete.
The right to erasure – You have the right to request that Zenbus erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that Zenbus restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
The right to data portability – You have the right to request that Zenbus transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
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 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.
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.
There are a number of different types of cookies, however, our website uses:
Functionality – Zenbus uses these cookies so that we recognize you on our websites (i.e. google accounts for paying customers).
Advertising – Zenbus uses google analytics, so they collect data and then share it with us, so that we can know about your visit to our websites, the content you viewed, the links you followed and information about your browser, device…
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. ^^
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.
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.
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.
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.