How your location is used

WorkIsHere is run by FreedX Technologies OÜ, a private limited company registered in Estonia (registry code 16937909), Viru väljak 2, 10111 Tallinn, Harju maakond, Estonia. Questions about privacy: omerbabadogan@gmail.com.

For employees’ attendance and location data, the business they work for is the controller: it decides why and how attendance is recorded, and we process the data on its behalf as its processor. For the account and billing data of business owners, we are the controller.

The Terms of Use set out the rules for using WorkIsHere, and the Data Processing Terms how we process employees’ data for each business.

While you are checked in: reading starts when you tap “I entered” and stops when you tap “I’m leaving”. Without auto-pilot, your location is not read at any other time.

The web app reads your location while its check-in screen is open. If your business uses location level 2 or 3, it can also send location checks at random moments during your shift, about every 30 minutes by default and at most once an hour on the Free plan: opening one shares your location once. While the app is closed and you don’t open a notification, nothing is read, unless the WorkIsHere phone app has shift location checks on: then, only during your shift, the phone answers each check on its own with one location reading.

We record:

• At check-in and check-out: coordinates, GPS accuracy, the time and the distance to the site.
• Location reports with the same details: every 30 minutes by default while the check-in screen is open, and one each time you open a location check notification. Whether each location check was answered in time or missed is also recorded, and your managers can see it.
• With auto-pilot, at each crossing of the workplace circle: the same details once, and whether you went in or out.
• Your device type and browser, to help diagnose problems.

Your route between reports is not recorded. Without auto-pilot, nothing is recorded while you are off the clock.

Auto-pilot is off until you turn it on in the WorkIsHere phone app, and it asks for its own consent. While it is on, your phone watches your workplace’s circle with its own region monitoring, not continuous GPS.

Only when you cross the circle does the app take one location reading and send it, so you can be checked in or out. Your location between crossings and your route are never recorded. Location checks during your shift happen only if your business uses location level 2 or 3.

You can turn auto-pilot off in the app unless your business requires location level 3, and you can always change the location permission in your phone’s settings. If your business requires a level and your phone is not set up for it, your check-ins are still accepted but marked, so your business can see it. Your business can also turn auto-pilot off for everyone.

While they are closed, the WorkIsHere phone apps use your location only for two optional features that you turn on yourself. Both need the “Always” (iPhone) or “Allow all the time” (Android) location permission:

• Shift location checks: only while your shift is open, your phone answers each of your business’s location checks on its own, silently, with one location reading. During the open shift it also watches your workplace’s circle: when you cross it, it sends one reading and may ask whether you are leaving. Once your shift is closed, nothing is read.
• Auto-pilot: your phone’s own geofencing watches the circles of your workplaces, also while the app is closed, and wakes the app only when you cross one. The app then takes one reading, sends it and stops. There is no continuous GPS and no location service running in the background.

On Android, while shift location checks are on during an open shift, or auto-pilot is on, a notification stays in your notification bar (“Shift location checks are on” or “Auto-pilot is on”) so you always know your location can be shared. It goes away when you check out or turn them off. While a shift location check takes its reading, a short “Confirming your location…” notification may also show.

You can turn either feature off in the app unless your business requires it, and you can always change the location permission in your phone’s settings.

Your business chooses one of three location levels: level 1 is check-in and check-out with location; level 2 adds location checks during the shift; level 3 adds auto-pilot. It can make its level required or only recommended. The location permissions on your phone stay your choice: if you don’t allow them, you can still check in, and your business sees that your setup is below its level.

Your business can mark some people, such as drivers or field staff, as location exempt. Their location is still recorded at check-in and check-out, but it is never compared with a workplace: no outside flag, no location checks during the shift and no auto-pilot.

You can see your own check-ins, check-outs and history. The owners and managers of the business you work for see the records of their own people.

Other businesses cannot see your records, even though they use the same platform.

Location reports are deleted automatically after the period your business sets: at most 30 days on the Free plan and 90 days on the Team plan, where 90 is the default. An Enterprise agreement can set another period.

Check-in and check-out times, the location taken at those moments and the length of each shift are kept as attendance records, because businesses use them to work out hours. The business decides how long to keep them while it uses WorkIsHere; after it leaves, we delete them within 90 days.

Other data:

• Notifications: deleted 90 days after they are read, or after 180 days if never read.
• Your account details: until you delete your account.
• If you sign in with Apple: an encrypted Apple sign-in token, kept only so that we can ask Apple to revoke WorkIsHere’s access when you delete your account. It is revoked and deleted then.
• Invoices and payment records: 7 years from the end of the financial year, as Estonian accounting law requires.
• The record that you accepted the Terms of Use (your account’s ID, the version, the time, where you accepted, and your browser or app): kept after your account is deleted, as proof of the agreement, for up to 10 years.

GPS can drift by tens of metres indoors. A reading outside the circle is not treated as proof on its own; it is flagged for a manager to review.

If your business turns on strict mode, you cannot check in while clearly outside the circle.

Before your first check-in, the app shows you how your location is used and records that you accepted it, with the date and the version of the notice.

Your browser or phone also asks for location permission. You can withdraw it in its settings at any time, but you cannot check in without it.

Your employer records attendance on the legal basis that fits its situation: usually your employment contract, a legal duty to record working time, or its legitimate interest in knowing who is at work (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b), (c) or (f); KVKK Art. 5(2)(c), (ç) or (f)). Your employer’s own notice tells you which one it uses.

Whether auto-pilot and shift location checks are used depends on the location level your business chooses. When a level is not required, they work only if you turn them on yourself. In every case the phone’s location permission stays your choice, and you can change it at any time in your phone’s settings without affecting what was recorded before.

For the owners and managers of a business we keep the account details they give us (name, e-mail address, phone number if added, and language) and the business’s plan, seats and invoices. If you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive your name and e-mail address from them (with Apple, possibly a relay address).

Payments on the web are handled by Stripe, and in the apps by Apple (App Store) and Google (Google Play). They receive your payment details directly: WorkIsHere never sees your card number. We receive only what we need to run the subscription: its status, the plan and number of seats, the period and the invoices.

When anyone uses the service, the servers of our providers log technical data such as the IP address, the time and the request, to keep the service secure and find faults. These logs are kept only for a short time.

For employees’ attendance and location data, your employer decides the legal basis (see above). For the data we control ourselves, we rely on:

• Your account and the service you or your business signed up for: the contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b); KVKK Art. 5(2)(c)).
• Invoices and payment records: our legal duty to keep accounting records (GDPR Art. 6(1)(c); KVKK Art. 5(2)(ç)).
• Security, preventing misuse and fixing faults, including technical logs: our legitimate interest in a safe, working service (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f); KVKK Art. 5(2)(f)).
• The record that you accepted the Terms of Use: our legitimate interest in being able to prove the agreement (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f); KVKK Art. 5(2)(e)).

An account needs a name and an e-mail address, and checking in with your phone needs its location: without them, that part of the service cannot work. Everything else is optional.

We do not use personal data for advertising, sell it, or make decisions about anyone by automated means alone. Auto-pilot and strict mode record check-ins automatically, but your managers see the records and can correct them, and you can ask them to.

We use these providers to run WorkIsHere. They process data only to provide their service to us, and are bound by contract to protect it at least as well as we do:

• Supabase: the database and sign-in, where account, attendance and location data is stored, in the EU (Ireland).
• Vercel: hosting of the website and the web app, which runs in the EU (Dublin) and reaches you through Vercel’s worldwide network.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) and the Apple Push Notification service: delivering notifications, such as location checks and reminders, to your phone.
• Google Maps Platform (Google): the maps in the Android app, for example a workplace’s circle or where a check-in was recorded. To draw a map, Google receives the area shown and your device’s IP address. The iPhone app uses Apple Maps and the web app OpenStreetMap maps the same way.
• Stripe, Apple and Google: payments, as described above, and sign-in when you choose “Continue with Apple” or “Continue with Google”.

Our data is stored in the EU. Some of our providers, or companies in their groups, are outside the EU, mainly in the United States (and, for Supabase, Singapore), and may reach some data from there, for example for support or to deliver notifications. We allow this only with a safeguard the GDPR allows: the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, or, for companies certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the Commission’s adequacy decision. Ask us for a copy of the safeguard at the address above.

If you work in Turkey, using WorkIsHere transfers your data abroad under KVKK Art. 9. Your employer is responsible for the safeguard the law requires, such as the standard contract of the Personal Data Protection Board, which we sign with it on request.

WorkIsHere stores only what it needs to work on your device:

• sb-…-auth-tokenSign-in session: keeps you signed in. Removed when you sign out.
• NEXT_LOCALENEXT_LOCALE_PROBEDLanguage: remembers the language you chose. The second one is a ten-minute marker that saves reading your account’s language on every page.
• wime_last_businessLast business: opens the business you used last.
• wime-themeTheme (local storage): remembers whether you chose light or dark mode.
• wime:…Small settings (local storage): for example a notice you closed, or when to offer installing the app again.
• Offline copy (the service worker cache): the web app keeps its files on your device, so it opens quickly and can show a page when the connection drops. The pages you visited are removed from it when you sign out.

We use no analytics or advertising cookies and no tracking of any kind, so no cookie banner is needed. If that ever changes, this page will change first, and we will ask for your consent.

Under the GDPR (EU) and KVKK (Turkey), you can ask to know whether and how your data is processed, to see it and get a copy, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict its use, to receive it in a portable format, and to object to processing based on legitimate interest. Where processing is based on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Under KVKK you can also ask who your data was transferred to in Turkey or abroad, ask that they be told of a correction or deletion, object to an outcome against you that comes only from automated analysis, and claim compensation for unlawful processing.

Your employer decides why and how attendance is recorded, so send requests about your attendance and location data to them. If you write to us, we pass your request on to them, and we give them the data they need to respond.

For the data we control (accounts, billing, the Terms of Use record), write to us at the address above. We answer within one month (30 days under KVKK), and may ask you to confirm who you are.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Estonia, the Data Protection Inspectorate (Andmekaitse Inspektsioon, Tatari 39, 10134 Tallinn, www.aki.ee), or the authority where you live or work. In Turkey, after applying to the controller first, to the Personal Data Protection Authority (Kişisel Verileri Koruma Kurumu, www.kvkk.gov.tr).

You can delete your WorkIsHere account yourself at any time. Delete your account

WorkIsHere is not meant for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly keep their data.

We update this policy when the service or the law changes. The date at the top shows the current version, and we tell you about significant changes in the service before they apply.