Privacy policy
Last updated: 2026-10-12
This policy explains what personal data the Alobel app and the website alobel.se process, why, and what you can do about it. The English version is the authoritative one; the Norwegian and Swedish versions are translations.
1. Who is responsible
The data controller is S.I.A AB, organisation number 559509-7998, Vävlagaregatan 9 A, 416 58 Göteborg, Sweden.
Privacy questions: support@alobel.se.
2. What we collect
Account data - collected when you register:
- Name
- Email address
- Phone number (optional)
- Up to five named addresses (optional), such as Home or At parents. You can enter them manually or ask the app to suggest one from your phone's current position. Confirmed address details and available coordinates are stored in your private profile.
Usage data - created while you use the app:
- Your role setting (here / with)
- Check-in times and your chosen check-in frequency
- Requests you send and the emoji replies you give
- Circles you belong to and invitations you send or accept
- Language and theme preferences
Location and local weather data:
- Your coordinates at the moment you send an SOS, if you granted permission
- If you turn on "Share my position", your phone publishes a position to the circles where you are the subject about once an hour. This is not live tracking, and switching the setting off clears the published position.
- While position sharing is on, our servers send coordinates rounded to four decimal places to the MET Norway Locationforecast API. The returned local forecast is stored with your life signs. MET Norway receives our servers' IP address, not your phone's.
- If you add Weather for one of your saved addresses in Smart Life, our servers send that address's stored coordinates to the same MET Norway API when the card refreshes. The address label and your identity are not sent to MET Norway.
Emergency audio - only after you trigger an SOS:
- If you have allowed microphone access, the app records up to 15 seconds after the SOS has already been sent
- The SOS is still sent if access is denied or recording or upload fails
Pulse (Android, optional) - only after you connect Health Connect:
- Your latest heart-rate reading, read from Health Connect (where for example Garmin Connect writes it), also in the background about every 15 minutes
- Only the latest reading and its time are shared with the circles where you are the subject. Pulse is informational; it never triggers an alarm.
Friend groups - when you are in a friend group:
- The time of your last "I'm OK", and your position if you choose to send it with that "I'm OK"
- "Are you all OK?" rounds you start, including your name
Google Home (optional) - only if you link your account:
- A link between your account and Google, stored as hashed tokens
- Saying "Help" sends an SOS with your last known position; "I'm OK" answers open questions and sends a sign of life
- Device names, rooms and states of the Smart Life devices you have added are shared with Google so they can be controlled by voice
- An optional PIN for unlocking doors by voice
Connected services (optional) - only for services you connect:
- Access tokens or credentials for SwitchBot, Mill, Shelly, Philips Hue, Withings and Home Assistant, stored on our servers and never shown to circle members
- Door and motion events, smoke-alarm events, sleep and heart-rate data from Withings, and the state of connected lights, heaters, plugs and locks
Device data:
- A push notification token for each device you sign in on
- Smart-home device names, provider identifiers, state and sensor readings that you choose to connect. For a Shelly power-metering device marked as a stove, we store its configured watt threshold, duration and latest monitor state so we can send a high-power warning.
Support requests:
- Support cases you open in the app: the subject, your messages, our replies, and your name and email address
- Emails you send to support@alobel.se or hei@alobel.se: your email address, name and whatever the message contains
The website alobel.se:
- The site has no user accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no cookies. Fonts are served from alobel.se itself.
- If you choose a language, that choice is stored in your browser and never sent to us.
- Our hosting provider (Google Firebase Hosting) processes your IP address to deliver the pages, to choose a language from your country, and in short-lived logs to keep the service secure.
3. Why we process it
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Operating the check-in service | Account and usage data | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Saving optional named addresses | Address and, when GPS suggestion or geocoding is used, coordinates | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), controlled by you under Account |
| Alerting your circle when you miss a check-in | Check-in times, circle membership | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Delivering an SOS alert with your position | Location, name | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), given by allowing location access; in an emergency also vital interests (Art. 6(1)(d)) |
| Showing position and local weather to your circle | Routine position and derived forecast | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), controlled by "Share my position" |
| Sharing emergency audio with your active circle | Audio, name, circle membership | Explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and Art. 9(2)(a)), given when you allow microphone access for SOS after the in-app explanation; in an emergency where you cannot give consent, vital interests (Art. 9(2)(c)) |
| Showing your pulse to your circle | Heart rate from Health Connect or Withings | Explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and Art. 9(2)(a)), given in the app before Health Connect access is requested, or by connecting your Withings account |
| Sending notifications, including an optional unanswered-ping reminder | Push token and request timing | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Sending an optional stove high-power warning | Connected-device readings and push token | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Friend-group status | "I'm OK" times, optional position | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); position by consent per "I'm OK" |
| Voice control and voice SOS through Google Home | Account link, device names and states, last known position | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), given by linking and withdrawn by unlinking |
| Answering support requests | Support cases and emails | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) for users; legitimate interest in answering (Art. 6(1)(f)) for others who write to us |
| Delivering and securing the website | IP address, request logs | Legitimate interest in a working, secure site (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
Emergency audio and heart rate can reveal information about your health. We treat them as special-category data under Article 9 GDPR and process them only with your explicit consent, or to protect your life when you cannot give it. You can withdraw consent at any time: turn off microphone access or disconnect Health Connect or Withings. Withdrawing does not affect processing that took place before.
4. Who can see your data
- Members of your circles see your name, your check-in status, your replies, your life signs and, while routine position sharing is on, your last shared position and its derived weather forecast. An SOS can also carry your position even when routine sharing is off. Active circle members can request a temporary link to play an attached SOS recording.
- Members of a friend group see the time of each member's last "I'm OK", and a position when one was sent with it.
- Your saved addresses remain in your private profile and are not shared with circle members.
Service providers that process data on our behalf:
- Google Firebase (Google Ireland Limited) hosts the database, authentication, server functions and the website.
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) delivers push notifications. Notification text passes through Google's service, which for an SOS includes your name and a map link with your coordinates.
- Our email hosting provider receives email sent to our @alobel.se addresses, and Google (Gmail) stores and displays it for the people who answer it.
Recipients that are responsible for their own processing (independent controllers):
- MET Norway receives coordinates rounded to four decimal places from our servers to return a local weather forecast. It does not receive your identity or your phone's IP address.
- Google (Google Home), if you link it, receives your device names, rooms and states, and handles your voice commands under Google's own terms.
- SwitchBot, Mill, Shelly, Philips Hue (Signify), Withings and Home Assistant, if you connect them, exchange device commands and readings with our servers. You hold your own account with each of them, and their own privacy policies apply to the data they hold.
We do not sell your data and we do not use it for advertising.
5. Where your data is stored and transfers outside the EU/EEA
Firestore data is stored in europe-north2 (Stockholm, Sweden), SOS recordings and data exports in Cloud Storage in europe-north1 (Finland). Cloud Functions run in europe-north1 (Finland) and scheduled jobs in europe-west1 (Belgium). MET Norway states that its API access logs are stored in Oslo, Norway.
Some data may still leave the EU/EEA:
- Push notifications are delivered through Google's global Firebase Cloud Messaging infrastructure, and Google may give its affiliates and subprocessors outside the EEA, including in the United States, access as part of operating Firebase and Gmail.
- Connected providers you choose to link may process data outside the EEA under their own terms.
Where our processors transfer data outside the EEA, the transfer relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for which Google is certified, or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses included in Google's data processing terms.
6. How long we keep it
One bounded daily cleanup applies these maximum retention periods:
- Latest pulse and shared-position readings: 7 days. Clearing a position also clears the weather derived from that position.
- Door and movement event history: 30 days.
- Pending or completed check-in requests: 90 days.
- SOS signals: 90 days. New SOS audio recordings are removed after 30 days; recordings created before the separate audio deadline was introduced are removed with their SOS signal after at most 90 days.
- Circle invitations: 30 days.
- Closed support cases disappear from your app after 30 days and are kept in our support archive for up to one year.
- Administrator audit events: two years.
Weather cache entries contain rounded coordinates but no user or circle id. They are removed by the same daily cleanup after the forecast cache expires. The cleanup uses bounded batches, so an unusually large backlog may take more than one daily run to remove completely.
Deleting your account removes your profile, memberships, requests, SOS signals, attached SOS recordings and invitations immediately, along with any circle where you were the last member. It also removes connected-service credentials, the Google Home link, sensor histories, friend-group rounds you started, smoke-detector setup and stove-monitor state owned by your account. Smart homes you own are kept without an owner so their other members do not lose them.
A copy of your data that you download from the app is deleted from our servers after 24 hours.
7. Your rights
You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, and receive a portable copy of your data, and to withdraw any consent you have given. You can complain to the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, IMY), which supervises us, or to the data protection authority where you live, such as Datatilsynet in Norway.
In the app you can:
- Change your name and password under Account
- Add or change your optional phone number under Account. The number is not verified and is not currently used to send SMS.
- Add, change or remove up to five saved addresses under Account
- Delete your account and its data under Account
- Download a copy of your data (a JSON file) under Account
You can also delete your account without the app at https://alobel.se/slett-konto/, by signing in with your email and password. For anything else, write to support@alobel.se.
8. Security
Access is enforced by Firestore and Storage security rules: your profile is readable only by you, and circle data only by active members of that circle. SOS audio is not publicly readable; an authenticated active circle member can request a playback link that expires after five minutes. Anyone who receives that link can use it until it expires. Traffic is encrypted in transit, and Firebase encrypts data at rest.
9. Children
You must be at least 16 years old to use Alobel. The app is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we delete it. If you believe a child has created an account, write to support@alobel.se.
10. Changes
We will update this policy when the app changes and note the date above.