Privacy policy

1. Who is responsible?

This policy applies to the Carte Halloween app for Android, iPhone and iPad (identifier com.intuitions.halloween), to this web page and to the download page carte-halloween.web.app. The app is published by Intuitions. Halloween au Québec is our partner for the house data; its website and forms are separate services.

For any question or request about your information, contact the person in charge of personal information for the app: intuitions.application@gmail.com.

2. What the app uses

Your location, if you allow it

The app uses the location provided by Android or iOS, precise or approximate as you choose (on iPhone, the “Precise Location” option), to find nearby houses, compute their distance and place you on the map. This location is used in memory on the device. The app does not request background location (on iPhone, only while the app is in use) and does not build a history of your movements. Outside the season, from November 1 at 8 a.m. to September 30, it does not ask for your location.

The app downloads the complete list of the season’s houses, the same for everyone, then sorts and filters them on the phone: neither your location nor the area on screen is sent to get them. Earlier versions of the app, on Android as well as on iPhone and iPad, instead send Firebase the geographic cells (about 3 × 5 km) covering the area shown on the map, or, in the oldest versions, search bounds around the place searched; raw GPS coordinates are never written to our database, but those cells or bounds can reveal your approximate area. Loading map tiles also reveals the area on screen to the map provider, which may match your location.

Your city or postal code

You can use a city or postal code without allowing location. That text is converted into an area using files bundled with the app. The text you type is not sent to any search service; only earlier versions of the app send the resulting area to load the houses. The city or postal code chosen at first launch, and the fact that onboarding is done, are saved on the phone. The current search and the selected house stay in memory while you use the app.

Your last ten successful searches are also kept on this phone, as city names or postal codes, without duplicates. This history contains no GPS coordinates, no map movements and no invalid searches. It is not sent to our database and is excluded from Android backups and transfers, as well as from iCloud and computer backups of the iPhone. You can delete it with “Clear history” on the search page; the oldest entries are replaced beyond ten distinct searches.

The houses you visited

The “We stopped by” button saves on the phone the house identifier and the season, with no time or location of the visit. These marks drive the counter and the check marks of your route. They are not sent to our database and do not change the public information of any house. You can undo a visit from the house sheet. Preferences and visits are excluded from Android backups and transfers, as well as from iCloud and computer backups of the iPhone.

Your checklist and reminders

In October, the “Get ready for Halloween” checklist saves on the device, for the current season, your answers: whether you give out candy, whether you shared the app, whether you declined the reminder or hid the checklist. These answers are not sent to us.

If you turn them on, the app schedules on your device a notification on October 31 at 4 p.m. and, after the season, a notification on the following October 1 for the reopening of the map. These are local notifications, on fixed dates, in the app’s language: no remote notification service is used and nothing is sent to a server. Only the fact that a reminder is scheduled, with its language, is saved with the preferences, which are excluded from backups. Android (13 and later), iPhone and iPad ask for your permission when you turn a reminder on. You can remove a reminder in the app or turn off notifications in the device settings.

The review prompt

To choose when to ask you for a rating, the app counts on the device, for the current season, how many times it was opened and how long it was on screen, and remembers whether you shared the app, turned on a reminder or already received the prompt. On the opening that follows two openings, five minutes of use, or a share together with a reminder, it may ask Google Play or the App Store to show their rating dialog, once per season at most. The store decides whether to show it. The rating and review you choose to leave are handled by Google or Apple and tied to your store account, like a review left on the app’s listing. We receive neither your rating, nor your text, nor even the information that the dialog was shown. These counters are not sent to us, are excluded from backups along with the other preferences, and reset to zero every season.

Your language

Unless you choose otherwise, the app follows your device language (French or English). The French or English chosen in the menu is saved on the device: on Android, by Android itself since Android 13 (in the app’s language settings), otherwise in an app file excluded from Android backups and transfers; on iPhone and iPad, with the app’s other preferences, excluded from iCloud and computer backups. This choice is not sent to us.

Technical connection data

Providers that receive a connection may process the IP address, the time of the request, the resources requested and technical information about the software used. These exchanges make it possible to deliver the houses, the map and this page, and to protect the services against abuse. They are not tied to any Carte Halloween account. Depending on your diagnostics-sharing settings, Google Play or the App Store may also provide us with aggregated statistics and technical reports, for example on installs and crashes.

What we do not include

This version includes no user account, no advertising, no audience measurement tool, no crash-reporting module and no remote notification service. It does not access your contacts, photos, microphone or payment information. We do not sell your personal information and do not use it to send you advertising.

3. Services involved

• Google Firebase / Google Cloud provides the house database, the house file downloaded by the app (Cloud Storage), and the hosting of this page and of the download page. The Firestore database and the house file are located in Montréal. Web hosting and some technical processing rely on international infrastructure; we cannot guarantee that all processing stays in Québec or in Canada. See the Firebase privacy information and Google’s policy.
• OpenFreeMap provides the map tiles and map fonts, displayed by MapLibre. The service receives the requests matching the area on screen and may use a content delivery network such as Cloudflare. Its privacy policy describes its technical logs and their retention.
• Android and Google location services, or iOS and Apple location services on iPhone and iPad, provide the location when it is allowed. You control this access in your device settings.

When you choose “Walk there” or “Drive”, the coordinates of the destination house, and possibly its address, are sent to the navigation app you choose. Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze or another app then handle the route and their own permissions.

The app menu (the avatar to the right of the search bar) opens other apps, only at your request:

• “Share the app” (also in the October checklist) opens the Android or iOS share sheet: the message and the download link are passed to the app you choose.
• “Send feedback” opens your email app with a draft addressed to intuitions.application@gmail.com, stating the app and system version (Android or iOS); you can edit or discard it before sending. Without an email app, the address is copied to the clipboard.
• “Rate the app” and “Our other apps” (also in the end-of-season panel) open the app’s listing in Google Play or the App Store. On Android, the “Our other apps” links carry a fixed campaign tag (utm_source=la-tournee), hard-coded and identical in every copy of the app: it tells the store that the install comes from this showcase. It contains no identifier about you. On iPhone and iPad, these links carry none. We receive no display or click statistics.

Apart from these buttons, the app may also, on its own, once per season, request the Google Play or App Store rating dialog (see “The review prompt”).

The download page carte-halloween.web.app, opened from a shared link, detects on the spot the device type reported by the browser to open Google Play or the App Store. It sets no cookie and includes no measurement tool; Firebase Hosting receives the connection data described above.

When you open the partner website or its registration form, your browser connects directly to that site. The information you enter there is subject to the practices of that site and of its form provider. External sites may in particular have their own cookies and advertising.

4. The houses shown on the map

With the permission of Halloween au Québec, we import the registrations found in its public maps: address, additional address line if any, city, geographic coordinates, schedule notes, and source and season information. Addresses are visible to everyone in the app.

When coordinates are missing, our server may send the address of the registered house to the Adresses Québec service to locate it. This processing concerns published houses, not your location as a visitor. A technical cache keeps the results to avoid repeated requests.

To add a house, use the official registration page. To correct or remove a registration at the source, use the partner’s contact form. You can also report to us a house to correct or remove from Carte Halloween at the email address above.

The public maps are checked about every ten minutes. A change may take longer to appear if the source is slow to publish, if a service is unavailable, or if a removal requires verification. Some addresses cannot be located and are then not shown.

5. Retention and protection

The chosen area, onboarding preferences, the chosen language, search history, visits and checklist answers per season, scheduled reminders, launch counters (“Our other apps” showcase and review prompt), and house or map caches may stay on your phone until they are replaced or erased. A new season shows a new counter; marks from previous seasons stay local. Preferences, search history and visits are excluded from new Android backups and transfers and from iCloud and computer backups of the iPhone, but other data, such as caches, may be included depending on your settings. Uninstalling the app or clearing its data does not necessarily delete an older backup managed by Android or Apple.

House registrations, geocoding results and import reports are kept to deliver the service, synchronize the maps and handle corrections. Houses removed from the source are removed from the active list after synchronization or verification; a local copy already downloaded may remain visible offline until its next refresh. Technical data from previous seasons and caches may be kept as long as they remain necessary for operations or for handling a request.

Connection log retention depends on the provider. Firebase states that Hosting IP data is kept for a few months. OpenFreeMap states that it does not keep IPs in its ordinary logs and limits its exceptional security logging to thirty days. Its other providers apply their own policies, linked above.

The app’s network exchanges use HTTPS. Phones can read the public houses but cannot write to our database; technical synchronization reports are not public. These measures reduce risks without guaranteeing absolute security.

6. Your choices and requests

You can refuse or revoke location in Android Settings → Apps → Carte Halloween → Permissions, or on iPhone and iPad in Settings → Carte Halloween → Location (where “Precise Location” is also found), then use the city or postal code search. You can remove a reminder in the app (“Remove”) or refuse notifications in Android Settings → Apps → Carte Halloween → Notifications, or on iPhone and iPad in Settings → Notifications → Carte Halloween. To delete local data, use the clear-data option in the app’s storage settings on Android, or delete the app on iPhone and iPad. Backups are managed separately in the system settings.

You can ask us for access to, correction of, or deletion of information about you, ask a question or file a complaint at intuitions.application@gmail.com. Include only the information needed to identify your request. Reasonable verification of your identity or of your link to a registration may be required. We will handle your request according to the applicable rules and explain any limitation.

If you write to us, we use your email address and message to reply and follow up on the request. We keep them for as long as needed to handle it and to meet applicable obligations. No account in the app is needed to exercise these choices.

7. Family use and updates

Carte Halloween can be used to plan a family trick-or-treat route. An adult should accompany children and manage device permissions and house registrations. The app asks for no name or age and creates no child profile.

We will update this policy if the way the app works or the services it uses change. The date at the top of the page shows the version in effect. Any new use of information requiring your consent will be the subject of appropriate notice or request.