Privacy policy

In short

• Your data is used to run Valais Connect, the network for students in Valais.
• No resale, no targeted advertising, no third-party audience measurement tool.
• Hosted in Switzerland (Infomaniak).
• You can delete your account at any time (see the Delete my account page).

Data controller

Dealmood Solutions, Valais, Switzerland, publisher of Valais Connect. Processing complies with the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, for members located in the European Union, the GDPR.

Data processed

• Account — name, email address, password (never stored in plain text), postal address (street, postcode, town) and its approximate location, school, programme and year of study (optional), referral code, date you accepted this policy.
• Profile — username, photo, bio, city, interests, skills, links, verified student badge.
• What you post and exchange — posts, stories, comments, messages (including voice messages and attachments), marketplace and housing listings with their photos, mutual help offers and requests, questions, events, resources, reviews, donations.
• Courses and the Gaspard assistant — progress, questions asked to Gaspard and to the tutor.
• Wallet — balance, top-ups, withdrawals; for a withdrawal, Mangopay may ask for your identity, date of birth, nationality, country of residence and IBAN.
• Deliveries — if you make deliveries, your location during the delivery and the hand-over photo.
• Technical data — sessions (IP address, device type), notification token, security logs.

App permissions

• Internet and network status — to reach the service and show “no connection”.
• Notifications — requested after you sign in, optional.
• Microphone — only when you record a voice message or dictate a question to Gaspard. Dictation uses your phone's speech recognition (Apple or Google): only the resulting text is sent to Valais Connect.
• Camera — only to photograph an item handed over, as proof of delivery.
• Location, including in the background — only if you are delivering an order and allow it, so that the recipient can follow your arrival, even with the screen off. Sharing stops at hand-over and the location is erased at the end of the delivery.

The app does not access your contacts or advertising tracking. The sign-in token is encrypted in the phone's secure storage (Android Keystore, iOS Keychain), excluded from backups, and expires after 30 days.

Purposes

• Providing the network: profile, feed, messaging, marketplace, housing, mutual help, courses, events, wallet, deliveries.
• Suggesting contacts and answering questions with Gaspard.
• Sending notifications and emails related to your account.
• Ensuring security and moderation, and meeting our legal obligations.
• Producing internal, aggregated statistics, without any third-party analytics tool.

Gaspard and artificial intelligence

Gaspard runs primarily on a model installed on our servers. General questions containing no personal data may be processed by external AI services (Google Gemini, Groq, Cerebras, OpenRouter, Mistral) after names, email addresses and numbers have been removed; these services do not use them to train their models.

Your conversations with Gaspard are erased after 30 days. The “Aider à améliorer Gaspard” (Help improve Gaspard) option is turned off by default and can be withdrawn at any time.

Who your data is shared with

• Other members — what you post, according to the audience you choose, and what you send in a conversation.
• Infomaniak (Switzerland) — hosting and email delivery.
• Mangopay (Luxembourg, EU) — wallets, payments, identity verification; top-ups, including by TWINT.
• Google — Google Maps (addresses, maps, directions) and Firebase Cloud Messaging (notifications on Android).
• Apple — notifications on iPhone (APNs) and Apple Maps (maps on iPhone).
• Mapbox, OpenRouteService — base maps and route calculation.
• Authorities — only where required by law.

We do not sell or rent your data. Some providers may process data outside Switzerland (EU, United States) with appropriate safeguards (Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, standard contractual clauses).

Retention period

• For as long as your account exists, except: stories 24 hours, conversations with Gaspard 30 days, notifications 180 days, delivery location until the end of the delivery.
• Backups: 14 days, then overwritten.
• Financial data: for the period required by law (up to 10 years for accounting records).

Security

Data is hosted in Switzerland and all communications are encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored as an encrypted hash; you can enable two-factor authentication and passkeys from the website. Members' money is held by Mangopay, a licensed electronic money institution, and not by Valais Connect.

Children

Valais Connect is intended for students and is not meant for children under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with data, write to us: we will delete the account.

Changes to this policy

If there is a significant change, we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect. The date of the latest update is shown at the top of this page.

Your rights

• Access and portability — export your data from “Paramètres” (Settings) › “Confidentialité” (Privacy) on the valais-connect.ch website.
• Rectification — from your profile and your settings.
• Erasure — “Profil” (Profile) › “Paramètres” (Settings) › “Compte” (Account) › “Compte” in the app, or by email (see the Delete my account page).
• Withdrawing consent — notifications, location, microphone or “Aider à améliorer Gaspard” (Help improve Gaspard), at any time, in the app or in your phone's settings.
• If you disagree, you can contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).