Cookie Policy

Last updated: October 17, 2026

Introduction

This document explains the technologies that help RIDEMATE work. Some of them store or read information on your device (for example, cookies in a web browser, or data the app keeps on your phone), and some are pieces of code from other companies (SDKs or scripts) that collect data automatically.

For simplicity, we call all of these "Trackers." We use the word Cookies only for browser-based Trackers, which are relevant when you visit our websites.

RIDEMATE does not use advertising or cross-app tracking Trackers, in the app or on the website. When that feature is turned on, the app uses one analytics Tracker, Amplitude (section 3 below); the website uses none. The Trackers we do use are described below, and more detail about the data involved is in our Privacy Policy (ridemate.ai/privacy-policy).

Owner and Data Controller

RIDE MATE LLC

661 NE 68th Street, Miami, Florida 33138, USA

Florida Document Number: L25000198352

Email: contact@ridemate.ai

EU Representative (Article 27 GDPR)

Sacha Hertz

Email: contact@ridemate.ai

How RIDEMATE Uses Trackers

1. Strictly necessary

These are needed for the app and website to work, so they cannot be switched off.

Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore (Google LLC), in the app. Keep you signed in and let the app load and save your data. The app stores a sign-in token and a local copy of recently used data on your phone. Place of processing: USA. Data involved: account ID, sign-in tokens, device and connection information.
Settings and image cache, in the app. The app stores a few settings on your phone (for example, your light or dark display choice and whether you dismissed today's "update available" banner) and copies of images it has downloaded. They stay on your phone.
Stripe (Stripe, Inc.), in the app. When you pay, and when drivers set up payouts, Stripe's payment screen and onboarding pages collect device and browser information to prevent fraud and may set their own cookies. Place of processing: USA. See Stripe's privacy policy.
Cloudflare security cookie, on ridemate.ai. Our website is hosted by Webflow and served through Cloudflare, which sets a cookie named _cfuvid. It helps Cloudflare tell visitors apart for security and rate limiting, and it is deleted when you close your browser. It is not used to track you across sites.

2. Functional

Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google LLC) and Apple Push Notification service (Apple Inc.). Deliver push notifications about bookings, trip changes, and messages. Place of processing: USA. Data involved: a notification token for your device, and the content of the notification.
Unsubscribe links in our emails. Our emails are delivered by Resend (Resend, Inc., USA). The Unsubscribe link in each marketing email carries a code that identifies your email address, so that one click is enough to unsubscribe. The email preferences page at go.ridemate.ai/preferences uses that code only to process your request.

3. Crash reporting, performance, and app usage analytics

These help us find and fix problems and see how the app is used. They do not follow you across other apps or websites, and we do not use them for advertising.

Firebase Crashlytics (Google LLC). Active in released versions of the app. When the app crashes or hits an error, it sends a report with the technical details, your device model, operating system, app version, and an installation identifier created by Crashlytics. We do not add your name, email address, or account ID to these reports. Place of processing: USA.
Firebase Performance Monitoring (Google LLC). Measures things like how long the app takes to start, how long screens take to load, and how long network requests take, together with device model, operating system, app version, and approximate country. Place of processing: USA.
Amplitude (Amplitude, Inc.), when available. Counts a few app usage events: sign-up steps reached and finished, searches (with how many rides they found, and the cities only when nothing was found), and push notifications opened. The app stores a random identifier for your phone, created by Amplitude (a new one is made when you log out or reinstall the app), and sends it with a hashed form of your account ID, whether you are a rider or a driver, your school's short name, and basic device details. It does not collect your IP address, your location, or advertising identifiers. You can turn it off in the app (Profile > Share app usage). Place of processing: USA.

RIDEMATE does not use Google Analytics for Firebase.

4. Location

Only drivers, and only at two moments: when a driver taps Start Ride (to confirm the phone is within 500 meters of a pickup point of the trip) and when they tap Finish Ride (within 500 meters of the drop-off point). The app asks your phone's location service for your current position and compares it with the point on the phone itself. Your GPS position is not sent to RIDEMATE or to Google Maps and is not stored. For Start Ride, the trip records only the result: whether the driver was at a pickup, away from it, or location was unavailable, the distance in meters to the nearest pickup, and how many minutes after the departure time the trip was started (see the Privacy Policy, Section 3.12). Riders' locations are never requested. If you refuse the permission, the app still lets you start and finish the ride.

Separately, when you type an address in the app, it is sent (through a relay we run on Google Cloud in Belgium) to Google Maps Platform (Google LLC, USA) to suggest matching places, and the pickup and drop-off points of a trip are sent to Google to calculate its distance. Google receives what you type, those points, and your device's IP address, but not your GPS location. A trip's page also shows a small map of the pickup point: to draw it, the app asks Google Maps (Maps Static API) for a picture of that point, and Google receives the point's coordinates and your device's IP address.

5. Marketing and advertising

RIDEMATE does not use advertising or cross-context marketing Trackers, and the app does not ask for permission to track you across other companies' apps and websites. If this changes, we will tell you and ask for your consent first where the law requires it.

6. Our websites

ridemate.ai is hosted by Webflow, Inc. (USA). It loads no analytics, advertising, or social-media tracking scripts. The only cookie we have seen it set is Cloudflare's _cfuvid security cookie (above). To display the site, your browser also downloads files from Webflow's content network (which also hosts the site's fonts), Amazon CloudFront, and jsDelivr. These services receive your IP address as part of delivering the files; they do not set cookies for us. ridemate.ai does not use Google Fonts; only the go.ridemate.ai pages below do.
go.ridemate.ai (the email-verification and email-preferences pages our emails link to) is hosted on Google Firebase Hosting (USA). These pages use no analytics or advertising Trackers. The verification page uses Firebase Authentication in your browser to confirm your email address. The ride and trip pages that open from links shared in the app are also on go.ridemate.ai: they set no cookies and use no analytics or advertising Trackers. They load their fonts from Google Fonts (Google LLC, USA), which receives the visitor's IP address as part of delivering the files; Google Fonts does not set cookies for us. To stop abuse, the page's server also keeps a scrambled (hashed) form of the visitor's IP address for about a day (see the Privacy Policy, Section 3.14).

Managing Your Choices

Location and push notifications: change them at any time in your phone's settings. On iPhone: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > RideMate, and Settings > Notifications > RideMate. On Android: Settings > Apps > RideMate > Permissions, and Settings > Apps > RideMate > Notifications (the wording varies by device).
Marketing emails: use the Unsubscribe link in any marketing email, visit go.ridemate.ai/preferences, or email contact@ridemate.ai.
Crash reporting and performance data: these run automatically in the released app, and the app has no setting to turn them off. If you object to them, contact us at contact@ridemate.ai.
App usage analytics: turn off Profile > Share app usage in the app. The setting applies to the phone you change it on.
Cookies on our websites: use your browser's settings (see below).

How to Control or Delete Cookies

You can set your browser to:

see which cookies are stored;
block some or all cookies; and
delete existing cookies.

For instructions, see the help pages for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Blocking the Cloudflare cookie may make parts of ridemate.ai load more slowly or show security checks.

Opting Out of Interest-Based Advertising

RIDEMATE does not use interest-based advertising. For general control over ad personalization in other apps, you can use your phone's settings (on iPhone, Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking; on Android, Settings > Privacy > Ads) or AppChoices from the Digital Advertising Alliance.

Consequences of Refusing Trackers

You can refuse the location and notification permissions. Without location, the start/finish check is skipped; without notifications, you will not hear about new messages or trip changes unless you open the app. The strictly necessary Trackers cannot be refused while you use the app, because sign-in, booking, payments, and chat would not work without them.

Definitions and Legal References

Personal Data (or Data): any information that identifies, or can be used to identify, a person.
Usage Data: information collected automatically when you use RIDEMATE, such as device information, logs, IP address, and times of requests.
Tracker: any technology (cookie, SDK, script, pixel, or identifier) that stores or reads information on a device or collects data about its use.
Owner / Data Controller: RIDE MATE LLC, unless otherwise stated.
Service: the RIDEMATE mobile app and its websites (ridemate.ai and go.ridemate.ai).
Cookie: a small text file stored by your browser.

Legal Information

This statement is prepared with reference to several privacy laws, including:

EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR);
the ePrivacy Directive 2002/58/EC; and
U.S. state privacy laws, where applicable.

This policy relates only to RIDEMATE, unless otherwise stated.