Fxit Community privacy policy

Last updated 2 November 2026

Fxit Community is a neighbourhood app for South Africa: safety alerts, help between neighbours, local services and chat. It is made and run by Llewellyn Williams (“we” or “us”), who is responsible for your information under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Questions or requests: llewellynwill1@gmail.com.

What we keep

• Your sign-in. You sign in with Google on Android, or with Apple on iPhone. The sign-in service keeps your email address and name so you can sign in. Our own records hold only an anonymous sign-in number, never your email or password.
• Your profile. Your username, neighbourhood, the groups you belong to and your answers to their join questions. If you add them, your status, mood and street.
• Your street address and a selfie. You give your address and take a selfie when you join. We keep them privately as a record of who holds each account. Neighbours and leaders never see them. We only look at them if an account is used for something criminal, or the police ask with a case number.
• Who vouched for you. New members are confirmed once two neighbours vouch for them. Neighbours who can vouch see who has vouched for a newcomer so far.
• Your cellphone number, as a code. We use your number to keep one account per person, and to let neighbours who already have your number find you. Our server turns it into a code with a secret only the server knows. We keep the code, not the number.
• What you post. Alerts, comments, errands, service listings, chat messages and reports you make.
• Chatter voice clips. What you say while holding the Chatter talk button. We keep each clip for 24 hours for safety. People on the channel hear it once, and only the channel’s leaders can listen back during that time. Nobody else can play back clips between two contacts. After 24 hours we delete the clip.
• Neighbourhood news. If you ask to write, what you said you would write about. Then the stories you write, their photos and who took them, and comments on stories.
• Your settings. Sound, quiet hours and data use, and which alerts and errands you have already seen.
• Votes and applications to lead. How you voted for a group’s leader stays on our server and is never shown to anyone. Members see only the totals. If you apply to lead, only we see your proof, and we delete it once your application is decided, or after 30 days at the latest.
• Notification addresses. The address each of your phones or browsers gets notifications on, until you sign out.

What neighbours see

Your username, status, mood, whether you’re online, and what you post in your neighbourhood. That includes any vehicle details or map spot you add to an alert. Neighbours never see your cellphone number, email address, street address or selfie.

Only a group’s members see its members, posts, chat and notices. Others in the neighbourhood see only its name and size. Members see your answers to its join questions. When you report a post, the person who posted it isn’t told who reported it.

What anyone can see

Neighbourhood news stories are public. Anyone with the link can read a story on fxit.app. Fxit writes each story from what neighbours shared in that neighbourhood the day before, never from group posts, chats or anything hidden. Only neighbours on Fxit see comments on stories. Nothing else in Fxit is public.

How the daily story is written

Once a day we send each neighbourhood’s shared posts from the last 24 hours, without usernames, to Azure OpenAI, run by Microsoft, which drafts the story. It may be processed in any country where Microsoft runs it. Microsoft doesn’t use it to train its models, and we delete the request once the story is back.

What we use only for a moment

• Your ID number. We check it once when you join, to confirm you’re 18 or older. We don’t keep it.
• Your location. We read it when you tap “Use where I am”, to suggest your neighbourhood, and once when you join, to verify your address. The check is a yes or no. We don’t keep your location.
• Your microphone. Only while you hold the Chatter talk button. Fxit asks for it the first time you use Chatter.
• Your phone contacts. Only when you tap “Check my phone contacts”. We send only the phone numbers, over a secure connection, to check them against Fxit members. Our server keeps none of them, and we never read names. You get back the usernames of neighbours you already know.
• Maps. When you open a map, its pictures come from OpenFreeMap, a free map service. Like any website, it sees your phone’s internet address, but not who you are or what you post.

How long we keep it

• Alerts, their discussions and their photos and videos go 24 hours after posting, or 24 hours after a poster or leader keeps one up for another day. We delete the photo and video files within two days.
• We delete Chatter voice clips within two days of being sent.
• Personal messages are kept on your phone and the other person’s phone, not by us. We hold each message only until the other person’s phone collects it, then delete it. If it isn’t collected within 7 days, we delete it then.
• Stories stay until a leader takes them down. Each neighbourhood keeps its newest 40 stories. We delete older ones.
• Everything else stays while you have an account. Deleting your account (My profile, then Privacy) removes your account, everything you posted, your chats, your service listing and any invites you haven’t used. It can’t be undone.
• After an account is deleted, we keep its username, the address given and the selfie privately for 90 days, in case the account was used for something criminal. Then we delete them.

Where we keep it

Our records, photos and videos are kept on Microsoft Azure in Johannesburg, South Africa. Sign-in runs on Microsoft Entra External ID, which keeps sign-in details in Europe. Google or Apple confirms who you are under its own privacy policy. All of these send information over secure connections.

What we never do

We don’t sell or share your information, show adverts, record what you do on screen, track you across other apps or websites, or let anyone outside your neighbourhood see its posts. Neighbourhood news is different: the daily stories are public.

Payments

Fxit is free for 3 months, then R149 a year until you cancel. Google Play, the App Store or a card payment service handles payment, and we never see your full card details. We keep when your free months started and the reference for your subscription, against the code for your cellphone number. That way a new account on the same number doesn’t start a new free trial, and your subscription carries over if you change number.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. Email llewellynwill1@gmail.com. You can also complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa (inforegulator.org.za).

Children

Fxit is for people aged 18 and over. When you join, we read your date of birth from your South African ID number to check your age. We don’t keep the ID number.

Changes

If this policy changes, we post the new version here with its date, and tell members in the app when a change matters to them.