Privacy Policy

Version of 14 September 2026 · applies to the website jouleverne.com and the Android app “JouleVerne”

1. Controller

The controller for the processing of personal data on this website and in the “JouleVerne” app within the meaning of Article 4(7) GDPR is:

No data protection officer has been appointed. The conditions of section 38 of the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) are not met: fewer than twenty people are constantly engaged in automated processing, no special categories of personal data are processed on a large scale, no data protection impact assessment is required according to our documented preliminary assessment, and no processing takes place for the purpose of transfer or for market or opinion research.

2. Key points about this app

So that you can place the sections below in context, the essentials first:

• No user account with us. The app requires no registration with JouleVerne. We issue no credentials and collect neither your name nor an e-mail address for your use of the app. Once in-app purchases are activated, an exception applies to purchases: when handling a refund or a withdrawal, we are able to see the order number and the associated account e-mail address in the Google Play Console. See clause 10.2.
• No user profile, no database. We keep no database about you. Your searches, routes and locations are not stored by us, are not combined into a profile, and are not linked to the purchase data mentioned above.
• One server of our own, with two jobs. Since September 2026 we have operated a server of our own. It calculates the detour times (clause 7) and retrieves charging station availability from official public sources (clause 6). Both were previously queries to third-party providers. The server computes and answers; it keeps no records about you.
• Direct queries. All other data is requested by the app directly from the services named below. For technical reasons those services receive your IP address together with the information needed for the query, such as coordinates or a search term.
• No advertising. No advertising is shown and no advertising ID of your device is processed. We do not sell data and do not pass data to third parties for advertising purposes.
• No analytics, no crash reports. The app contains no usage analytics service and no service for the automatic transmission of crash reports. No identifier is stored on or read from your device for analytics purposes.

3. The jouleverne.com website

3.1 Hosting

The website is hosted by IONOS SE, Elgendorfer Straße 57, 56410 Montabaur, Germany. The provider processes the data arising when the website is accessed on our behalf, on the basis of a data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR. Processing takes place in Germany. Additional services offered by the provider that could process data outside the EU — such as a content delivery network or malware protection — have not been booked by us; they are not active for our package. Further information from the provider can be found in its privacy policy: ionos.de/terms-gtc/terms-privacy.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest in providing our offering securely and efficiently.

3.2 Server log files

When the website is accessed, information transmitted by your browser is recorded automatically: IP address, date and time of the request, page accessed, volume of data transferred, referrer, browser type and operating system. This data serves solely technical operation and attack detection and is not combined with other data.

According to the host, IP addresses are anonymised at the point of collection and used only to determine the approximate place of access. The data is stored for eight weeks and then deleted. According to the provider, these log entries are not passed to third parties and not transferred to countries outside the EU.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(f) GDPR

3.3 Cookies and third-party content

This website sets no cookies. The fonts used are held on our own server; no connection is made to Google Fonts or any other external provider. No audience measurement and no tracking takes place.

Simply opening our pages loads no third-party content. The only embedded element is the newsletter sign-up form — and it is loaded only after you have expressly requested it by clicking. Before that, no connection is made to its provider and none of your data is transmitted there. Details in clause 3.5.

A consent banner is therefore not required.

3.4 Contacting us

If you contact us by e-mail, we process your information in order to deal with your enquiry. The data is deleted once it is no longer required and no statutory retention obligations apply.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR

3.5 Newsletter

You can subscribe to a newsletter on our website. All we need is your e-mail address; we ask for nothing else.

The sign-up form is provided by Brevo GmbH, Berlin, Germany , which handles the sending for us as our processor. A data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR is in place; it forms part of the provider’s terms of use. The processing takes place within the European Union.

The form is only loaded once you click it. Until then, Brevo learns nothing about your visit. Only when it loads is a connection made to the provider’s servers, in the course of which your IP address is transmitted.

Sign-up uses a double opt-in procedure. After submitting, you receive an e-mail containing a confirmation link. Only when you click it do we add you to the mailing list. If you do not click, the address is not used further. To document your consent we store the time of sign-up, the time of confirmation and the IP address used.

You can unsubscribe at any time via the link at the bottom of every newsletter e-mail, or informally to info@jouleverne.com. After you unsubscribe we delete your address from the list. We keep the record of your earlier consent for as long as claims arising from it can be asserted.

We do not measure whether you opened a newsletter e-mail or which links you clicked in it.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(a) GDPR — your consent. For storing the documentation data Article 6(1)(c) and (f) GDPR — the duty of proof under Article 7(1) GDPR. You can withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future; the lawfulness of the processing carried out until then remains unaffected.

4. App: location and input

4.1 Device location

The “Stops along the route” and “Charge now” functions require your device’s current location. It is used solely to carry out the location-based search you have requested and to determine the charging stations, restaurants and detour times needed for it.

When the app accesses your location

Access is triggered solely by your calling up a function that requires your current location. The app does not access your location when it starts, and not in the background; location access takes place exclusively during a search you have initiated, and the app does not request a background location permission.

The location is obtained via the location services of the Android operating system; determination is carried out by Google (Google Ireland Limited). Android shows you a permission prompt for this. Without the permission granted, the location-based search cannot be carried out, and the app has no function that works without your location. You can withdraw a permission at any time in your device settings.

Access to information on your device

Access to information on your terminal equipment is governed by Article 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC and by the provisions through which the Member States have transposed it — in Germany section 25(2)(2) TDDDG, in the other Member States the respective national transposition. All of these provide for the same exemption.

The access is strictly necessary in order to provide the digital service you have expressly requested — the location-based search you initiated. We do not obtain separate consent for this. The operating system’s permission prompt is a technical access control; it does not take the place of this statutory exemption.

Processing of the location

The location provided by your device is transmitted to the services described in clauses 5 to 8 in order to carry out the respective search, to the extent required for the function requested.

We do not store your location permanently and do not build a user or movement profile from it. It is used for the individual query and is not retained by us afterwards. We have no influence over the processing carried out by the providers named in clauses 5 to 8; their own terms apply there.

Legal basis for the processing: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — provision of the service you have requested.

4.2 Destination input

What you type into the destination field is transmitted to Google for address completion and route calculation (clause 5). We do not store your input.

5. Map, route and place services

The provider of the following services is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland; for users outside the EEA, Google LLC, USA. In each case your IP address is transmitted together with the information needed to answer the request.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR

5.1 Handover to the Google Maps app

If you take a stop over for navigation, the app opens the Google Maps application installed on your device with the coordinates of the destination. From that point on, Google processes the data as its own controller under its own terms; our app is no longer involved. Google’s privacy policy applies.

6. Charging station data

6.1 Availability via our own server

Whether a charging station is free or occupied is, since September 2026, obtained predominantly from the official national access points of the individual states. Under Article 20 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1804 these bodies are obliged to make such data available freely and on a non-discriminatory basis.

Your app does not communicate with those bodies, only with us. Our server retrieves the data from the official sources in its own name, holds it briefly and answers the app’s requests from it. The operators of the official sources therefore learn nothing about you — they see only our server.

What your app transmits to us: the map section for which you currently wish to see charging stations, together with your IP address. A map section is an area, not a point — your precise location is not transmitted for this query.

What happens on our server: The request is answered and not recorded. No personal access logs are kept; this applies to all jobs of the server. Details in clause 7.

The data retrieved does not itself concern individuals. It describes charging stations — location, connector type, power, availability and in some cases prices. It contains no information about the users of those stations, and we do not process any.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — provision of the service you have requested. On the legal basis for obtaining the data from the official bodies, see Article 20 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1804.

The origin of the data for each country and the associated licence notices can be found in the app under “Data sources & licences”, reachable via the settings. Where this server is located and who operates it is set out in clause 7; those details apply to all jobs of the server.

6.2 Open Charge Map

Information on public charging stations is obtained from Open Charge Map, operated by the Open Charge Map Foundation, United Kingdom. When a query is made, the coordinates of the area searched, filter details such as connector type or power, and your IP address are transmitted.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR · Third country: United Kingdom, adequacy decision of the European Commission (see clause 13)

6.3 TomTom — for gaps only

Where no official availability data is available for a country, we additionally fall back on TomTom International B.V., Beethovenstraat 503, 1083 HK Amsterdam, Netherlands. Since the change described in 6.1 this is the exception rather than the rule.

This query, too, runs via our server, not from the app. Our server queries TomTom and passes the result on. Coordinates and search radius are transmitted, together with the IP address of our server — not yours.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR

7. Our own server

We calculate the detour time for each suggestion on a server we operate ourselves, reachable at ors.jouleverne.app. It runs the free software openrouteservice on map data from OpenStreetMap. Until August 2026 this calculation was carried out by HeiGIT gGmbH in Heidelberg; that is no longer the case.

What is transmitted: the coordinates of your current location or route point, the coordinates of the charging stations and restaurants found, and your IP address. The connection is encrypted with HTTPS.

What happens to this data: The server calculates the travel times and sends them back. No personal access logs are kept. The services do not log requests; in so far as the upstream web server keeps technical logs, IP addresses are removed from them before they are stored. The coordinates transmitted and your IP address are not stored permanently.

As an alternative, the Google services named in clause 5 may also be used for this. Which service performs the calculation depends solely on availability; the purpose remains the same.

Where the server is located: We rent it from Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany. Hetzner processes the data exclusively on our behalf and is bound by our instructions; a data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR is in place. These details apply to all three jobs of the server — the detour calculation, the retrieval of availability under clause 6.1 and the map data for restaurants and other points under clause 8.

The data centre is located in Finland and therefore within the European Union.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — provision of the service you have requested.

8. Restaurant and POI data (OpenStreetMap)

For restaurants, snack bars and other points along your route we draw on data from OpenStreetMap. We hold this data on our own server — the same one that calculates the detour times and answers availability queries. Until September 2026 these queries ran through public endpoints of the Overpass API; that is no longer the case. Their operators are therefore no longer recipients of your data.

What your app transmits to us: the area to be searched, the category sought and your IP address. The connection is encrypted with HTTPS.

What happens on our server: The request is answered from the map data held there and is not recorded. No personal access logs are kept. Where the server is located and who operates it is set out in clause 7; those details apply to all jobs of the server.

Type of cuisine and opening hours come from the same map data. We retrieve a rating from the Google services named in clause 5 only for the few results actually shown to you — not for every place we examined beforehand. This keeps the number of queries to third parties as low as possible.

Outside Europe this map data is not available. Searches there are carried out via the Google services named in clause 5.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — provision of the service you have requested. Limiting the rating retrieval to the results shown follows the principle of data minimisation under Article 5(1)(c) GDPR.

The map data comes from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors. The licence notices can be found in the app under “Data sources & licences”.

9. Analytics and crash reports

We use none. The app contains neither a usage analytics service nor a service for the automatic transmission of crash reports. In particular, no processing by Firebase Analytics or Firebase Crashlytics takes place, and no identifier is stored on or read from your device for these purposes. Consent under section 25(1) TDDDG is therefore not required.

Information on the stability of the app reaches us exclusively in aggregated form via the Google Play Console. Google compiles this evaluation on the basis of your device’s system settings; we receive no data that could be attributed to an individual person.

10. Review dialogue, purchases and distribution

10.1 In-app review

The app may offer you the opportunity to submit a review via the Google Play In-App Review API. The dialogue is provided by Google; a review you submit is processed by Google as its own controller. We do not learn whether or how you have rated the app.

10.2 Purchases

Once in-app purchases (the 7-day pass and the annual subscription) are activated, they will be handled via Google Play Billing. Payment processing is carried out entirely by Google; Google acts as the payee. We receive no payment data — neither card details nor billing address — only the information as to whether a valid entitlement exists for your installation. In order to handle refunds and withdrawals we are able to access the order number and the associated account e-mail address in the Google Play Console.

Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — performance of the contract concluded with you.

10.3 Distribution via Google Play

The app is made available through the Google Play Store. When downloading and updating, Google processes data as its own controller under its own terms. We have no influence over this.

11. Android Auto

The app can be displayed on your vehicle’s screen via Android Auto. Android Auto is a Google platform; we transmit no additional data to it and receive no vehicle data from it. The queries described in clauses 5 to 8 run unchanged.

12. Overview of all recipients

13. Transfers to third countries

United Kingdom. For Open Charge Map the transfer is based on the European Commission’s adequacy decision for the United Kingdom. This was renewed on 19 December 2025 and applies until 27 December 2031. No additional safeguards are required.

United States. Transfers to the USA may occur in connection with the Google services. Google LLC, Mountain View, California, is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and listed as an active participant in the list maintained by the US Department of Commerce (last checked by us on 31 August 2026). In so far as the US company concerned is certified under the Data Privacy Framework, the transfer is based on the European Commission’s adequacy decision. In so far as a transfer is not covered by an adequacy decision, it is additionally based on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses pursuant to Article 46(2)(c) GDPR.

EU and EEA. IONOS (Germany), Hetzner (data centre in Finland), Brevo (Germany) and TomTom (Netherlands) process within the European Union.

14. Retention periods

• With us: We do not permanently store any personal data for the app. Location, destination input and search results are used only for the individual query and discarded afterwards.
• Our server (detour calculation, availability and map data): No personal access logs are kept; coordinates and IP addresses transmitted are not stored permanently. Details in clause 7.
• Cached charging data: The details on charging stations retrieved from the official bodies are held briefly in order to avoid repeated retrieval. This data concerns charging stations, not individuals.
• Map data held by us: The OpenStreetMap data for restaurants and other points is held permanently on our server and updated regularly. This data too describes places, not individuals.
• Website server log files: deleted after eight weeks.
• Newsletter: your address stays on the list until you unsubscribe. A sign-up that is never confirmed is deleted after 30 days. We keep the record of consent beyond that for as long as claims arising from it can be asserted.
• With the services named: In so far as those providers process data as their own controllers, their data protection terms and retention periods apply; we have no influence over them. Where we have influence over a retention period, it is stated above.
• Purchases: Once in-app purchases are activated, we will retain records of orders and refunds for the duration of the statutory retention and limitation periods.

15. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the following rights:

• Access to the data processed about you (Article 15)
• Rectification of inaccurate data (Article 16)
• Erasure (Article 17) and restriction of processing (Article 18)
• Data portability (Article 20)
• Objection to processing based on legitimate interests (Article 21)
• Withdrawal of consent given, with effect for the future (Article 7(3))
• Lodging a complaint with a supervisory authority (Article 77)

A message to info@jouleverne.com is sufficient for a request. Please note: as we keep no user accounts and store no data permanently, we can as a rule only answer requests about data stored with us to the effect that no such data exists. In so far as one of the providers named in clause 12 processes data as its own controller, you may also assert your rights directly against that provider. Who is responsible for which processing depends on the operation concerned; we are happy to forward a request sent to us.

You may lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority responsible for us. Under Article 77(1) GDPR you have that right equally before the supervisory authority of your habitual residence, your place of work, or the place of the alleged infringement.

The supervisory authority responsible for us is:

16. Changes to this privacy policy

We adapt this policy when our processing or the legal situation changes. The version published on this page at the time applies. The date of the current version can be found at the top.