Rubika Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy sets out how we, (“Rubika”) use and protect your personal data that you provide to us, or that is otherwise obtained or generated by us, in connection with your use of our cloud-based messaging services (the “Services”). For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refers to Rubika, and ‘you’ refers to you, the user of the Services.
Rubika has two fundamental principles when it comes to collecting and processing private data:
- We don't use your data to show you ads.
- We only store the data that Rubika needs to function as a secure and feature-rich messaging service.
2. Legal Ground for Processing Your Personal Data
We process your personal data on the ground that such processing is necessary to further our legitimate interests (including: (1) providing effective and innovative Services to our users; and (2) to detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud or security issues in respect of our provision of Services), unless those interests are overridden by your interest or fundamental rights and freedoms that require protections of personal data.
“Rubika” is a communication service. You provide your mobile number and basic account data (which may include profile name, profile picture and about information) to create a Rubika account.
To make it easier for your contacts and other people to reach you and recognize who you are, the screen name you choose, your profile pictures, and your username (should you choose to set one) on “Rubika” are always public. We don't want to know your real name, gender, age or what you like.
We do not require your screen name to be your real name. Note that users who have you in their contacts will see you by the name they saved and not by your screen name. This way your mother can have the public name 'Johnny Depp' while appearing as 'Mom' to you and as 'Boss' to her underlings at work (or the other way around, depending on how these relationships are structured).
When you enable 2-step-verification for your account, you can opt to set up a password recovery email. This address will only be used to send you a password recovery code if you forget it. That's right: no marketing or “we miss you” bullshit.
Rubika is a cloud service. We store messages, photos, videos and documents from your cloud chats on our servers so that you can access your data from any of your devices anytime without having to rely on third-party backups. All data is stored heavily encrypted and the encryption keys in each case are stored in several other data centers in different jurisdictions. This way local engineers or physical intruders cannot get access to user data.
In addition to private messages, "Rubika" also supports public channels and public groups. All public chats are cloud chats. Like everything on, "Rubika", the data you post in public communities is encrypted, both in storage and in transit — but everything you post in public will be accessible to everyone.
3.4. Phone Number and Contacts
"Rubika" uses phone numbers as unique identifiers so that it is easy for you to switch from SMS and other messaging apps and retain your social graph. We ask your permission before syncing your contacts.
We store your up-to-date contacts in order to notify you as soon as one of your contacts signs up for "Rubika" and to properly display names in notifications. We only need the number and name (first and last) for this to work and store no other data about your contacts.
Our automatic algorithms can also use anonymized sets of phone numbers to calculate the average number of potential contacts an unregistered phone number may have on "Rubika". When you open the 'Invite friends' interface, we display the resulting statistics next to your contacts to give you an idea of who could benefit most from joining Rubika.
You can always stop syncing contacts or delete them from our servers in Settings > Privacy & Security > Data Settings.
If you share a location in a chat, this location data is treated like other messages in cloud respectively.
If you share your Live Location in any chat or turn on ’Make Myself Visible’ in People Nearby, “Rubika” will use your data to display your location to those users with whom you are sharing it, even when the app is closed – for as long as you keep these optional features activated.
The only cookies we use are those to operate and provide our Services on the web. We do not use cookies for profiling or advertising. The cookies we use are small text files that allow us to provide and customize our Services, and in doing so provide you with an enhanced user experience. Your browser should allow you to control these cookies, including whether or not to accept them and how to remove them. You may choose to block cookies with your web browser, however, if you do disable these cookies you will not be able to log in to “Rubika” Web.
4. Keeping Your Personal Data Safe
The servers and networks that sit inside these data centers and on which your personal data is stored are owned by Rubika. As such, we do not share your personal data with such data centers. All data is stored heavily encrypted so that local Rubika engineers or physical intruders cannot get access.
Unless stated otherwise in this Privacy Policy, the personal data that you provide us will only be stored for as long as it is necessary for us to fulfill our obligations in respect of the provision of the Services.
5. Processing Your Personal Data
Rubika is a cloud service. We will process your data to deliver your cloud chat history, including messages, media and files, to any devices of your choosing without a need for you to use third-party backups or cloud storage.
Rubika supports massive communities which we have to police against abuse and Terms of Service violations. Rubika also has more than 20 million users which makes it a lucrative target for spammers. To improve the security of your account, as well as to prevent spam, abuse, and other violations of our Terms of Service, we may collect metadata such as your IP address, devices and Rubika apps you've used, history of username changes, etc. If collected, this metadata can be kept for 12 months maximum.
To prevent phishing, spam and other kinds of abuse and violations of Rubika’s Terms of Service, our moderators may check messages that were reported to them by their recipients. If a spam report on a message you sent is confirmed by our moderators, your account may be limited from contacting strangers – temporarily or permanently. In case of more serious violations, your account may be banned. We may also use automated algorithms to analyze messages in cloud chats to stop spam and phishing.
5.4. Cross-Device Functionality
We may also store some aggregated metadata to create Rubika features that work across all your devices.
We may use some aggregated data about how you use Rubika to build useful features. For example, when you open the Search menu, Rubika displays the people you are more likely to message in a box at the top of the screen. To do this, we calculate a rating that shows which people you message frequently. A similar rating is calculated for inline bots so that the app can suggest the bots you are most likely to use in the attachment menu (or when you start a new message with “@”). To turn this feature off and delete the relevant data, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Data Settings and disable “Suggest Frequent Contacts”.
Rubika has an API that allows third-party developers to create bots. Bots are apps that look like special Rubika users: you can talk to them from your chat list, add them to groups or use a special “inline” interface to access their features. By performing any of these actions, you will be sending some of your data to the respective third-party bot developers.
6.2. How Bots Can Receive Data
You can send data to bot developers when you interact with their bots in one of these ways:
- By sending messages to a bot.
- By using an inline bot.
- By participating in a group with a bot.
- By pressing buttons in messages sent by a bot.
In any of the above cases, the developers of an automated user (bot) can get your public account data: your screen name, username and profile picture(s).
Bots can also receive the following data when you interact with them.
- Bots will obviously get your messages when you send them something.
- If you click on links or buttons provided by the bot, the bot can potentially get your IP address (provided that it controls the website to which the link leads).
- If the bot is a member of the same group with you, it may know you are a member.
- When you start your message with the username of an inline bot (e.g. @gif) the interface transforms so that everything you type becomes a query to that bot. This query is sent to the bot so that it can provide its service. We will warn you about this the first time you use an inline bot.
- Bots added to groups can operate in two modes: with access to messages in the group or without access. If the bot has access to messages, it can see everything that happens in the group. The interface clearly shows whether or not a bot has access to messages in groups.
6.4. Bots Are Not Maintained by Rubika
Other than our own bots, no other bots or third-party bot developers are affiliated with Rubika. They are completely independent from us. They should ask you for your permission before they access your data or you make it available to them.
7. Your Rights Regarding the Personal Data You Provide to Us
Under applicable data protection legislation, in certain circumstances, you have rights concerning your personal data. You have a right to: (1) request a copy of all your personal data that we store and to transmit that copy to another data controller; (2) delete or amend your personal data; (3) restrict, or object to, the processing of your personal data; (4) correct any inaccurate or incomplete personal data we hold on you; and (5) lodge a complaint with national data protection authorities regarding our processing of your personal data.
You can control how your data is used (e.g., delete synced contacts) in Settings > Privacy & Security > Data Settings (using one of our mobile apps).
Sadly, if you're generally not OK with Rubika's modest requirements, it won't be possible for us to provide you with our Services. You can delete your Rubika account by proceeding to the deactivation page.
If you would like to delete your account, you can do this on the deactivation page. Deleting your account removes all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Rubika cloud. This action must be confirmed via your Rubika account and cannot be undone.
- In cloud chats, you can choose to delete a message for all participants within at least 48 hours after sending. Otherwise, deleting a message will delete it from your message history. This means that a copy will stay on the server as part of your partner's message history. As soon as your partner deletes it too, it's gone forever.
- In supergroups and channels, deleting a message removes it for all participants. Note that deleted messages and original versions of edited messages from supergroups are stored for 48 hours after deletion in order to be shown in the admins log.
By default, if you stop using Rubika and do not come online for at least 3 months, your account will be deleted along with all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Rubika. You can go to Settings to change the exact period after which your inactive account will self-destruct.
