Vamo Privacy Policy

Effective date: 17 September 2026 · Last updated: 17 September 2026

Who we are

Vamo is a mobile app for booking water taxis, tours, package delivery and food delivery in Bocas del Toro, Panama. It has passenger, captain and restaurant modes. Vamo is operated by Jesse Stephens, the developer of Vamo, based in Bocas del Toro, Panama ("we", "us"). If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact us at support@usavamo.com.

Information we collect

• Account information: your email address, a password (we never see or store your actual password — our authentication provider stores only a hash of it), your first and last name, and your preferred language.
• Phone number (optional): stored separately from your public profile. We only show it to the other party in a booking — the passenger or the captain, for example — while a trip or order is active, so they can reach you.
• Profile photo (optional): a photo you take with your camera or choose from your photo library, stored in our file storage. You can remove it at any time from your profile.
• Location: we only collect location while the app is open and in use, never in the background. If you are a passenger, we use it to set your pickup point and show you nearby docks and places. If you are a captain, while you are online and during a trip your live position is shared with your passenger so they can see the boat approaching; we store recent positions briefly to run the service, then discard them.
• Trips, bookings and orders: pickup and destination points, times, prices and price offers, the identity of the other party to the booking, ratings you give and receive, in-app messages between passenger and captain, routes you save, and any emergency contacts you add on the Safety screen.
• Technical information: we do not use analytics or advertising SDKs. Our hosting providers keep standard server logs, such as your IP address and request timestamps. Map tiles are loaded from OpenFreeMap, which — like any web server — sees your IP address when it serves a tile.

How we use your information

We use your information to run the service: matching passengers with captains, restaurants and drivers, calculating prices, and letting both sides of a trip or order communicate and find each other. We also use it for safety and fraud prevention, to provide customer support, and to meet our legal obligations. We do not sell your personal data, and Vamo does not show ads.

Who we share it with

• The other party to your trip or order: they see your first name, your photo, your rating, and — during an active trip — your live location (if you are a captain) and your phone number (both sides).
• Service providers who act on our behalf: Supabase, which hosts our database, authentication and file storage; Resend, which sends account emails such as password resets; OpenFreeMap, which supplies map tiles; and Apple and Google, for app distribution and, if we turn them on in future, push notifications.
• Authorities, when required by law.

Payments

Vamo does not currently process payments in the app. If we add in-app payments, they will be handled by a licensed payment provider, and Vamo will never store your card number. We will update this policy before that happens.

Retention and deletion

We keep your data while your account is active. Settings > "Delete my account" removes your name, phone number and photo, deletes your photo files, and marks your profile deleted. Trip and order records are kept in anonymized form for accounting and legal reasons. To request that we erase anything remaining, email support@usavamo.com.

Your rights

You can access, correct, delete or export your data, and you can withdraw location, camera and photo-library permissions at any time in your phone's settings. Panama's Law 81 of 2019 on Personal Data Protection applies to Vamo. If you live elsewhere, we honor the equivalent rights under your local law.

Children

Vamo is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information.

Security

All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS). Database access is restricted per user with row-level security, and passwords are stored only as hashes.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will post the update here with a new effective date.