Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Sagip is developed and maintained by the Sagip development team ("we", "us", or "our"), which is responsible for the personal information processed through Sagip. Sagip was built for the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (MDRRMO) of Santa Maria, Bulacan, whose authorized personnel receive emergency requests, send response teams, and keep incident reports through Sagip.

2. Scope of this policy

This policy covers information collected through the Sagip mobile applications, the Sagip web system, our servers, and the services we use to verify accounts, send response teams, and manage emergency requests. It does not cover websites or services that we do not control.

3. In short, for young users

If you are 13 to 17 years old, here is what you need to know:

• Ask your parent or guardian before you use Sagip.
• Sagip asks for your name, email, phone number, barangay, gender, a photo, and a valid ID so the MDRRMO knows who is asking for help.
• When you send an SOS, Sagip shares where you are with the people sending help.
• Only MDRRMO staff who need your information can see it. We do not sell it.
• You or your parent can ask us to show, fix, or delete your information.

4. Information we collect

• From residents — Account details: name, email address, contact number, barangay, gender, password (stored only as a protected hash), profile photo, and account status (pending, verified, rejected, or banned).
• From residents — Verification documents: photos of the front and back of a valid ID that shows your name and address.
• From residents — Emergency requests: emergency type, request type (Online, Manual, or External), date and time, proof photo, coordinates, address, barangay, landmark, and the request status (Pending, Assigned, Accepted, En Route, Arrived, Completed, Declined, or Cancelled).
• From residents — Offline SOS text messages: the date and your name, email address, contact number, and coordinates, sent by SMS to the MDRRMO hotline.
• From residents — Location: your location while you use the app, and your last known location if you allow it to be shown to accepted connections.
• From residents — Connections: the residents you send, accept, reject, or block connection requests with.
• From residents — Requests you make: account deletion requests and requests for the Full Incident Report of a past emergency.
• From MDRRMO personnel — Account details: name, email address, contact number, role, and duty schedule.
• From MDRRMO personnel — Response team location during an active trip, including while the phone screen is locked.
• From MDRRMO personnel — Messages and photos posted in the Barangay Channel.
• From MDRRMO personnel — Review records: who rejected a registration, reviewed an account deletion request, or sent a Full Incident Report, and when.
• About people involved in an emergency — After each response, the response team fills in an incident report with the caller name, patient name, relationship to the incident, contact number, what happened, patient status (injured, not injured, or unknown), emergency type, number of affected persons, completion status, summary, and a rescue proof photo. The patient may not be a Sagip user.
• Device and technical data — Push notification tokens, sign-in session records (including IP address and device or browser type), and failed sign-in code attempts.
• Device and technical data — On Android, Firebase Analytics records limited usage events to help us improve the app. Advertising ID collection is turned off.
• Device and technical data — Sagip does not use Crashlytics, Sentry, or another crash-reporting tool. Your phone may keep its own diagnostic logs outside Sagip.

5. How we use your information

• Create and manage accounts, sign you in, and keep your session secure, including the email one-time code at each sign-in.
• Review valid IDs and mark accounts as verified or rejected. Requests from accounts not yet verified are still accepted but are labeled Unverified for the dispatcher.
• Receive emergency requests, assign an available response team and vehicle, show the route, and track the response until it is completed.
• Show the response team's live location and the request status to the resident and the dispatcher during an active trip.
• Keep incident reports in one place so the MDRRMO can find past records for reports, subpoenas, and complaints, and send a Full Incident Report to a resident who asks for it.
• Send notifications about requests, verification results, and bulk alerts from the MDRRMO to residents of selected barangays.
• Prevent false requests: limit each resident to three emergency requests per day, limit repeated requests to the server, and ban accounts that send false requests.
• Handle support and account deletion requests.
• Improve the reliability of Sagip using limited usage events.
• Comply with the law and with lawful orders.

6. Legal basis for processing

We process personal information under Section 12 of the Data Privacy Act:

• Consent, when you register, upload your ID and photos, or allow optional permissions such as location sharing with connections (Section 12(a)).
• To provide the service you signed up for (Section 12(b)).
• To comply with legal obligations, such as subpoenas and court orders (Section 12(c)).
• To protect life and health, which covers emergency requests (Section 12(d)).
• Legitimate interests, such as preventing false requests and keeping Sagip secure (Section 12(f)).
• Some information is sensitive personal information under the Data Privacy Act, such as government-issued ID details and the health information in incident reports. We process it with your consent, or, during an emergency, because it is needed to protect the life and health of the person involved when that person cannot give consent (Section 13(a) and 13(c)). For this reason, Sagip processes an emergency request from anyone, of any age and whether or not the account is verified.

7. Location and device permissions

Sagip asks only for the permissions it needs. You can change them in your phone's Settings, but turning one off may stop the matching feature from working.

• Location: residents share their location while using the app, to place the SOS on the map. Response teams share their location during an active trip; on Android, a visible notification stays on while location is shared with the screen locked. We do not ask for always-on background location for residents.
• Camera and photos: to take or attach proof photos, valid ID photos, a profile photo, rescue proof photos, and Barangay Channel images.
• SMS, phone state, and calls (Android): to send the Offline SOS text message, choose a SIM on dual-SIM phones, place the call to the MDRRMO hotline, and prepare a borrow-load message for Globe or TM. Sagip does not read your SMS inbox or call history. On iPhone, Sagip opens the Messages app and you tap Send yourself.
• Notifications: for requests, assignments, trip updates, verification results, and alerts.
• Motion (Android): to detect a shake for Shake SOS. You can turn shake off in Profile. On iPhone, Back Tap is set up in the phone's accessibility settings.
• Display over other apps (Android, optional): lets a shake bring Sagip to the front when it is in the background. It is not used for ads.

8. Who can see your information

We do not sell your personal information. It is shared only as follows:

• Dispatchers see each request with your name, contact number, verification status, uploaded ID, proof photo, and location.
• The assigned response team sees your name, contact number, address, landmark, location, proof photo, and whether your account is verified.
• Administrators see resident accounts and uploaded IDs to verify, reject, or ban accounts and to review deletion requests.
• The super administrator sees approved incident reports, can search and export them, and emails the Full Incident Report to the resident who asked for it. The Full Incident Report includes the resident's ID photos, so it is sent only to that resident's account email.
• The MDRRMO of Santa Maria may use incident reports for its monthly and annual reports and may disclose records when required by law, such as for a subpoena.
• Accepted connections see your last known location only if you allow location permission.
• Service providers that run parts of Sagip for us (Section 9).

9. Service providers

Sagip uses these providers, which process data under their own terms and privacy policies. Sign-in and sessions are handled by Better Auth, which runs on our own server.

• Railway: hosts our server and database.
• UploadThing: stores uploaded IDs and photos.
• Resend: sends emails, including one-time codes, verification results, account credentials, and Full Incident Reports.
• Google Maps Platform: maps, routes, and converting coordinates into addresses.
• Expo Push Service, Firebase Cloud Messaging, and the Apple Push Notification service: deliver push notifications.
• Firebase Analytics: limited usage events on Android.
• Google Sign-In: optional sign-in with a Google account, once approved by Google.

10. How long we keep information

• Account details and valid IDs: while your account exists. When an approved deletion request is processed, your account, sessions, connections, and messages are deleted.
• Incident reports and emergency request records: kept after an account is deleted, because the MDRRMO needs them for its reports and for legal requests. The link to the deleted account is removed.
• Rejected registrations: a record with the email, name, reason, the administrator who rejected it, and the time is kept to prevent repeated false registrations.
• Review records and account deletion requests: kept to show how each request was handled.
• When information is no longer needed, we delete or anonymize it.

11. Security

We protect personal information with these measures: passwords stored as hashes, an email one-time code at every sign-in, a lock after repeated wrong codes, role checks so each user sees only what their role needs, limits on repeated requests, checks on every piece of data sent to the server, sign-in tokens kept in the phone's secure storage, service keys kept out of the source code, and encrypted connections. No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the National Privacy Commission as required by law.

12. Your rights

Under the Data Privacy Act, you have the right to:

• Be informed about how your personal information is processed.
• Access your personal information.
• Correct inaccurate information. You can update most profile details in the app.
• Object to processing, or withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
• Ask for your information to be deleted or blocked, subject to Section 10.
• Get a copy of your information in a commonly used format.
• Claim damages for harm caused by inaccurate or unlawfully used personal information.
• File a complaint with the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph).
• To use these rights, contact us (Section 17). We may need to confirm your identity first, and we may decline a request that conflicts with a legal obligation or with emergency safety.

13. Account deletion

Residents can request deletion from Profile in the citizen app (Profile menu, then Delete account). The Account deletion page on this website explains the steps. An administrator reviews each request. You can keep using Sagip while the request is pending, and you can cancel it. A request may be blocked while you have an active SOS. Personnel accounts are not deleted through this process.

14. Children

Sagip is for users 13 years old and above. Users below 18 should use Sagip only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian. Sagip does not ask for a birthdate, so this age requirement is declared by the user and is not checked by the app. We do not knowingly create accounts for children below 13. If you believe a child below 13 has an account, contact us so we can remove it. An emergency request from anyone, of any age, is still processed to protect life and health (Section 6).

15. Information stored outside the Philippines

Some of our service providers store or process information outside the Philippines. We use providers that protect personal information and we stay responsible for it under the Data Privacy Act.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when Sagip or the law changes. We will change the dates above and give notice in the app, on the website, or by email.

17. Contact us

For questions, requests, or complaints about this policy or your personal information, contact the Sagip development team.

Data Protection Officer: Marc Erman D. Martinez Email: [email protected]

We will respond within a reasonable time, as required by the Data Privacy Act.