Privacy policy

This is the privacy policy for 4th at Square, a Windows application designed for making the most of the foursquare™ service.

By using the foursquare service, you are bound by their terms of service. Please review this documentation provided by Foursquare Labs, Inc:

Terms of Service: http://foursquare.com/legal/terms Privacy Policy: http://foursquare.com/legal/privacy Privacy 101 document: http://foursquare.com/privacy

This Privacy Policy may be updated and you can receive information about updates through this website, accessible via the app’s Settings pane. The latest version of the privacy policy is always at http://www.4thAtSquare.com/privacy.

This policy is additive to that of the foursquare privacy policy, since 4th at Square is a client application designed for use with that service.

Location API data

The application uses location data provided by Windows (via the “Location API”), when enabled and opted-in by the user.

Upon first launching the application, you will be prompted to allow or deny access to location information. You can adjust this setting in the future via the Settings charm.

How the Location API data is used:

Location data is used:

  • When looking for nearby places, the GPS data is used for a service call to foursquare to get this list.
  • When checking in to a place, the GPS data is sent to foursquare to validate the check-in, along with accuracy information.
  • To provide a “toast” notification suggesting that you check-in to a nearby place, when the app determines that you’re at a new location.
  • To provide a tile update notification suggesting that you check-in to a nearby place, when the app determines that you’re at a new location.
  • To provide a “toast” notification notifying you if a friend is nearby.
  • To provide a tile update notification notifying you if a friend is nearby.

Disclosure of location data:

When you decide to check-in to a place by using the “check-in” or “quick check-in” features, subject to the foursquare privacy policy, your location information is sent for validation and then optionally shared as you decide.

For quick check-in: Your check-in will be shared with your foursquare friends. Your defaults stored with foursquare for telling Facebook or Twitter are used. By default they are off until you connect and opt in.

For check-in: There are opt-in switches to enable sharing your friends on other services, which are:

  • Facebook: check to post your check-in to a place on Facebook.
  • Twitter: check to post your check-in to a place on Twitter.

Notifications and tile updates

By default, 4th at Square will provide a reminder via a “toast” notification which makes it quick and easy to check into a location as you use your PC in different locations, or to notify you if a friend is nearby. It will also update its Start tile with a similar suggestion. Each of these features can be disabled by opening the Settings charm while in the app, and selecting “options” and then toggling one or both of the “toast ” and “tile updates” options for each kind of notification. Note that while any of these features is enabled, a 4th at Square background task will attempt to determine your location (of course, this only happens after you have first opted into allowing the app access to it). If both options are disabled, the background task will never run and never attempt to determine your location.

Information collected or recorded

When connecting to the foursquare service, the application will collect an authentication token through an authentication mechanism provided by that service. Your password is never stored by the application.

If either of the “toast” notification or “tile update” options are enabled (they are by default), the app will temporarily store the name of the last location it advertised to you. This is only stored locally on your computer and is used exclusively for the purposes of displaying helpful toast and tile notifications (and to avoid repeated notifications for the same location). If both notification options are disabled, then the recorded location name is immediately cleared and no new location names will be recorded (unless one or both of those options is later re-enabled).

As of version 1.1.1, some debugging information may be recorded to a log file on your hard drive. By default, this data only contains information about errors the application encounters. The “Detailed Logging” option enables logging additional debugging information which, if enabled, may contain name of places or friends which appears in app notifications. This information is never transmitted by the application, and is only used to aid in support and troubleshooting.

4th at Square does not transmit your location or any other information to any parties, including the app author, other than the foursquare service as described above.

Using other social networks via foursquare

In interacting with the foursquare service, you may have connected your foursquare account to other social networking sites (“external services”). In using 4th at Square with the foursquare service, you may be able to post information to one or more of those external services, which may include personally identifiable information. For example, if you connect your foursquare account to the Twitter or Facebook service, you may be able to share your location and comments or photos to others using one or more of those services. In some cases, you can configure actions on foursquare to automatically submit data to these services. In other cases, you can manually opt-in when taking those actions (i.e. when checking into foursquare, you may choose to toggle the “Twitter” or “Facebook” switches to the on position, enabling transmission of your check-in data to those sites).

If you use external services such as these with foursquare, you must read the privacy policies of those services.

Contacting the developer

If you have any questions about this policy, please e-mail support@4thAtSquare.com

foursquare™ is a trademark of Foursquare Labs, Inc. This application uses the foursquare™ application programming interface but is not endorsed or certified by Foursquare Labs, Inc.

Recent Posts

Introducing 4th at Square Lite – Free version, available now.

A new, free edition of 4th at Square is now available in the Windows Store. 4th at Square Lite shares the same codebase as the paid version and the same feature set, with the following differences:

  • Does not support background updates to the live tile.
    • (It will still update when you check-in or view the Friends page)
  • Does not support notifications (i.e. check-in reminders, or nearby friends).
  • Contains advertising.
  • Contains “nag text” at the bottom inviting you to install the paid version.

My plan is to keep both versions in sync for all future updates. However, it is possible that additional features may be added to the paid version which won’t appear in the free one. This is particularly true for future updates which will make use of a server back-end (i.e. notifications whenever a friend checks in, and live tile updates for pinned locations or friends).

  1. Version 1.4.1 in the Store Comments Off on Version 1.4.1 in the Store
  2. New update (1.4) adds Comments, Likes, and more Comments Off on New update (1.4) adds Comments, Likes, and more
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