Privacy policy

Yammak is a service run by Alhareth Ali Jasim Al-mashhadani as a sole trader, in Baghdad, Iraq, and he is responsible for the personal data this policy describes. Where we say “we” or “Yammak”, we mean him and the people who work with him to run the service.

For any question or request about your data or this policy, write to us at [email protected].

Iraq does not yet have a law in force dedicated to protecting personal data; the bills for one have not been passed. But the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to personal privacy (Article 17) and forbids monitoring or disclosing communications and electronic correspondence except by judicial decision (Article 40); Civil Code No. 40 of 1951 obliges anyone who infringes another’s freedom or reputation to compensate them (Article 205); and Penal Code No. 111 of 1969 punishes disclosing a secret learned through one’s work (Article 437). We comply with all of these, and with the Communications and Media Commission’s framework for digital platforms, which requires following international best practice in protecting data.

We process each piece of data on one of three bases. The first is performing the contract between us — our terms of use: to connect you with a ride or bring riders to you, work out the fare, keep the trip record, and contact you about it. The second is your consent, for what is optional: verifying your account as a rider, location permission, notifications and sharing your trip. The third is an obligation the law imposes, such as keeping commercial records for seven years under Article 18 of Commercial Law No. 30 of 1984, and complying with a judicial decision.

You can withdraw your consent: turn off location or notifications in your phone’s settings, and stop sharing your trip whenever you like. Verification photos stay as long as your account does, and are deleted when you delete it.

You sign in to Yammak in one of three ways: with a Google account, with an Apple account, or with your email address and a password. If you sign in with Google or Apple, they give us a permanent identifier for your account, your name and your email address — which may be a relay address Apple creates if you choose to hide your email — and we never see your password with them. A Google or Apple account can be linked to only one Yammak account.

If you register with your email, we keep your name, your email and your password — not the password itself, but a fingerprint of it from which it cannot be recovered. We send a six-digit code to your email to confirm it, and another if you forget your password, through the email service Resend. Each code is valid for ten minutes, and we keep only a fingerprint of it.

You can add a phone number so our team can reach you. We do not verify this number with a code, and we do not use it to sign you in, to match you with a driver or rider, or to work out a fare; the other person on a trip never sees it. Our team sees it in order to contact you, and if you drive, we compare it with the numbers on other driver accounts to catch duplicate accounts.

We do not offer signing in with a code sent to a phone number today; if we offer it later, we will say so here before it is switched on. Once you sign in, your phone keeps a sign-in key that lasts thirty days, so you do not have to sign in every time.

The driver app sends us the driver’s location continuously while they are online, even in the background, so we can offer them nearby requests. Outside trips we keep no history of where a driver has been: we keep only their latest position, and it is erased when they stop taking requests or their location goes quiet. During a trip that is under way, we record a point of the car’s route every thirty seconds or so.

The rider app asks for your location once, only to open the map where you are; it does not follow you. The pickup and destination you choose are kept with the trip, as a point on the map and an address.

We keep the recorded route of every trip, with no end date, so we can go back to it after an incident or a dispute. On our team, those allowed to handle trips see each trip's pickup and destination addresses, and those allowed to watch drivers online see each online driver's name, phone number and approximate area. Only one page draws a trip's recorded route, next to its planned route where the trip has one, and every opening of it is logged against the person who opened it.

If you share your trip, the person you send the link to sees the trip's status, the pickup and destination addresses, the car's model, colour and plate, your driver's first name, and the car's approximate position while the trip is under way. They see no phone number. The position disappears when the trip ends, and the link itself stops working 15 minutes later, or as soon as you stop sharing.

Verifying your account as a rider is entirely optional. If you choose it, you upload a photo of your ID, then a selfie holding a code the app gives you. Both photos are encrypted before they are stored, and only our team can see them, through an internal, audited tool that logs every time either photo is opened.

The number you type is stored only as a keyed fingerprint, for comparison, not for reading; the photo of your card, which shows it, is kept encrypted as described above.

We keep these two photos for as long as your account exists, and delete them when you delete your account.

To approve a driver, we ask for four photos — their national ID, driving licence, a photo of themselves and the vehicle's registration — and three details they type: their national ID number, their licence number and the licence's expiry date, plus the car's plate, make, model and colour. The photos, the national ID number and the licence number are encrypted before storage; only the members of our team who review drivers can see them, and every opening of a photo is logged.

If you apply on the drivers’ application site, we also ask your gender and your province, and record that your application came through the site. To stop one person opening more than one driver account, we keep fingerprints of your national ID and licence numbers for comparison, and whoever reviews your application is shown any other driver account that shares a fingerprint, a phone number, a car plate or a name. Each match is a warning a person decides on — except a national ID number matching a driver who is approved or under review, in which case approval is refused.

We keep your documents as long as your account exists, and delete them when it is deleted. When your licence or the car’s registration expires, you stop receiving requests until you upload a new one and our team approves it.

Notifications reach your phone through Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging service. Most carry only the kind of notification and reference numbers, and your app writes the sentence you read. Some carry a little more, because you need it at a glance: a new chat message carries its text, a ride offer to a driver carries the fare and the pickup area, and a cash-settlement notice to a driver carries the amount. No notification carries map coordinates.

Chat messages between you and your driver are deleted automatically 90 days after the trip ends. Until then, members of our team allowed to handle trips can read a trip's chat to answer a complaint or a dispute, and every opening is logged. A new message's text also travels in the notification that tells the other person about it.

The one exception: a trip with a Safe Stop or a help request raised during monitoring. We keep that chat with no end date, because those are exactly the trips we may be asked about later.

We keep every trip's status changes, its recorded route, and any monitoring event or Safe Stop on it, because that is the record we go back to for a dispute or an official request.

A seat's boarding code on a trip between cities is shown only on your own screen, and our team never sees it.

During a trip that is under way, the system watches for the car stopping for an unusually long time, its location going quiet, and — on trips between cities — its drifting far from the planned route; the app then asks you whether you are all right, and we keep the question and your answer with the trip. The driver is not penalised for this and is not told about it.

With each trip we also keep its fare, your rating of the driver and any comment you write, any pickup note you leave, and any request from you or the driver never to be matched again. For each driver we keep their money records, their plan and their car's details. For each phone you use we keep its notification token, its system and the app version. We also record each notice from Yammak that you open, so we can show you which ones you have not read yet.

This website uses no cookies and no analytics; it keeps only the language and appearance you choose, in your browser. The drivers’ application site uses one cookie for your session and one to protect its forms, and we set nothing else there; its button for signing in with Google loads a script from Google itself.

Each side of a trip sees only what it needs from the other to complete it. The rider sees their driver’s name, the car’s model, colour and plate, and the car’s approximate position. The driver sees the rider’s name, the pickup and destination points and their addresses, the fare, any pickup note, and the “verified rider” mark if there is one. Neither sees the other’s phone number.

Our team sees your data only as far as each person’s work requires, and each sees only what their permissions allow. We do not sell your data; we hand it to an official body only on a request grounded in law; and we disclose chat messages to no one outside Yammak except by judicial decision, as Article 40 of the Constitution requires.

We use providers that process data for us and on our instructions: Hetzner, from whom we rent the servers your data is stored on; Cloudflare, through which all connections between the apps and Yammak’s servers pass, to protect them and carry them encrypted; Google, to deliver notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging and for signing in with Google; Apple, for signing in with Apple; and Resend, to send email codes.

Maps, addresses and route calculation come from a map server we run ourselves: it receives pickup and destination points and whatever you type when you search for an address, and both apps load their maps from it. We give each provider only what it needs to do its work for us.

Your data is kept on servers in the European Union, that is, outside Iraq, and the providers above process some of it in the United States and other countries. Iraqi law does not currently restrict keeping personal data abroad or transferring it there, and we apply the same protection to it wherever it is. When you sign in with Google or Apple, their own privacy policies also apply to you.

Data travels between the apps and our servers encrypted. Identity and document photos, and a driver’s national ID and licence numbers, are encrypted before they are stored, and the photos can be opened only through an internal tool that checks the permission of whoever opens them and logs every opening. We keep passwords, sign-in codes and sign-in keys only as fingerprints from which they cannot be recovered.

Our team signs in to the admin console with a password and two-step verification, and every change to their permissions is recorded. Every day we take a backup of the database and the documents and keep it off the server; the documents stay encrypted in it.

No system is free of risk. If we learn of a breach that affects your data, we will tell you without delay what happened and what we did about it.

Chat messages: ninety days after the trip ends, except on a trip with a Safe Stop or a request for help. Sign-in codes: they stop working after a few minutes (ten for email codes). The sign-in key on your phone: thirty days. A trip’s share link: until fifteen minutes after the trip ends. A driver’s position outside trips: only while they are online.

Rider verification photos, and drivers’ documents and their numbers: as long as the account exists, and deleted with it. Trip records — their statuses, route, safety events, fare, bookings and ratings — and a driver’s money records: with no end date, and after an account is deleted they stay with no name or phone number. The Commercial Law requires financial records to be kept for at least seven years (Article 18), and a claim about a trip can be brought years after it (Article 232 of the Civil Code; Article 86 of the Transport Law).

Copies of deleted data remain in backups until they are replaced in the normal cycle, and then they are gone. Deletion does not reach what the providers above keep themselves under their own policies.

Because Iraqi law does not yet set out your rights over your data in detail, we commit to these: to know what we keep about you, to get a copy of it, to correct what is wrong, and to delete your account. Write to us at [email protected] from the email address on your account, so we know the request is yours, and we will answer as soon as we can.

To delete your account: from inside the app, where it is deleted at once, or by asking us. The Delete your account page explains what is deleted and what stays.

In every case you can also complain to the Consumer Protection Council, or go to the courts.

Yammak is for adults. No one under eighteen — the age of majority under Article 106 of the Civil Code — may open an account, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. We do not ask your date of birth, so we rely on your statement of your age when you accept the terms; if we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we delete it.

We change this policy when what the system does, or what the law requires, changes. We publish the new text here with the date it takes effect, and announce any significant change in the app before it takes effect. This version is in force from 21 September 2026.

The Arabic text of this policy is the authoritative one; the English and Kurdish texts are translations of it. If they differ, the Arabic text prevails.