Privacy Policy

Account and profile information

Signing in is required to use the App. You may sign in either with your phone number or with your Google account; we collect only what the method you choose provides.

If you sign in with your phone number:

• Phone number — collected when you sign in with a one-time password (OTP). Your full phone number is stored encrypted at rest on our backend; by default only the last 4 digits are visible to our team, and any access to the full number is logged in an audit trail.
• How your code is delivered — by default we send your code as a WhatsApp message through the WhatsApp Business Platform, operated by Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”). To deliver it, Meta receives your phone number and the code, and reports back whether the message was sent, delivered, read, or failed. If WhatsApp delivery is unavailable, or you tap “Get the code by SMS instead”, the code is sent by SMS through Google Firebase Phone Authentication. The same applies to the code that confirms a bus owner's mobile number during bus registration. We never send riders marketing on WhatsApp. Other uses of our WhatsApp number are described under “Messages on our WhatsApp number” below. Your use of WhatsApp itself is governed by WhatsApp's own terms and privacy policy.
• OTP security records — used solely to check your code, rate-limit requests, and prevent abuse: a hashed phone number, the code stored only as a keyed hash, a copy of your number encrypted for that single sign-in attempt, a hashed device identifier, the message's delivery status, and timestamps. Your phone number and code are never stored in readable form in these records.

If you sign in with Google (via Firebase Authentication and Google Sign-In), we receive from your Google account:

• Email address — provided by your Google account and stored on our backend as your account identifier.
• Name and profile photo URL — provided by your Google account and used to pre-fill your profile.
• We receive no other Google data. We do not access your Google password, contacts, Drive, or any other Google service, and we never post to your Google account.

Regardless of sign-in method:

• Profile details — display name, city, and preferences (such as theme) that you choose to provide or set.
• Sign-in and activity records — the account creation date, the date you last signed in, the last time you used the Service, and a record of each day you used it, with whether that was the App or the website and the time of your first visit that day. We use these for account security and support, and to understand how often the Service is used. They contain no location and no route.

Profile photo (optional)

• Photo you choose — you may add a profile photo. This is entirely optional; the App is fully usable without one.
• How it is selected — the photo is chosen through your device's system photo picker, which hands the App the single image you select. The App does not request gallery-wide storage permission and cannot read, browse, or index the other photos on your device.
• Processing before upload — the image is resized on your device to a maximum of 512×512 pixels and re-encoded before it is transmitted. The original full-resolution file never leaves your device.
• Where it is stored — the resized image is stored in our object storage and served over HTTPS. Only JPEG, PNG, and WebP images up to 1 MB are accepted.
• Who can see it — you see your profile photo in the App's Profile and Settings screens. If you post in the rider community, other signed-in riders also see it next to your posts and comments, unless you turn off “Show my name and photo”. It is not shared with third parties.
• What we do not do — we do not apply facial recognition, biometric analysis, or any automated inference to your photo, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.
• Removal — you can delete your photo at any time from Profile → Profile photo → Remove photo, whether you uploaded it or it came from your Google account. This deletes any image we stored and your profile reverts to your initials. The removal is recorded, so signing in with Google again will not silently restore the Google photo; if you later want it back, “Use my Google photo” in the same menu puts it back on request.

Rider community (posts, comments, photos and reports)

The App includes a community in which signed-in riders share updates about Chennai buses, routes and stops. Taking part is optional. When you use it, we store:

• What you post — posts (for example a bus delay, a route diversion, or a report about a stop), comments and replies, the route or stop you attach them to, Lost & Found items, and any expiry time you choose.
• Photos you choose to post — taken with your device's camera app or chosen through the system photo picker, and only when you add one to a post. Before upload, each photo is re-encoded on your device to at most 1,600 pixels on its long side, and all embedded metadata is removed, including GPS location, camera make and model, and capture time. Photos are stored with Cloudflare R2 and shown to other users with your post.
• Your interactions — confirmations (“I see this too”), “helpful” marks, saved posts, the routes and stops you follow, riders you block, and reports you file (with the reason and any note you add).
• Community notifications addressed to you, and contribution counts (such as posts made and confirmations received) used to work out your community level.

How you appear to other riders. Your posts, comments and Lost & Found items are shown to other signed-in riders with your display name and profile photo, together with your community level. Community content you publish is visible to all signed-in users of the App.

You control this. Show my name and photo, in My community inside the App, turns it off: your contributions — including everything you have already posted — are then shown under a pseudonym such as “Rider 1B0F”, derived from your account. You can turn it back on at any time. Your phone number and email address are never shown to other riders either way, and a rider who has not set a display name is shown under the pseudonym.

Nearby community feed. To show reports from stops around you, your device sends its coordinates to our transit service to find the nearest stops (see Location information below). Only the identifiers of those stops, never your coordinates, are sent to the community service.

Screening and moderation. Text is checked automatically for personal details such as phone numbers, UPI ids, OTPs, and Aadhaar, PAN or card numbers, and is refused if it contains them. Some posts are held for review before they appear. Our moderators review reported content and, to act on abuse, can see the account behind a post, limited to its display name and the last 4 digits of its phone number. Moderation actions are recorded in an audit log.

Location information

• Precise device location (foreground only) — collected only when you use a feature that needs it: the Home screen (when you open it, we look up your nearest stop to name your location at the top), Nearby Stops, the Nearby Live map, the journey planner (when you plan a journey from where you are), or the community's Nearby feed. Your device's coordinates are sent over an encrypted connection to our servers for the sole purpose of working out the stops, routes, buses and journeys near you at that moment.
• Weather on the Home screen — if you choose “Use current location”, your location is rounded to about 1 km and our server asks WeatherAPI.com for the weather there. WeatherAPI.com receives only that rounded location, not your identity. We keep the answer for about an hour against the rounded location, with nothing linking it to you.
• We do not collect location in the background, do not keep your coordinates after answering the request, do not write them to our server logs, do not build a history of your movements, and do not use your location for advertising. Our hosting and network providers carry these requests and may hold them briefly.
• Location permission is optional. If you deny it, the features that do not need your location continue to work.

Live bus contribution data (“telemetry”)

When you view live bus tracking, the App fetches live bus positions from the official MTC public service. To improve accuracy for everyone, a copy of that bus information is contributed to our servers in the background:

• Bus data — the vehicle number, route number, position, and refresh timestamps of the buses you view. This describes the bus, but it is stored day by day under your contribution ID, so it also shows which buses and routes your account viewed and when.
• Account-linked contribution ID — a random identifier generated by our server for your signed-in account so contributions can be authenticated (uploads are cryptographically signed) and remain consistent across reinstalls and devices. It is not your advertising ID and is never shared with advertisers.
• App version and platform (e.g., Android), for compatibility.

Usage and analytics data

We use Google Firebase Analytics to understand how the App is used. This includes screens viewed, features used, and in-app events such as route searches, route/stop views, and live-tracking opens (which may include the route numbers or stop names you searched or viewed). When a search finds nothing, the text you typed is included, cut to 40 characters, so we can see what is missing. If you answer the optional question shown when you return after a while, your answer is sent too. Analytics data is associated with a pseudonymous app-instance identifier and may be associated with your account identifier so we can improve the Service for signed-in users. Analytics data is used in aggregate; we do not use it to identify you personally.

Device and technical data

• Device model, operating system version, app version, preferred language, and network state.
• IP address — received by our servers and our service providers when your device makes network requests. Our live-tracking server keeps it for up to 14 days in a request log, with the time and the service requested (for example which route's live data), to keep the Service secure and diagnose faults. That log never contains your coordinates.
• Push-notification token — in the App, collected only when you set a bus arrival alert (Section 10). It is an identifier issued by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging so that a notification can be delivered to your device. Browser notifications are covered under “Using the website” below.
• Advertising ID — read by Google Firebase Analytics, and by Google Mobile Ads (AdMob) and by Meta Audience Network and Unity Ads, which supply some of the ads, to serve and measure the App's ads (see Section 4).
• Crash and diagnostic data (Firebase Crashlytics) — when the App crashes or encounters a serious error, a crash report is sent automatically to Google Firebase Crashlytics. A report contains the crash stack trace, device model and operating-system version, app version, device state at the time of the crash (such as orientation and available memory/disk), timestamps, and a per-installation identifier Crashlytics uses to count affected devices. Crash reports do not include your name, phone number, location, or account identity, and are used solely to diagnose and fix bugs. Additional diagnostic data may also be collected through Google Play services.

Data stored only on your device

The following stay on your device (local storage) and are not uploaded: your recent routes and searches, cached route/stop data, cached fleet directory, theme preference, and cached sign-in profile. They are removed when you clear the App's data or uninstall the App. Your favourites are kept on your device too, and a copy is saved to your account (see “Favourites” below).

What we do NOT collect

The App does not collect: contacts, microphone data, files, SMS content (OTP auto-read is handled by the OS/Google Play services), your WhatsApp chats or contacts (on supported phones WhatsApp can hand the sign-in code to the App so it fills in by itself, and that code is all the App receives; anything you send to our number is covered below), background location, location history, payment or financial information, or government identifiers. The App contains no payments and no bookings.

The App does not browse your photo gallery or use your camera on its own. We receive only the images you deliberately choose: the profile photo you pick through your device's system photo picker, and photos you add to a community post, taken with your device's camera app or picked through the system photo picker. We cannot see any other photo on your device.

Messages on our WhatsApp number

Our WhatsApp number is also a support line. If you message it, we store:

• What you send — the text (a sign-in code you paste is removed first), your WhatsApp profile name, the time, and any photo, video, voice note, document or location you share. Files are kept in private storage. From a contact card we keep only the name.
• Your number — stored hashed and encrypted, with the last 4 digits readable, and it can be matched to your TNBusStand account. Our team sees the last 4 digits by default, and any access to the full number is logged in an audit trail.

Our team reads these messages and can reply, and replies are stored with them.

Messages we send. Besides sign-in codes and replies to you, we send invitations and updates about listing a bus on TNBusStand, only to bus owners and operators who agreed to receive them. You can opt out with the button in the message or by replying STOP; we then keep a hashed record of your number so that we do not message you again. We keep a record of which numbers these messages went to (hashed, with the last 4 digits) so that nobody is invited twice. We never send riders marketing on WhatsApp.

Using the website

You can search routes, stops and timings on the website without an account. If you sign in or use the features below, we also store or process:

• Sign-in — you sign in with your phone number in the same way as in the App, and a cookie keeps you signed in. The sign-in and activity records described above apply.
• Location — if you allow your browser to share it, your coordinates are sent to our servers to find the stops and buses near you. They are handled like the App's: used for that request, not kept, and not written to our server logs. If you do not allow it, the site shows Chennai's city centre or asks you to search instead.
• Browser notifications — if you turn them on: a push token issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging, your browser's user-agent, and the stops and routes you follow.
• Saved routes — up to 10 routes you save to your account.
• Reviews — the rating, title and comment you submit. Our team checks each one before it appears, and it is then shown publicly with your display name.
• Wrong-information reports — what you report and which route, stop or service it is about. These go to our team and are not shown publicly.
• Issue reports — what you write in the report-an-issue form, the page you were on, your browser's user-agent, a session identifier, and your email address if you give one.
• Website analytics — we use Google Analytics, and Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights, to see which pages are visited and how quickly they load.

Bus owners and operators

This covers registering and managing a bus attnbusstand.com/bus-register or in theOperators App. Both use the same account and the same records. We collect:

• Business and contact details — operator type, business name, the owner or authorised person's name, your mobile number (confirmed by OTP and stored encrypted), an optional WhatsApp number (also encrypted) and email address, and your business address.
• Bus and service details — registration numbers, bus type, make, model and seating capacity, and each bus's route, stops, operating days, timings and approximate fare.
• Photos and documents you upload — kept in private storage, visible only to our verification team through short-lived links, and never shown to passengers (bus photos may be shown once a bus is approved). Photos uploaded on the website are resized in your browser, which removes embedded location metadata.
• Driver details — the names and mobile numbers of drivers you add, and the bus each is assigned to. Numbers are stored encrypted, with a hash and the last 4 digits. Passengers never see them. Add only drivers who know you are sharing their details; a driver can ask us about their record at [email protected].
• Tracking preferences — the tracking method you choose and, optionally, your GPS provider or device name. We never ask for provider passwords or API keys in the form.
• Messages to our team — support questions and change requests you send, and our replies.
• Plan and payment records — if you buy a live-tracking plan: the buses covered, the period, the amount, the receipt number and the payment reference. Payments are handled by Cashfree Payments, which receives your name, mobile number and email address to process them. Your card, UPI and bank details go to Cashfree, not to us.
• Consent records — which consents you gave, their version and time, a hashed (not raw) IP address and your browser's user-agent.

We use this to verify your service, manage your registration and plans, contact you about them, connect live tracking where applicable, and show passenger-facing transport information — your business name, bus and route details and, once tracking is active, permitted live location and status. Your phone numbers, email, address and documents are never shown to passengers. How live vehicle location is handled is set out in the Operator Live Tracking Agreement.

The Operators App signs you in with your phone number in the same way as the App, and keeps an unfinished registration on your phone until you submit it. Its map is drawn by Google Maps. It has no location permission, carries no ads, and contains no analytics or crash-reporting SDK. Photos and documents reach us only when you choose them with your camera, gallery or file picker.

Feedback and issue reports in the App

If you use Send feedback or Report an issue (Settings → Help & feedback), we receive what you write and, for an issue, the kind of problem you pick. To help us find the problem, each report also carries:

• your account, so we know whose report it is;
• the app version and build, your Android version, your phone's maker and model, and the language the App is set to;
• the names of the last few screens you opened (such as the live tracking screen), never the route, stop or bus you looked at.

A report does not include your location, contacts or photos. Reports go to our team only and are never shown publicly. Issue reports from the website are described under “Using the website” above.

Favourites

When you save a route, stop or bus as a favourite, the App keeps it on your phone and also saves it to your account, so that your favourites come back when you reinstall the App, clear its data, or sign in on another phone. For each favourite we store which route, stop or bus it is (the route number, the stop, or the bus's number), what the App shows for it (such as where the route runs, or the route the bus was last seen on) and when you saved it. Favourites contain no location.

Removing a favourite in the App removes it from your account too. If someone else signs in to the App on your phone, your favourites are taken off the phone, stay on your account, and are never shown to them.

• Phone number, OTP records — sign you in (sending your code on WhatsApp or by SMS), secure your account, prevent OTP abuse and fraud.
• Google email, name, photo URL — sign you in with Google, identify your account, pre-fill your profile.
• Profile details — personalise the App (name, city, theme).
• Sign-in and activity records — keep your account secure, give support, and understand how often the Service is used.
• Location (when you use a feature listed in Section 1) — work out nearby stops, routes, live buses, and journeys, name your location on the Home screen, and show local weather; nothing else.
• Community posts, comments, photos, and interactions — run the rider community: show your posts to other riders, notify you of replies and updates, and work out community levels.
• Display name and profile photo shown on community content — let riders see who wrote a report, unless you turn this off.
• Reports, blocks, and moderation records — keep the community safe, act on abuse, and meet legal obligations.
• Website saved routes, notifications, reviews and reports — run those features, check reviews before they appear, correct wrong information, and answer issue reports.
• Feedback and issue reports from the App — find and fix problems, and decide what to improve.
• Favourite routes, stops and buses — keep your favourites with your account, so they come back when you reinstall the App or sign in on another phone.
• Bus owner and operator details — verify your service, manage your registration and plans, contact you, and show passengers your bus and route details.
• Messages on our WhatsApp number — read and answer your messages, give support, and act on reports.
• Bus contribution data — learn each bus's typical routes and timings to make live information more reliable for everyone; personalise features tied to your account, such as trip suggestions and arrival alerts.
• Usage and analytics data — understand which features matter, improve performance.
• Crash and diagnostic data — detect, diagnose, and fix crashes and bugs.
• Device and technical data — compatibility, security, fraud prevention, diagnostics.
• A bus arrival alert you set (which bus and which stop) and your device's push-notification token — watch that bus and send you a notification as it nears your stop.

We do not sell your personal data. We do not share your phone number or your location with advertisers.

We process personal data on the basis of your consent (given when you sign in and when you grant permissions such as location or notifications) and, where applicable, legitimate uses recognised by the DPDP Act (such as security, fraud prevention, and compliance with law). You may withdraw consent at any time by revoking a device permission, signing out, or deleting your account; withdrawal does not affect processing already carried out.

In the App — Google AdMob, Meta Audience Network and Unity Ads

The Android App is free and is funded by advertising served through Google AdMob. Through AdMob's mediation feature, two other ad networks, Meta Audience Network (Meta Platforms, Inc.) and Unity Ads (Unity Technologies), can also offer an ad for the same space, and the best offer is the one shown. The App uses these ad formats:

• a banner pinned to the bottom of most screens;
• an occasional full-screen (interstitial) ad, shown only at a break you chose — when you open live bus tracking or move from one screen to another — and never more than once every five minutes;
• native ads, each labelled as an advertisement, placed among the content of screens such as Home, Explore, route and stop lists, and route and stop pages; and
• rewarded ads, which play only when you choose to watch one, in return for a benefit: a period without ads, an offline copy of a route's timetable, or a bus arrival alert after your account's first one, which is free. Nothing the App already offers is locked behind an advertisement.

Ads never open by themselves, and they are never shown on the sign-in, Privacy Policy, or Terms screens.

• What the ad networks receive — to serve and measure ads, Google, Meta, Unity, and their ad partners may collect and use your device's advertising ID, your IP address (from which a general area, such as your city, can be worked out), coarse device and app information, and your interactions with the ads, each under its own privacy policy.
• We never share your identity with advertisers — your phone number, name, email, profile photo, saved places, searches, and precise location are never sent to AdMob, Meta Audience Network, Unity Ads, or any ad network. The App does not pass your location to ad networks, and the App does not hold the permission needed to read nearby Wi-Fi networks.
• Consent in the EEA and UK — where required, Google's User Messaging Platform asks for your consent before personalised ads are served, and ads are not requested until that question is resolved.
• You can limit ad personalisation or reset/delete your advertising ID at any time in Android Settings → Google → Ads (or Settings → Privacy → Ads). The App keeps working normally.
• Meta's privacy policy, which covers Audience Network: www.facebook.com/privacy/policy.
• Unity's privacy policy for people who see its ads in apps: unity.com/legal/game-player-and-app-user-privacy-policy.

On the website — no advertising

The website does not show advertisements and does not use any advertising network. It uses Google Analytics cookies to understand site traffic. You can disable cookies in your browser settings at any time.

• Learn how Google uses data from apps and sites that use its services: Google's Privacy & Terms.

We share information only as described here:

• Service providers — Google LLC provides Firebase Authentication (sign-in sessions, SMS codes, and Google sign-in), Firebase Analytics, Firebase Crashlytics (crash reporting), Firebase Cloud Messaging (delivery of arrival-alert notifications), Google Cloud (hosting of our arrival-alert service), Google Maps (map rendering), Google AdMob (advertising in the App), and related infrastructure. Meta Platforms, Inc. (through Meta Audience Network) and Unity Technologies (through Unity Ads) supply some of the ads shown in the App through AdMob mediation and receive the advertising data described in Section 4. Separately, Meta Platforms, Inc. carries our WhatsApp messages through the WhatsApp Business Platform: the sign-in codes we send, and the messages described under “Messages on our WhatsApp number” in Section 1. Cloudflare, Inc. stores community photos (Cloudflare R2) and carries traffic to our servers. WeatherAPI.com supplies the weather on the App's Home screen and receives only the rounded location described in Section 1. Cashfree Payments processes bus operators' plan payments. Vercel, Inc. hosts the website and its API and provides website analytics. Supabase, Inc. hosts our main database and file storage. Other cloud hosting providers store the rest of our backend data. These providers process data under their own policies and our instructions.
• Other users of the App — community posts, comments, photos and Lost & Found items you publish are shown to other signed-in users with your display name and profile photo, or under a pseudonym if you turn that off. Your phone number and email are not shown. Reviews on the website are shown publicly with your display name.
• Passengers — once a bus is approved, its business name, bus and route details and bus photos are shown to passengers.
• MTC public services — for some live-tracking views the App connects directly from your device to MTC's public bus-tracking service to fetch live positions. In those requests MTC's servers receive your device's IP address, as with any internet request. We do not send MTC your identity.
• Legal requirements — we may disclose information if required by law, court order, or a lawful request by public authorities, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of users, the public, or the Service.
• Change of ownership — if our business or the Service is restructured, acquired, or otherwise passes to another organisation, your information may move to that organisation as part of the transaction. Any recipient will be required to safeguard it on terms no weaker than this Policy and in keeping with the law.

We never sell personal data, and we never share it with third parties for their own marketing.

• All network traffic uses HTTPS/TLS; unencrypted (cleartext) connections are disabled in the App. The one exception stays on your phone: Meta's ad SDK uses a local connection (127.0.0.1) to cache ad video, and nothing leaves your device over it.
• Telemetry uploads are cryptographically signed (HMAC-SHA256) so our servers can reject tampered or replayed data.
• Phone numbers are encrypted at rest; team access to full numbers is on-demand only and audit-logged.
• Sign-in codes are generated randomly, stored only as keyed hashes, expire within minutes, work only once, and lock after repeated wrong attempts.
• Community photos have all metadata, including GPS location, removed on your device before upload; community text containing phone numbers, UPI ids, OTPs, or identity or card numbers is refused.
• Access to backend systems is restricted and controlled.

No system can be completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute protection. What we do commit to is applying the safeguards — technical and procedural alike — that the law expects of us.

• Account and profile data — retained until you delete your account.
• Profile photo — retained until you remove it or delete your account, whichever is first. Removing it deletes the stored image; each replacement also deletes the image it replaced, so we hold at most one photo per account.
• OTP and rate-limit records — deleted automatically after 30 days.
• Sign-in and activity records — kept until you delete your account.
• Community content — posts, comments and photos are kept until you delete them, a moderator removes them, or your account is deleted; deleting a post also deletes its photos. Time-limited reports (such as bus delays) stop being shown when they expire. Read notifications are deleted after 30 days and all notifications after 90 days. Reports and moderation records are kept for as long as needed to keep the community safe and to meet legal obligations.
• Bus contribution data — retained to operate and improve the live-tracking service. The log kept under your contribution ID stays until you delete your account, and is deleted then. Other copies hold only the contribution ID, and once your account is gone nothing connects that ID to you.
• Website data — reviews, saved routes, followed stops and routes, push tokens, and wrong-information and issue reports are kept until you delete your account, unless you remove them sooner.
• Feedback and issue reports from the App — kept until you delete your account.
• Favourites — kept until you remove them in the App or delete your account.
• Bus owner and operator records — kept while your registration is active, and afterwards for as long as needed to settle disputes and meet legal obligations. Payment records and receipts are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Analytics and advertising data — retained by Google and, for the App ads they supply, by Meta and Unity, under their own retention settings and policies.
• WhatsApp sign-in messages — the message stays in your WhatsApp chat until you delete it; Meta keeps its delivery records under its WhatsApp Business terms.
• Messages on our WhatsApp number — deleted automatically after 12 months, and sooner when your account is deleted or when you ask us to delete them. If you asked us to stop messaging you, we keep a hashed record of your number so that we can honour that.
• Server request logs — kept for 14 days.
• Crash reports — retained by Google Firebase Crashlytics for 90 days.
• Arrival alerts — the push-notification token is deleted from our alert service when the alert ends. What remains (which bus, which stop, and how the alert ended) is deleted within about three days, or sooner if you set another alert. One thing is kept for as long as you have an account: a note that your account has used its one free alert, with the date. It records no bus and no stop, and exists so that the free alert cannot be claimed again by reinstalling the App.
• On-device data — retained until you clear the App's data or uninstall.

We may retain limited data longer where required by law, for dispute resolution, or for fraud and abuse prevention, and we may keep anonymised, aggregated data that can no longer identify you.

Under the DPDP Act and this Policy you can:

• Access and correct — view and edit your display name, city, profile photo, and preferences any time in the App (Profile/Settings).
• Delete your account — visit tnbusstand.com/delete-account or email [email protected] with the subject “Delete my account”. Write from the email address on your account if you signed in with Google, or tell us the phone number if you signed in by phone. We check that the request is yours, delete within 30 days, then confirm. Deletion removes your phone number, email address, profile, profile photo, preferences, sign-in records, your community posts, comments, photos, follows and other community data, your favourites, your saved routes, reviews, reports, feedback and notification settings, your WhatsApp messages to us, your arrival-alert records, and your contribution log and the link between your account and its contributions. Bus registration records are separate: say so in your request if you want those deleted too, and we will keep only what the law requires.
• Delete community content — delete any of your community posts or comments in the App at any time; deleting a post also deletes its photos.
• Withdraw permissions — turn off location or notification access any time in Android settings; the App continues to work without them.
• Control advertising — limit ad personalisation or reset/delete your advertising ID in Android settings. In the EEA and UK you can also change your advertising consent choice in the App.
• Stop contributing bus data — simply don't use the live-tracking features.
• Grievance redressal — contact us (Section 12); if unresolved, you may approach the Data Protection Board of India as provided under the DPDP Act.
• Nominate — as provided by the DPDP Act, you may nominate another individual to exercise your rights in the event of death or incapacity.

The Service is not directed at children. Users under 18 should use the Service only with the consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian, who accepts this Policy on their behalf. We do not knowingly collect personal data of children without verifiable guardian consent and we do not serve behaviourally targeted advertising to users we know to be children. If you believe a child has provided us personal data, contact [email protected] and we will delete it.

A bus arrival alert tells you when a bus you are tracking is close to a stop you chose. The first time you set one, the App asks for notification permission (Android 13 and later); it does not ask before then. An alert watches one bus, ends by itself when the bus reaches the stop, and can be cancelled at any time in the App.

So that the alert reaches you when your phone is locked or the App is closed, the watching is done by our alert service, not by your phone:

• When you set an alert, the App sends our alert service the bus, the stop, your account identifier, the language you use the App in, and your device's push-notification token.
• The service checks that bus's position with the official MTC public service every 30 to 60 seconds, and sends you a notification through Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) when the bus is close and when the alert ends.
• The alert service runs on Google Cloud. When the alert ends, the push-notification token is deleted from it; the rest of the record is deleted within about three days (Section 7).
• Your account's first alert is free; each one after that is set by choosing to watch a rewarded ad (Section 4). The alert service keeps a note that the free alert has been used, so that it is not given again after the App is reinstalled.
• An alert does not use your location, and none of this information is used for advertising.

You can turn notifications off any time in Android settings; alerts then cannot be set.

Community notifications (replies to your posts, confirmations of your reports, and updates from routes and stops you follow) are shown inside the App. They are not currently sent as push notifications.

The Service may link to third-party websites and services (for example, the official MTC website, or ticket-booking platforms linked from our website). Their privacy practices are their own; review their policies before sharing data with them.

Our backend data is processed in India and on cloud infrastructure of our providers. Google services (Firebase, AdMob, and Maps), Meta (Audience Network advertising in the App, and WhatsApp messages), Unity (advertising in the App), Cloudflare (photo storage and traffic), WeatherAPI.com (weather), Vercel (website hosting and analytics), and Supabase (database and file storage) may process data on servers outside India under their own safeguards and applicable law.

For questions, complaints, or requests relating to this Policy or your personal data:

• Privacy and data requests: [email protected]
• Support: [email protected]

We acknowledge and address grievances within the timelines prescribed under applicable law.

This Policy may change as the Service evolves. Where a change is significant, we will flag it in the App or on the website before it applies and refresh the “Last Updated” date shown at the top. Continuing to use the Service once the revised Policy has taken effect indicates that you are comfortable with it, to the degree the law permits.