Privacy Policy

DriveTrace is a drive-recording and social community app that lets you record GPS-based car drives, manage a garage of vehicles, connect with friends, and view distance-based leaderboards (friends, country, and global). We may also offer optional DriveTrace Premium paid features through in-app subscriptions on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Questions about privacy: use our Contact page. We do not publish a support email address on this site.

2.1 Account & profile

• Authentication data via Firebase Authentication (for example, Sign in with Google, and Sign in with Apple when enabled), which may include your name, email address, profile photo URL, and provider account identifiers.
• Profile details you choose to provide: display name, username, country, and profile photo.
• Aggregate drive statistics we compute for your account (e.g. total distance, drive count, and duration for all-time, week, and month windows).

2.2 Location & drive data

• Precise location data from your device while you are recording a drive (and in the background if you grant Always / background location permission), used to compute distance, duration, speed, and route.
• Derived drive metadata: start/end times and coordinates, distance, duration, average and max speed, encoded route polyline, optional raw GPS track points (stored securely for your account), a distance-verification flag, and a country code inferred from the drive start location via a reverse-geocoding provider.
• We do not continuously track your location when you are not recording a drive.

2.3 Garage & media

• Car details you add (brand, model, year) and optional car photos.
• Photos and other uploads are stored in Firebase Storage under paths tied to your account. Profile and car image URLs may be readable by others who have the link, as needed to show your garage and profile in the App.

2.4 Social & leaderboards

• Friend relationships and friend requests (sender/receiver, status, timestamps).
• Public profile fields visible to other authenticated users (e.g. username, name, photo, country, aggregate stats, account creation date). Your email is not shown in the App’s public profile views.
• Leaderboard entries (e.g. username, photo, and distance) for friends, country, and global rankings.

2.5 Push notifications

• If you allow notifications, we store a device push token (FCM) and platform (iOS/Android) so we can send alerts such as friend request and friend accepted notifications.

2.6 Purchases & subscriptions

• If you subscribe to DriveTrace Premium (or restore a purchase), we may receive and store subscription/entitlement information needed to unlock features — for example product identifiers, purchase or transaction identifiers, purchase tokens or receipts (or validation results), subscription status, expiration or renewal dates, and the store platform (Apple App Store or Google Play).
• Payment card and billing account details are collected and processed by Apple or Google, not by us. Their privacy policies apply to that payment processing.

2.7 Contact & account-deletion requests

• When you submit our website contact form or account deletion request, we collect the name, email, and message you provide, plus limited technical metadata (e.g. user agent and a hashed form of your IP address) to operate support, prevent abuse, and process requests.

2.8 Usage & technical data

• Standard technical logs needed to operate the API (e.g. request timing, error diagnostics). We may use rate limiting (including Redis-backed limits keyed by account or IP) to prevent abuse.
• Optional analytics events (if enabled in a given app version), such as sign-in success or drive completed — without selling personal data.

• Provide, maintain, and improve drive recording, history, garage, and stats.
• Power social features (username search, friends, leaderboards) and anti-abuse checks (e.g. distance verification against submitted routes).
• Infer drive country for country leaderboards via reverse geocoding.
• Authenticate you, secure the service, and send push notifications you opt into.
• Verify in-app purchases, restore entitlements, and provide DriveTrace Premium features you have paid for.
• Respond to contact and account-deletion requests submitted through our site.
• Comply with law and respond to lawful requests.
• Communicate about service issues, subscriptions, or material policy changes when needed.

We do not sell your personal information.

• Other users: public profile fields, friend status, and leaderboard entries (e.g. username, photo, and distance) as described in the App.
• Service providers: infrastructure processors such as Firebase / Google (Authentication, Firestore, Storage, Cloud Messaging); hosting (e.g. Vercel); rate-limiting infrastructure (e.g. Upstash Redis); and reverse geocoding (e.g. BigDataCloud) to derive country from drive start coordinates. Map display on device may use Apple MapKit or similar platform map APIs. Apple and Google also process purchase and subscription data as the merchants for App Store and Google Play in-app purchases. They process data on our instructions or as needed to provide their services.
• Legal: if required by law, regulation, or to protect rights, safety, or the integrity of the service.

In the current product, individual drive routes are intended for your account (friends viewing full routes may be added later and announced in the App). Do not assume drive maps are private from anyone with account access on a shared device.

Recording drives requires location access. You can use While Using for foreground-only recording, or Always if you want recording to continue when the App is backgrounded. You can revoke permission in system Settings at any time; doing so will limit or stop recording.

Background location is used solely for continuous drive recording while a drive session is active — not for advertising or unrelated tracking.

We retain account, drive, garage, social, device-token, and subscription/ entitlement records while your account is active (and subscription records as needed to honor renewals, restores, fraud prevention, and legal/accounting requirements). You may delete individual drives or cars in the App, or delete your entire account in Settings. Account deletion removes your profile, garage, drives (including stored track files), friendships, uploaded files, push tokens, and authentication account, except where we must retain data for legal, security, tax/accounting, or backup purposes for a limited period. Canceling Premium in the App Store or Google Play stops renewal but does not by itself delete your DriveTrace account.

If you cannot use in-app deletion, submit a request on our account deletion page. Web deletion requests are processed within 7 days. Contact and support messages may be retained as needed to handle your request and for abuse prevention.

We use industry-standard measures such as encrypted transport (HTTPS), token-based API authentication, and access-controlled cloud storage. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure.

The App is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have, contact us via the Contact page and we will take appropriate steps.

Your data may be processed in the United States or other countries where our providers operate. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for cross-border transfers.

Depending on your location (e.g. EEA/UK/California), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or export personal data, or object to certain processing. Use our Contact page to exercise these rights (or delete your account in the App / via the account deletion page). You may also complain to your local data protection authority.

We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the revised version with a new effective date. Continued use after changes means you accept the updated Policy, except where additional consent is required by law.

For privacy questions or requests, use our Contact page. Please do not rely on email addresses listed elsewhere — the contact form is the supported channel.