Privacy Policy
Last updated 23 September 2026
The short version. Bus Pulse has no accounts and no analytics. Your location is used to find the bus stop nearest you and is not stored. Nothing you do in the app is tied to your identity, because the app never learns it.
What the app collects
Your location — used, not kept. If you grant location permission, the app reads your device's position and sends the coordinates to our server to work out which stops are near you and how far away they are. The coordinates are used to answer that one request and are not written to a database, not logged, and not built into any history or trail. If you refuse the permission or have no signal fix, the app still works — you search for your stop by name or by the number printed on the stop pole.
Arrival reports — anonymous. If you tap "Report" to tell other riders a bus has arrived, we store the stop, the route, the trip, the time, and a random token the server issued to your installation. That token exists only so the same person cannot report the same bus repeatedly, and so several independent reports can be counted as corroboration. It is not an account, it is not linked to your device identifiers, your phone number, your Google account or anything else about you, and it is never shown to other users. Reports are held in server memory and disappear when they expire or when the server restarts.
Server logs. Like any web server, ours records requests — including the IP address the request came from, the time, and the path. These logs are kept only to keep the service running and diagnose faults, are capped at a few megabytes and rotate away, and are not combined with anything else or used to build a profile.
What the app does not collect
- No name, email address, phone number or account of any kind
- No advertising identifier, and no ads
- No analytics or crash-reporting SDK
- No contacts, photos, files, microphone or camera access
- No background location — the app only asks while you have it open
- No location history and no tracking between sessions
Who else is involved
National Transport Authority. Live bus data comes from the NTA's GTFS Realtime feeds. We request that data ourselves, on a schedule, for the whole network — the NTA is not told which stop you looked at.
Google Maps. The map screens use the Google Maps SDK for Android, which communicates with Google to fetch map tiles and is governed by Google's privacy policy.
We do not sell data, share it with advertisers, or pass it to anyone else.
How long anything is kept
- Location: not stored at all — used to answer the request, then gone
- Arrival reports: minutes, then they expire automatically
- Reporting token: held in memory only; a server restart invalidates it
- Server logs: rotated automatically, a few megabytes at a time
Your choices
You can refuse or revoke location permission at any time in Android Settings → Apps → Bus Pulse → Permissions; the app continues to work through stop search. Uninstalling removes everything the app holds on your device. Because nothing on our side is tied to you, there is no account to close and no personal data set to request or delete — if you would like the reporting token from your installation dropped anyway, get in touch and we will clear it.
Children
Bus Pulse is a public transport timetable. It is not directed at children under 13 and collects nothing that could identify anyone.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the updated version appears at this address.
Contact
Questions about this policy or about data in the app: privacy@buspulse.space.