Privacy Policy

1. Lawful use and safe driving

Roadar is for use in the United States. You agree to use it only for lawful purposes, in compliance with all applicable traffic laws and other applicable law. Reports about enforcement are intended to encourage you to slow down. They are not intended to help anyone break the law or evade law enforcement. Do not interact with the app while driving. Set it up before you drive, or have a passenger operate it.

2. Information we collect

Apple ID identifier. When you sign in with Apple, we receive an opaque, app-specific user identifier from Apple. We never see your real Apple email unless you choose to share it. Optionally, your name is read from Sign in with Apple and stored only on this device and in your private iCloud Key-Value Store, so it survives reinstalls on the same Apple ID. We never see it.

Reports you submit. Category (for example "speed enforcement" or "accident") and the coordinate you reported, along with timestamps. Reports are tied to your account so we can show you your own reports, compute your reputation, and prevent abuse, but other drivers see only the report itself and a reputation tier (for example "trusted"), never your identity.

Confirms and disputes. When you confirm or dispute someone else's report, we store that vote, tied to your account, to compute reputation and reduce abuse.

Alerts shown to you. To power the Profile "This week" summary, Roadar keeps a small log of the alerts it gave you. It is just the category and a timestamp, never where you were. It is stored on your device and synced to your own private iCloud so the summary matches across your devices, and it is removed when you delete your account. Separately, when Roadar warns you about a community report, that report’s anonymous "drivers alerted" counter goes up by one - a single aggregate number on the report itself, so the reporter can see their heads-up helped. No record of who was alerted, when, or where is created.

Feedback you choose to send. If you use Settings → Send feedback, we receive the message you write (with an anonymous handle, not your name). See section 9.

Reputation. An automated score based solely on the accuracy of your own reports and votes, not on your identity or any personal or protected characteristic, applied equally to every account, recoverable through accurate participation, and never used for any legal or similarly significant decision. It is tied to your Apple ID so it persists if you delete your account and re-register with the same Apple ID, a deliberate anti-abuse measure that prevents resetting a low reputation by deleting and reinstalling.

No payment data. Roadar's core app is free; one optional add-on (Avoid routing) is a subscription. Apple processes all payments, so we never collect or store any payment, billing, or card information of any kind. See section 8.

Diagnostics. Standard Apple-provided crash reports if you've opted in at the system level. We do not run third-party analytics or trackers.

3. How we use it

Showing the reports you and other nearby drivers have submitted; notifying you of relevant hazards ahead; computing report accuracy and your reputation; preventing abuse, spam, and bad-faith reporting; operating and improving the app; complying with law and enforcing our Terms.

4. What we do NOT do

No ads. No selling or renting your data. No third-party analytics SDKs. No tracking across other apps or websites. No public profile, username, photos, or free-form text in reports. No personalized "data broker" profile of you.

The only third parties that ever receive any data through Roadar are Apple (iCloud / CloudKit storage, push notifications, and geocoding), the OpenStreetMap Overpass service (anonymous, coarse-grid posted-speed-limit lookups; see section 5), and Web3Forms (only the feedback you choose to send; see section 9). None of them receives your data for advertising.

5. Location specifics

While using the app. Your device location is used in real time to show your position on the map, find nearby reports, and notify you of hazards ahead. We do not store a history of where you've been.

Background alerts (always allow). If you grant "Always" location, Roadar can deliver hazard alerts in the background, so you're warned even when the app isn't open. You can change this anytime in iOS Settings > Roadar > Location. We do not record a continuous trail of your movements; we use background location only to evaluate proximity to nearby reports.

Continuous background alerts (on by default). Roadar uses Apple's continuous-background API to keep proximity alerts as responsive as possible. iOS displays a blue indicator when location is in use in the background. To save battery you can turn it off in Settings > Background alerts, which switches to the lighter mode where iOS wakes the app only on significant moves. Either way we do not store a trail of your movements.

Area alerts (on by default). If you keep "Area alerts" on, Roadar registers a coarse area cell (roughly a 20-mile grid square, not your precise location or any movement history) with Apple's CloudKit as a notification filter, so Apple can push you when police, an accident, or a road hazard is reported in that area even while the app is closed. Turning Area alerts off in Settings removes it.

Report coordinates. The coordinate of a report you submit (for example "speed enforcement at this corner") is shared with other Roadar users, because that's the whole point. The coordinate is associated with the report, not displayed alongside your identity.

Posted speed limits. To show the speed limit for the road you're on, Roadar sends an approximate location, snapped to a coarse ~50 m grid rather than your exact position, to the OpenStreetMap Overpass service, and caches the result on your device. The request is anonymous: no account, name, or identifier is attached. You can avoid it entirely by turning off the speed display in Settings. Roadar also fetches mapped fixed-camera locations (ALPR/Flock, fixed speed cameras, and red-light cameras contributed to OpenStreetMap by projects like DeFlock) from the same service, around a coarse ~1 km snap of your area; turn this off in Settings > Map > Mapped cameras. Camera data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Your chosen app language (English, Spanish, or Russian) is stored only on your device and in Roadar’s own App Group so its widgets match - it is not sent anywhere.

6. Sharing with other drivers

The only thing other drivers ever see about you is the reports you submit and your reputation tier. Specifically: report category and coordinate, age of the report, count of confirmations and disputes, and your reputation tier label (for example "trusted"). They do not see your name, your email, your Apple ID, your other reports, your location when you're not reporting, or anything else about your account.

7. Where data is stored

Roadar uses Apple's CloudKit. Public report data (the reports themselves and votes) is stored in CloudKit's public database, owned by Apple's infrastructure, accessible to the Roadar app. Account-tied data (your reports linked to you, your reputation, your settings) is stored in CloudKit and in your private iCloud, governed by Apple's iCloud terms and security. Your name (if you provided one during Sign in with Apple) is held on this device and in your iCloud Key-Value Store. The street name shown in an alert is looked up from that report's coordinates using Apple's geocoding. We don't geocode or log where you drive. We do not run our own analytics or marketing servers.

8. Cost & payments

Most of Roadar is free. One optional auto-renewable subscription, Roadar Avoidance ($0.99 per year with a 6-month free trial), unlocks the Avoid routing tab. Apple, not Roadar, processes every payment through your App Store account, so we never receive or store your card or billing details. Roadar receives only your subscription status (active, in free trial, or lapsed) from Apple, used solely to unlock the feature. You can manage or cancel the subscription anytime in your Apple Account settings (Settings → your name → Subscriptions). Deleting your Roadar account does not cancel an Apple subscription; cancel it separately to stop being charged.

9. Feedback

If you choose to send feedback from inside the app (Settings → Send feedback), your message is delivered to our support inbox through Web3Forms, a third-party form-relay service. Only what you type is sent (plus an anonymous handle), and it is used solely to read and respond to you. It is never used for ads, profiling, or tracking. Don't include sensitive personal information in feedback.

If you email berinshteyn@gmail.com, we receive the email content you send us and reply from the same address. We don't use those emails for any other purpose. To report abuse or objectionable content, email berinshteyn@gmail.com; we act on valid reports promptly.

10. Security

Data in transit is encrypted by Apple platforms (TLS) and CloudKit. We follow the principle of least data: if we don't need it, we don't collect it. No system is perfectly secure; if you believe you've found a vulnerability, please write to berinshteyn@gmail.com.

11. Retention

Reports expire over time and are removed from the map. We retain the minimum account-tied history needed to compute reputation and protect the community from abuse. You can take down your own report from the Activity tab or marker detail within 24 hours of posting it, until three drivers have confirmed it (after a day, or once corroborated, it stays as a community record). If you delete your account from Settings, your personal data is removed from active use; reputation data tied to your Apple ID is retained as an anti-abuse measure (see section 2), your "This week" alert log is deleted, and your name is wiped from iCloud Key-Value Store on this device. Reports you submitted may remain visible until they naturally expire, since the community already relied on them.

12. Your choices and rights

You control: location permission (When in Use, Always, or Off, in iOS Settings); notifications (in iOS Settings); whether you submit reports at all; whether to provide a name when signing in with Apple. You can delete your account from Settings > Profile, which removes your personal data from active use (subject to the reputation retention in section 11 and the report retention in section 11). For requests about your data (access, correction, deletion beyond the in-app delete), email berinshteyn@gmail.com.

13. Children

Roadar is not directed to children. You must be old enough to drive in your jurisdiction to use the app. We don't knowingly collect data from children.

14. Changes and contact

We may update this Privacy Policy. Continued use of Roadar means you accept the updated terms. Contact: berinshteyn@gmail.com.