Last updated 20 September 2026
Tracks is a subway-riding app. It needs your location to do its job, so this policy is written to be read rather than skimmed past. Everything below is true of the app as shipped, and most of it is visible in the app itself under Settings › Privacy.
Tracks reads your location only while a trip is running — between the moment you tap Start Trip and the moment you tap End Trip. It does not read your location between rides, and it does not run in the background outside a trip.
It asks for background location access because the subway is underground and your phone will be in your pocket. Without it, the app cannot tell which stations you passed through.
The raw GPS points collected during a ride stay on your phone for the duration of that ride and are deleted when the ride ends. What is kept, and backed up to your account, is the ride itself: which stations and lines you rode, when, and how far. Your location is never used for advertising and is never shared with anyone.
Creating an account stores your email address, the display name and username you choose, and the colors you pick for your card. Your rides, your unlocked stops and your statistics are backed up to that account so they survive a new phone.
Other riders can see your profile and your leaderboard standings — display name, username, card colors, and the statistics the boards are built from. They cannot see your individual rides, your friends list, or your email address.
Accounts, sync and sign-in are provided by Google Firebase (Authentication, Cloud Firestore and App Check). If you sign in with Google or with Apple, that provider tells us your email address and, on the first sign-in only, your name. Signing in with Apple lets you hide your real email address; if you do, we only ever see the relay address Apple gives us.
When something breaks, Tracks sends a crash report containing what broke and which version of the app you are on — never where you were. This is handled by Sentry. You can turn it off entirely under Settings › Crash reports; with it off, nothing is collected and nothing is queued for later.
The app also writes troubleshooting logs for each ride. These live on your phone, are excluded from iCloud and iTunes backups, clear themselves after two weeks, and are deleted when you sign out. They only ever reach us if you choose to attach them when you send a report through Report a Problem or Wrong Route — and both of those work without attaching them.
Settings › Clear all my data erases your rides, stops and statistics while keeping your account and your friends.
Settings › Delete my account removes everything: your rides, your stops, your statistics, your profile, your friend connections, your username, and the sign-in identity itself. It is irreversible, and it releases your email address so you could sign up again from scratch. If you signed in with Apple, deleting your account also revokes the app’s Apple sign-in token.
Tracks is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected, the date at the top will change and the change will be described in the app’s release notes.