Privacy
What the app collects, what never leaves your phone, and who else sees anything. In plain language, because you shouldn’t need a lawyer to understand what an app does with your riding.
LAST UPDATED · 31 AUGUST 2026 · BETA
The short version
- Your live location never leaves your phone. The app has no live tracking. Nobody — not us, not other riders — can see where you are.
- We have no analytics, no crash reporting and no advertising. There is no tracking SDK in the app at all.
- Your emergency contacts never leave your phone. They’re stored only on your device.
- A ride you publish is stored on our server — its route and stops — because that’s the only way other riders can see and join it. A ride you don’t publish stays on your phone.
- We don’t sell anything about you, and we don’t want an advertising business.
What stays on your phone
Most of what the app knows about you never goes anywhere. This is all stored in a database on your device only:
- Your bike — model, tank size, mileage, service reminders
- How you ride — pace, distance and route preferences
- Your emergency contacts
- Places you’ve saved
- Your ride history and fuel logs
- The offline maps you’ve saved
- Rides you created but never published
If you uninstall the app, this is gone. There is no backup of it on our side.
What we store on our server
Your account
Your phone number, and your email address if you add one. This is handled by Firebase Authentication, a Google service. It’s what identifies you to other riders and what brings your rides back if you change phone.
Rides you publish or join
When you publish a ride, this is stored so other riders can see it: the ride’s title and description, its start and destination, each stop with its name, category and coordinates, the route line, distance and riding time, the date and start time, the rider limit, and who can see it. Your name and account ID are stored as the ride’s owner.
When you join someone’s ride, your name and account ID are added to that ride so the group can see who’s coming.
This is stored in Cloud Firestore, a Google service. Note what isn’t in that list: your phone’s position, your speed, your bike, or anything about your other rides.
Location
The app asks for location so it can put you on the map and guide you along a route. That happens entirely on your phone. The route is calculated on the device, the maps are stored on the device, and your position is drawn on the device.
Your position is never sent to us and never shown to other riders. There is no live group map, no “riders near you”, and no background tracking — the app does not run a location service when you’re not using it.
The one exception is one you trigger yourself: SOS, below.
What we send to TomTom
To work out traffic on a route, the app sends the coordinates of that route to TomTom’s routing service. It’s the route you planned, not your live position, and it happens when the app is checking traffic — not continuously. If this matters to you, plan and ride offline: with maps saved, the app doesn’t need it.
SOS
If you trigger SOS, the app sends an SMS to the emergency contacts you chose, containing a Google Maps link with your coordinates. That message goes directly from your phone to them, as a normal text message. It does not go through us — we never see it, and we never see your location.
SOS is not an emergency service. It messages your people, not the police or an ambulance.
Your contacts
If you pick an emergency contact from your phonebook, the app reads your contacts only at that moment, to let you choose. The contact you pick is saved on your device. Your phonebook is never uploaded, never scanned in the background, and never sent to us or anyone else.
Why the app asks for each permission
- Location — to show where you are on the map and follow a route. Used while you’re using the app.
- Contacts — only when you’re choosing an emergency contact.
- Camera — only to scan a ride code when someone shares one with you.
- SMS — only to send an SOS message to your own contacts.
- Notifications — to tell you when someone joins your ride, or a ride you joined changes.
- Internet — to sign in, publish and find rides, and download maps before you leave.
You can refuse any of these. The app will keep working, minus the part that needs it — decline location and you can still plan rides, but the app can’t show you on the map or navigate.
Who else gets data
- Google (Firebase) — sign-in, and storing published rides. They process this on our behalf.
- TomTom — route coordinates, when checking traffic.
That is the complete list. No analytics company, no advertising network, no data broker.
What we never do
- Sell your data, or share it with advertisers.
- Track where you are, in the app or in the background.
- Show your location to other riders.
- Read or upload your phonebook.
- Contact your emergency contacts unless you trigger SOS yourself.
Your choices
- Delete your account from inside the app, under Profile. This removes your account and the rides you own.
- Delete a ride at any time. Deleting is permanent — there’s no undo, and we’d rather say so than pretend otherwise.
- Turn off any permission in Android settings.
- Ask us what we hold about you, and ask us to correct or delete it. Email below.
[To confirm: how long a published ride is kept after it happens, and how long an account is kept after deletion is requested.]
Children
The app is for people old enough to hold a motorcycle licence. It isn’t designed for or directed at children.
Changes
The app is in beta and will change. If we change what we collect, we’ll update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant, we’ll tell you in the app rather than quietly editing this page.
Getting in touch
Questions about any of this, or a request about your data: hello@theridingco.com. We’ll come back to you.
[To add before launch: registered entity name and address, and a named grievance officer as required under India’s DPDP Act.]