Privacy policy

Last updated October 30, 2026

RadarNav is a road-report and navigation app. This page explains what it collects, when, and what leaves your device. It describes the app as built; if anything here does not match what you see, treat the app as the source of truth and tell us.

Location

RadarNav asks for location when you first open the map or the Community tab: to center the map on you, to find reports near you, to preview a route, or to run drive alerts. If you refuse, the map, the feed and reporting from a point you choose still work. There is no “always allow” location permission: drive alerts and navigation keep running with the phone locked only after they have started in the open app, and the phone shows that they are running. Your device location history is never saved.

While the app is using your position it stays in memory on your device. The exception is a drive with “Show me to nearby drivers and friends” on: your position, accurate to about a metre, then goes to our servers every few seconds. Only the latest one is kept, and it is deleted within a minute of the last update.
The lean angle gauge and the map turning with the phone in drive mode read the phone's motion sensors, only while the map is on screen. Those readings stay on your device and are never saved or shared.
Searching for nearby reports sends an approximate area, not your exact position, and that area is not stored against you.
Publishing a report shares the point you selected on the map, which is not necessarily where you are. To keep reports accurate, the app also sends where you are at that moment, so the report can be checked to be near you; that position is not stored or shown to anyone.
Showing yourself to nearby drivers and friends is one setting, “Show me to nearby drivers and friends”. It is on by default, and you can turn it off when you first agree to the terms or any time in Account, Settings. While it is on, your position is published only while drive alerts or navigation are on and the app is open, and it is deleted within a minute of the last update. Other drivers see only an approximate position about a minute old, under an anonymous id that changes every few minutes and with no name or account id attached, and they see nothing near where a drive started or once the car has been parked for a few minutes. Turning the setting off or deleting the account removes it at once. If you pick an emoji in the app, other drivers see it in place of the RadarNav logo, and it shows on your profile. It stays the same from drive to drive, so it can let people recognise you; it is optional, and you can remove it at any time.
Friends are the one exception to that anonymity. A friendship needs a request and an acceptance; a friend who has switched you on in their Friends tab, to show you on their map, then sees your username or first name, photo, position and current speed, live from that same position record and under that same setting, including near the start of a drive and while parked, when strangers see nothing. The anonymous view never carries a name or speed.

Reports, votes and replies

A shared report carries the point you picked, the type and any text you wrote, and is shown to other drivers without your name. Replies show who wrote them, and votes and replies are attached to your account so each person counts once. Community reports expire by type: police, unmarked patrol car, mobile radar and drone reports two hours after publication, accidents, hazards and traffic one hour after. Each “still there” from another driver keeps a report up for at least another hour, never past three hours after publication. Speed cameras stay until drivers vote them out. Five different people in a row voting “not there” removes a report earlier, or two for a report relayed from a public drivers' group. An expired report leaves the map and the feed, but its record stays on our servers until the account that published it is deleted.

Account

An account holds your email address, your name, your chosen username and a profile photo: one you upload, or the picture on the Google or Apple account you signed in with. Your profile is public and shows the username, photo, points, contribution counts and friend count, never individual reports; whether it can be found by username or name search is the Findable by username setting. Your name is not on your profile, but signed-in members see it in search results while that setting is on, and the people you exchange friend requests with see it too. Friendships, friend requests and the friends you watch are stored against your account. Sign-in is handled by Clerk, with email and password, Google or Apple. Deleting your account permanently removes your profile, photo, username, friendships, shared reports, replies, votes and contribution progress, along with the push tokens of your phones. Two records stay: a flag another member filed on your content keeps a short copy of that content in our moderation records, and a banned account keeps a marked account record so that it cannot come back, while everything it published is removed. An emoji you pick for the map is stored with your profile and shown on it.

Notifications

RadarNav asks once, the first time it opens, whether it may send notifications, and you can change that answer at any time in your phone's settings. Two switches in Account, Settings decide what it sends.

Friend notifications tell you when someone sends you a friend request or accepts yours, and the same switch lets us send an occasional service notice, such as new cameras or an important fix. While you are signed in and notifications are allowed, the app gives our backend this phone's push token, its platform and the app language, kept against your account for up to five phones. A friend notification carries the other person's username or name and nothing else: no location and no account id. Turning Friend notifications off, signing out or deleting the account removes the token.
Drive reminders are planned on your phone, from when you drive with RadarNav and when you open it; that record stays on the device for up to eight weeks and is never sent anywhere. If you have not opened the app for a while, a reminder also comes now and then, for at most six months. Both are local notifications, need no account, and stop with the Drive reminders switch.

Navigation subscription

If you subscribe to navigation, the App Store or Google Play takes the payment; RadarNav never receives your card or bank details. The store hands RadarNav a proof of purchase, which it verifies with Apple or Google and keeps against your account as the product you chose, the store's subscription identifier, when the current period ends and whether it renews. Renewals, cancellations and refunds reach RadarNav from the store the same way. RadarNav stores no payment details, and these records are deleted with your account.

Services the app contacts

Google Maps and the Navigation SDK render the map and calculate routes. Planning a route sends your start and destination to Google, and during navigation the SDK receives your precise location. Searching for a place on the map, part of the navigation subscription, sends what you type and the point the search is centered on to Google Places; typed coordinates are not sent.
Photon (OpenStreetMap) resolves the road or place name for a report from the point you selected, and answers place searches when Google cannot, receiving what you type and the point the search is centered on.
Clerk handles authentication. Our backend, hosted on Convex, stores shared reports, replies, votes, progress, friendships, the live positions described above and the push tokens of phones that allow notifications.
Apple Push Notification service and Firebase Cloud Messaging deliver friend notifications and service notices to iPhone and Android. They receive the phone's push token and the text of the notification.
Resend delivers our moderation emails. When someone flags content or blocks an account, it receives a copy of that content, any note from the person who flagged it and their username or name.
App Store and Google Play take the payment for the navigation subscription and report whether it is active.

Each of these receives normal connection information, including your IP address, when the app calls it.

Advertising and tracking

RadarNav shows no ads, and there are no advertising or cross-app tracking identifiers in the app.

This website

This site measures its own traffic with PostHog, hosted in the EU: which pages are viewed, where a visit came from, which country it came from and which store button was pressed. Page views are counted on our server without a cookie. Without your permission, so that the same visitor is counted only once a day, our server computes a one-way (hashed) identifier from your IP address, browser details and the site's name; it changes every day, is never stored on your device and cannot be linked to your visits on other days. PostHog uses the IP address to work out an approximate location (country and city). Only with your permission, or where no permission is required, does the site also set rn_anon_id and rn_sid, which recognise a returning browser and group the pages of one visit, and PostHog's own ph_ cookie. You can change your choice at any time under Cookie settings in the footer. The site also sets theme, which remembers light or dark, NEXT_LOCALE, which remembers your language, and rn_consent, which remembers your choice. It sets no advertising cookies.

Contact

Questions about your data, or a deletion request: support@radarnav.me.