Privacy

In short

• No accounts and no ad trackers. We add up anonymous totals of how the app is used, and if you say yes we use one cookie with a random ID to see how many people come back (see “Cookies and visitor counts” below).
• We never keep where you go, what you search for, or your travel profile.
• Your travel profile (for example pushchair, pregnancy or wheelchair) is health information. It is saved only on your phone.
• Your location and searches are used to plan that journey, then forgotten.

Your location

Your phone asks before sharing your location. The map dot stays on your phone. When you plan a journey, your start point (rounded to about 10 metres) is sent to our server to find routes. It is never put in a web address, never written to our logs, and never stored.

Map pictures (tiles) for the area on screen are loaded by your phone from OpenFreeMap, like any map app, so OpenFreeMap sees which part of London is shown and your internet address.

To draw walks along real streets, the start and end of each walk (rounded to about 10 metres) are sent to the OpenStreetMap walking router run by FOSSGIS. Nothing else is sent with them.

Home, recent places and last location

Your home, your recent places and your last known location (used when there’s no signal, for example underground) are saved only on this phone. You can remove them in Profile, or by clearing your browser data.

What you type

Postcodes are looked up with postcodes.io. Place and business names are looked up with Photon (OpenStreetMap, run by komoot) and, when switched on, Foursquare. Only the text you type is sent, searching around central London rather than around you. We keep recent searches in memory for up to an hour to save repeat lookups, then they are gone.

Your profile

Your profile is stored in your browser on this phone. It is sent with each journey search so the routes suit you, and is not stored by us. Clearing your browser data deletes it.

Data we fetch for everyone

Live lifts, lines, trains and buses (TfL), timetables (TfL and Network Rail) are fetched by our server for London as a whole. Nothing about you is sent with those requests.

Reports you send us

If you send feedback, report a problem or tap “Still correct?” on a station page, we store what you chose, the station, any step count and note you typed, and the time. There are no accounts and no photos, so please don’t put your name or contact details in the note. To limit spam we also keep a scrambled fingerprint of your internet address (it changes every day and can’t be turned back into your address), and we delete it after a week. We read every report ourselves before changing anything on the site.

Advertising

A small card on the start page and the results page may carry an advert, always labelled “Ad”. We sell these ourselves. There is no advertising network and no tracking, and adverts are never chosen using your travel profile, your location or what you search for: everyone sees the same one. If you tap an advert you go to the sponsor’s own website, which has its own privacy policy.

Cookies and visitor counts

The first time you open Smuvly we ask: “Can we count your visits?” You can say Yes or No thanks, and nothing is set until you do. You can change your answer at any time with “Cookie choices” at the bottom of every page. If your browser sends “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” we treat that as a No and don’t ask.

If you say yes, we save one cookie on your phone called smuvly_vid. It holds a random ID (nothing about you) and lasts up to 13 months. When you open the app we note that this ID came back that day, with three rough facts: the kind of device (iPhone, Android or computer), the city your connection is in, and the website you came from, if any. That lets us see how many people use Smuvly, how many return and where they find it.

We never connect that ID to your travel profile, where you are or are going, the places you look up, what you search for, whether you choose step-free or lift routes, or anything about your health. We don’t keep a record of where you go.

If you say no, or change your mind, the cookie is deleted and we delete the record we hold for it. We keep these records for 13 months at most. They are kept in our database (Supabase, in Ireland) and are not sold or shared with any other company. We are the only ones who see them.

Our legal reason is your consent. Saying no does not change how the app works for you.

Counting how the app is used (anonymous)

We add up how often things happen so we can fix and improve the app: for example how many journeys were planned today, how long searches took, which kind of page was opened, and how often the card at the bottom was shown or tapped. We also count journeys between rough areas: the start and the destination are each turned into a square of about 2 km, with the part of the day (such as “weekday morning”), and nothing else is kept. Trips to or from health places, such as hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, are not counted at all. Each count is just a tally for the day, such as “journeys planned: 42”.

A count never includes who you are, your travel profile, your exact location or destination, what you searched for, your internet address, or any kind of ID. We use no cookies and store nothing on your phone to do these anonymous totals, and the totals are not shared with any other company. Because they can’t be traced back to you, they are not personal information.

You can switch counting off on the Profile page (“Count my visits anonymously”). It is also off automatically if your browser sends “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control”. The totals are kept in our database (Supabase, in Ireland).

Hosting

The app runs on Vercel. Like any web host, Vercel handles your internet address to deliver the pages. Our own code does not log what you search for.