Privacy Policy

Trackside is an independent project for tracking commuter-rail trains. It is built to collect as little about you as possible: no account, no login, no advertising, and no third-party analytics. This page explains exactly what the app and this website collect, why, and how to have it removed.

Last updated 7 November 2026.

What the app collects

The Trackside app works without an account. To deliver train notifications and Live Activities, it registers with our notification service and stores:

• A random device identifier — an anonymous ID the app generates on your device. It is not your name, email, Apple ID, or phone number, and it is not linked to any account.
• An Apple push token — issued by Apple so our service can send notifications and Live Activity updates to your device.
• Your commute and alert choices — the stations, trains, and notification subscriptions you set up, plus any quiet-hours window and your phone's time zone, so quiet hours follow you when you travel, and so we know which trains to notify you about.
• The app version — to keep the service compatible with your build.
• Your subscription status — whether your device has an active Trackside Plus subscription, so premium features unlock. In-app purchases are handled by Apple. The app sends our service Apple's signed record of your current subscription, and we keep only when it ends and Apple's identifier for it, so a subscription you restore after reinstalling or on a new phone unlocks there too. Apple also sends our service a notice when your subscription starts, renews, ends or is refunded, naming your device identifier so the change reaches your device; after 30 days we keep only the latest notice for each subscription. We never see your name, Apple ID or payment details.

The app also uses your approximate location — once each time you launch it, and again any time you tap the locate button to re-check your nearest station — to suggest which station you're closest to. This happens entirely on your device and is never sent to our servers or stored anywhere. Beyond that, the app does not collect your contacts or any advertising identifier, and it contains no third-party analytics or crash-reporting SDKs. Your selected commute also syncs through your own iCloud account (Apple’s private key-value storage) so it follows you across your devices — that copy lives in your Apple account, not on our servers.

To show you how a train is running, the app also looks up public train data from our server — for example a train’s alerts, its reliability, or when it arrived at each stop. These lookups carry a train, a station or a pair of stations (your commute’s, for a commute lookup), and a date, with no device identifier attached, so like any web request they reach our server with only your IP address. When you use a Live Activity, the notification service also receives the train, date and stations of that ride so it can keep the card up to date, and deletes them 7 days after the Live Activity ends.

Your ride history (which trains you rode, between which stations, and how they ran) is kept on your device and syncs through your own private iCloud account. It is never sent to our servers. Apart from a problem report you choose to send (below), the only ride details our servers hold are a Live Activity’s, as described above, and only until 7 days after it ends.

Problem reports

If you tap Report a tracking problem, the app sends us a report about that train so we can find out what went wrong. A report contains:

• the train number, the date, and the time you tapped;
• what the app was showing for that train (such as its delay, location and predicted times) and the train data the app had at that moment;
• where in the app you tapped, and whether you were riding or watching the train;
• for a ride you were tracking, or one from your ride history, the stations you boarded and got off at, and for a finished ride how it ended: its recorded delay, any time it was held for a passing train, its scheduled and actual arrival, and when you last edited it;
• two counts of how often, while the app was open, a train’s arrival estimate fell behind the clock (held back from showing a time already past, or shown anyway);
• the app and iOS version;
• anything you choose to add: a category, a note, and an email address.

A report does not include your name, your phone’s location, or the anonymous device identifier we use for notifications. The train position in a report is the train’s, from the agency’s public feed, never your phone’s. If you send a report while you’re on that train, though, its position is close to where you were at that moment. We don’t try to connect a report to anything else we hold. One honest caveat: a report about a ride you followed with a Live Activity, sent while it runs or in the 7 days after it ends, names the same train and stations our notification service still holds for that ride, so the two could in principle be matched. We don’t do that. Like any request, a report reaches our server with your IP address. We use it only for a short time, to limit how many reports one connection can send, and we don’t store it with the report.

Two optional extras make a report identifiable, and only if you choose them:

• Your email address, if you’d like a reply. We use it only to reply about that report.
• Your Device ID, if you turn on “Include my Device ID”, to help us look into a notification or Live Activity problem.

Each report is stored on our server and sent to us by email. Every report gets a code (like R-7F3KQ2) that you can quote if you write to us, so you can follow up without giving an email address.

What this website collects

The pages on this site set no cookies for tracking, run no analytics, and use no advertising trackers. The only information the website receives is what you choose to type into the feedback form, and the page of this site you opened it from:

• Feedback — your message, and optionally your name and an email address if you would like a reply.
• The page you came from: if you open the form from a page on this site, the form notes that page’s address on this site (the path only, with no query string), so we can see what your feedback is about. A page on any other site is never recorded.

Form submissions are sent to the operator by email, and a copy of each is also kept in a file on our server, which holds the same message, name, email address and page. Entries in that file are deleted 180 days after they arrive. Neither copy is added to the reliability database or used to build any profile of you. Like any website, our server keeps standard, short-lived access logs of each request (the address asked for and whether it worked) for security and to keep the site running. Because requests reach us through Cloudflare, these logs do not hold your IP address or browser type, and they are not used to track or profile visitors.

Hosting & content delivery

This site is served through Cloudflare, a content-delivery and security provider. As the network layer in front of the site, Cloudflare processes connection information (such as your IP address and request details) and network-error reports in order to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. To tell real visitors apart from automated bots, Cloudflare may set a strictly-necessary security cookie (for example __cf_bm); by Cloudflare’s design these contain no personal information, expire quickly, and do not track you from one site to another. This is infrastructure, not analytics — Trackside itself sets no tracking cookies.

How your information is used

• To send the train notifications and Live Activities you asked for.
• To reply to feedback you send us.
• To look into tracking problems you report, and to reply if you left an email address.
• Never sold, rented, or shared for advertising, and never shared beyond what a task requires.

Keeping & deleting your information

We keep feedback emails, and any beta-signup emails sent to us before the app was on the App Store, until you ask us to delete them. The copy of each feedback submission on our server is deleted 180 days after it arrives. Your app data (the device identifier, push token, and your commute and alert choices) is deleted from our notification service once the app stops being in touch: when Apple has retired your push token (as happens when you delete the app) and the app hasn’t been in touch for 30 days, or when it hasn’t been in touch for 180 days. An alert you set for one day’s train is deleted 7 days after the day it was for, and a Live Activity’s train and stations 7 days after it ends. You can also ask us to remove any of it. Problem reports are deleted from our server 180 days after they arrive, and any email address in one is removed after 90 days; copies we receive by email are deleted on request. Our server is backed up every night so it can be restored after a failure. Something deleted from the server, such as a problem report or the email address in one, can stay in those backup copies for up to 30 days, until they’re replaced. To have anything removed, email privacy@tracksidetransit.com.

Third parties

• Apple — the App Store delivers the app, the Apple Push Notification service delivers notifications, iCloud syncs your own commute and ride history, and Apple handles any in-app purchase and its billing; all are governed by Apple’s privacy policy.
• Cloudflare — serves and protects this website, as described above.
• Google — our email runs on Gmail, so feedback and problem reports reach us as emails kept in our Google account, and we delete them on request.
• Backblaze — stores an off-site copy of our server backups, which follow the 30-day limit above.
• Transit agencies — the reliability figures here are compiled from public realtime feeds; Trackside is an independent project and is not affiliated with any transit agency.

Children

Trackside is a general-audience commuting tool and is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the “last updated” date above. Material changes to how we handle the information described here will be reflected here first.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or requests to delete your information, go to privacy@tracksidetransit.com.