Privacy

MapCar has no account and never uploads your journey. The app does talk to our server for three things — advertising, the community map and place search — and the sections below say exactly what each one sends.

What the app uses

• GPS location — to compute speed, identify the road you are on, and compare it to the limit. Processed on the device and not retained after the app closes.
• Trip figures — distance, time, average and maximum speed and overspeed count, stored in a database on the device so you can look back at them. The route itself is not stored, only the journey's totals. Delete one trip or all of them from the history screen.
• Speed limits you correct yourself — stored in a database on the device, readable only by your device.

What leaves the device

Four things, none of which identifies you personally.

• Map tile requests to OpenFreeMap. Each carries the coordinates of the map square to be drawn, exactly as a browser fetching map images does. No account and no journey accompanies it. Fetched tiles are cached on the device so they are not requested again.
• An ad request to our server, about once an hour. It carries the name of the display slot and how many ads to return — no GPS position, no journey, no device id and no identifier of any kind.
• Community map reports — only when you tap the report button. Sent to our server: the report kind (speed sign, traffic jam, fuel station…), the coordinates of where you are standing when you tap, your heading if available, the app version, and an anonymous device id (see below). No journey, no name, no phone number.
• Community map downloads — about once a minute while driving, the app asks the server "what is around this grid cell?". The request carries a ~5 km grid cell key, not your exact position.
• Place search and directions — what you type into the search box and an approximate position (rounded to ~1 km) go to our server, which forwards them to the address provider MapVina. Directions send the origin and destination. Results are cached on the server for up to 72 hours, keyed by the search itself, not by device.

The community map and the anonymous device id

On first run the app generates a random string as its device id. It is not the IMEI, not the Android ID, not shared with any other app, and cannot be linked to you. The server needs it to answer one question — "did these three reports come from three devices, or from one device tapping three times?" — which is how a sign gets confirmed and how careless reporters get limited.

• What the server stores: each report (kind, coordinates, heading, device id, app version, time), the merged published result, and a per-device daily count to limit abuse. IP addresses are not stored with reports.
• Who sees what: other drivers only see the position, kind and confirmation count of a published item — never a device id. Temporary hazards (jams, accidents…) clear themselves after 30–60 minutes.
• Retention: raw reports are kept for at most 12 months, then deleted; published items stay as long as they are true.
• Opt out: the "Community map" switch in Settings turns off both directions — nothing sent, nothing downloaded.
• Deletion: uninstalling discards the device id; reinstalling is a new device to the server. To have every report tied to your device id deleted, send the id (shown in Settings) to support@z-cloud.com.vn — we delete within 30 days.

Advertising

The app carries an advertising corner. Worth stating plainly, because this is exactly where most other apps start collecting:

• Ads are not personalised. Every device asking for the same slot is sent the same set of ads and rotates them locally. There is no user profile, no interest segment and no behavioural targeting.
• There is no third-party ad SDK. No Google AdMob, no ad network. The app talks only to our own server.
• We count deliveries, not people. The server records how many times each ad was sent out per day, so advertisers can be given a report. That number belongs to the ad, not to any device or person.
• The server sees the request's IP address, as every web server does. It is used to block abuse and is not stored alongside the advertising figures.
• Tapping an ad leaves the app. A browser opens the advertiser's page, and from that point their privacy policy applies, not ours.

Permissions requested

• Location — required; without it the app can measure nothing.
• Foreground service — so the trip and the speed alerts continue when another app takes over the screen.
• Notifications — to show the 'MapCar is running' notification that a foreground service requires.

None of the following

No analytics SDK, no cross-app tracking, no third-party ad network, no data sales. Apart from the MapLibre map library the app contains no third-party code; address data goes through our server to MapVina, the app never talks to them directly.

Deleting data

Everything stored on the device — map cache, the limits you corrected, trip history, the reports you sent — can be deleted from Settings or the history screen; uninstalling removes all of it. Server-side data tied to your device id is deleted as described under the community map.

Last updated: 10 September 2026.