TrainTrack Privacy Policy

TrainTrack is a community railroad-crossing alert service. This policy explains the information TrainTrack uses to provide live crossing reports, alerts, public contributor rankings, and future optional location-based features.

Information you can provide

You may use TrainTrack and submit crossing reports without creating a public profile. Reports include the crossing, train status, optional direction, time, and a pseudonymous device/reporter identifier used for spam prevention and contributor counting.

If you create a leaderboard profile, TrainTrack stores your chosen public username, a securely hashed version of your private PIN, a reporter identifier, account creation time, and your reporting activity. Your PIN itself is not stored in readable form.

Notifications

If you enable notifications, TrainTrack stores a push-notification token or web push subscription plus the crossings and alert types you select. These values are used only to deliver TrainTrack alerts.

Location

Location is optional. The current TrainTrack service does not require continuous location access to create a leaderboard profile or submit reports. A future native Commute Assist feature may offer optional location access to show nearby crossings, warn about crossings ahead, and prompt users to confirm when a train has cleared. TrainTrack will request that permission only when you turn on a feature that needs it.

Public information

If you choose a public username, other users may see that username, report count, rank, streak, and badge. Your PIN, push token, and reporter/device identifier are not displayed publicly.

Community requests and construction reports

TrainTrack may store city/crossing expansion votes, request text, and construction-status submissions needed to operate those community features. Public usernames and expansion requests are subject to filtering and the TrainTrack Community Guidelines. Users can hide public community items on their own device and report content for review.

How information is used

Information is used to provide live crossing status, prevent report spam, calculate contributor rankings, deliver selected notifications, review community construction reports, and improve coverage.

Account deletion

Signed-in users can choose Delete account & data from the public leaderboard/profile screen. Deletion removes the profile and data tied to that account, including its leaderboard-linked train reports, pending construction reports, notification subscriptions, account sessions, and expansion votes. You may continue using TrainTrack anonymously afterward with a new pseudonymous identifier.

Retention

Live train-report data is operational data and may be automatically removed as it ages. Account data remains until the account is deleted or it is no longer needed to provide the service.

Sharing and sale

TrainTrack does not sell personal information to advertisers. Service providers used to host the app or deliver notifications may process information only as needed to provide those services.

Children

TrainTrack is a general-audience transportation utility and is not designed to collect personal information from children. Public profiles do not require an email address or real name.