RouteUp Privacy Policy

Effective 6 August 2026 · applies to the RouteUp app for iOS and Android

RouteUp is made by Melon Labs (ABN 31 267 542 900), a sole trader business based in New South Wales, Australia. This policy explains what information the RouteUp app handles, what leaves your device, and what never does. It is written to describe what the app actually does, not what a template says.

What we do not collect

• No account or sign-in. RouteUp has no account system, so we never ask for or hold your name, email address, phone number, or password.
• No record of where you travel. The stops you search for, the journeys you plan, and the trips you save stay on your phone. They are never sent to us and are deliberately kept out of every analytics event, because an origin and destination pair can amount to your home address.
• No contacts, photos, files, microphone, or calendar access. The app never requests these permissions.
• No screen recording or session replay. Our analytics tool supports it; we have it switched off.

Advertising

The free version of RouteUp shows ads on some screens, supplied by Google AdMob. Buying RouteUp Pro removes every ad in the app.

We do not give AdMob any information about you. We never send it your location, your stops, or your journeys. Google does receive the information any ad network receives in order to serve and measure an ad: your device's advertising identifier, your IP address (which gives a rough idea of your city, not your position), your device and app details, and whether you saw or tapped an ad. Google uses that under its own privacy policy, which covers how to control ad personalisation across all apps on your phone.

Your choices. On iOS, RouteUp shows Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt before any ad loads. If you decline, you still see ads, but they are not personalised. In Europe and the UK, a Google consent form appears first and your answer there controls personalisation the same way. On Android you can reset or delete your advertising ID in your phone's settings. And on any device, buying Pro removes ads entirely.

We deliberately hold the consent form and tracking prompt back until after the app has shown you a first set of departures, so you are never asked before the app has done anything useful.

Usage analytics, and how to turn them off

RouteUp records a small, fixed set of anonymous events (things like "app opened for the first time", "a journey was planned", "the paywall was shown") using PostHog, hosted in the United States. Each event carries your platform, app version, and whether you own Pro. Events are tied to a random ID generated on your device, not to you.

The event list is a closed set defined in the app's source, and none of it can accept a stop name, a stop ID, or a coordinate. There is a second filter that strips anything location-shaped before an event leaves your phone. We can see that a journey was planned; we cannot see where to.

You can switch this off. Settings has an analytics toggle. Turning it off stops all event collection, and nothing queued is sent afterwards.

Your location stays on your phone

If you allow location access, RouteUp reads your approximate position once, on the device, to sort nearby stops. The lookup runs against timetable data already downloaded to your phone. Your coordinates are never saved, never included in any network request, and never shared with us, with our ad network, or with any other third party. If you decline location access, the app works normally; you just pick stops by name instead.

To be complete: your IP address is visible to any server the app talks to, including Google's ad servers, and an IP address gives a rough idea of your city. That is a property of using the internet, not something the app sends. It is unrelated to the precise location described above, which never leaves the device.

What does leave your device

• Crash and performance reports. If the app crashes or runs slowly, a technical report is sent to Sentry, our error-reporting service. Reports contain the error details plus basic device context such as device model, operating system version, and language. We have configured Sentry not to collect your IP address or any personal identity data. Reports are used only to find and fix bugs.
• Purchase records. If you buy RouteUp Pro, the purchase is processed entirely by Apple or Google. We never see your payment details. RevenueCat, our purchase-management service, receives an anonymous app-generated ID and the store transaction so the app can remember that you own Pro, including after you reinstall.
• Ad requests. When the free version loads an ad, Google receives the information described under Advertising above.
• Usage events. The anonymous, location-free events described above, unless you have turned analytics off in Settings.
• Timetable downloads. The app downloads timetable and real-time data from our servers. Like any internet request, these include your IP address while the request is being served. We do not use these requests to identify or profile you.

Data stored on your phone

Your saved trips, recent stops, settings, and downloaded timetables are stored only on your device. Deleting the app deletes them. None of this is synced to us; we have no servers that hold user data.

Services we use

• Google AdMob (advertising in the free version), as described above.
• PostHog (anonymous usage analytics, switchable off in Settings), as described above.
• Sentry (crash and performance reporting), as described above.
• RevenueCat (purchase management), as described above.
• Apple App Store and Google Play process all payments under their own terms and privacy policies.
• Transport for NSW open data is the source of timetable information. No data about you is ever sent to Transport for NSW.

We never sell, rent, or trade your data for money, and we do not share it with anyone beyond the services listed above. One thing worth stating plainly: some privacy laws, including California's, treat showing personalised ads as a form of "sharing" even when no money changes hands. If that concerns you, decline the tracking prompt, opt out of personalised ads in your phone's settings, or buy Pro to remove ads altogether. Any third party that receives data through the app is required to protect it to the same standard described in this policy.

Keeping and deleting data

Because RouteUp has no accounts, there is no profile of you for us to keep or delete. Everything stored on your phone is removed when you uninstall the app. Crash reports in Sentry, anonymous usage events in PostHog, and anonymous purchase records in RevenueCat are kept only as long as needed for debugging, for understanding how the app is used, and for honouring your purchase. If you would like data connected to your device deleted from those services, email us and we will action it.

Children

RouteUp is a commuter utility and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect any information from children.

Security

Everything the app sends is encrypted in transit using HTTPS. The services we use (Google AdMob, PostHog, Sentry, RevenueCat, Cloudflare) are established providers with their own security programs.

Your rights

We handle information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles. Depending on where you live, you may also have rights under laws such as the GDPR (Europe) or CCPA (California), including the right to access or delete data about you. Given how little we collect, the practical way to exercise any of these rights is to email us; we will respond to every request. If you are unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) or your local data-protection authority.

Changes to this policy

If we change what the app collects, we will update this page and change the effective date at the top before the new behaviour ships. Significant changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.

Contact

Melon Labs
Email: [email protected]