1Who runs Road Nerd
Road Nerd is operated by Pinney Consulting. The app talks to a single backend service ("the Road Nerd server") that is privately operated by Pinney Consulting on Amazon Web Services. The app and server are the only first-party components; the third-party services they rely on are listed in Section 9.
2At a glance
| Data | Where it lives | Leaves your device? | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Precise location (GPS) | On device; sent to the Road Nerd server and to Wikipedia to find nearby places | Yes — see Section 3 | Not stored as a location history; reduced-precision cache up to 180 days |
| Drive history (facts heard, ratings, plate progress, when you were where) | On device only, in the app's local database | No | Until you clear it in Settings |
| Visited-place names (town / county entered) | Merged into one anonymous shared record per place on the server | Yes — place name and state only; no identifier, route, or coordinates — see Section 4 | Indefinite (aggregate across all installs, not tied to you) |
| Interests & ratings | On device; interest keywords are sent with story/score requests | Keywords: yes. Ratings: used to compute scores, not stored as a profile | Caches keyed by content, 30–365 days; see Section 5 |
| Install identifier | A per-install token; server stores only a hashed form | Yes | Until the install is removed or revoked |
| Plate-sharing display name & spots | Only if you join a shared session; sent to the server and other participants | Yes, when used — see Section 7 | Until the session expires (about 4 hours after the last activity) |
| Crash & analytics data | Google Firebase | Yes | Per Google/Firebase retention |
3Location data
Road Nerd requests precise and approximate location (ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION and ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION). Location is the app's core function: it triggers location-based facts as you drive and detects when a drive has ended. The app does not request background-location permission; location is only accessed while a drive session is active in the foreground service.
Your coordinates are used in four ways:
- On device. Coordinates drive the geofencing and the drive-end detector. Drive-end detection is based on GPS speed and displacement only — the app does not use the Android activity-recognition permission.
- Sent to the Road Nerd server. When the app looks up a place name (reverse geocoding) and when it requests a story, it sends your latitude and longitude to the Road Nerd server. The server uses these to resolve the surrounding municipality or county and to fetch local context (such as weather). The server does not store your coordinates as a location history and does not log them on a successful request; it logs the resolved place name and an install identifier. Reverse-geocode results are cached against coordinates rounded to roughly one kilometer of precision for up to 180 days. Exact coordinates may appear in error logs only if a geocoding lookup fails.
- Look-ahead preparation pings. While a drive session is active, the app periodically sends your position and current speed to the Road Nerd server so it can prepare narrations for places you may reach soon (the look-ahead radius scales with your speed). Each ping is used immediately to decide what to prepare and is not stored as a location history.
- Sent to Wikipedia. To find articles near you, the app queries the Wikipedia (Wikimedia) API directly from your device, including your coordinates. This request goes to Wikimedia, not through the Road Nerd server, and is subject to Wikimedia's privacy policy (linked in Section 9). As with any direct internet request, your device's IP address is visible to Wikimedia.
4Drive history on your device — and the shared map
Your personal drive history — which facts and stories you heard, your ratings, your plate-game progress, and when you were where — is stored in a database on your device. That history is not uploaded to the Road Nerd server. It remains on your device until you delete it (see Section 8) or uninstall the app.
One anonymized signal does leave your device: when you enter a municipality or county during a drive, the app reports that place's name and state (no coordinates, no route) to the Road Nerd server. The server keeps a single shared record per place — "this place has been visited by some Road Nerd install" — with a first-seen and last-seen date, and shows those places on a shared map of everywhere the app has ever been. The record carries no install identifier, the public map shows no dates, identifiers, or routes, and visits from all installs are merged into the same record — so a place on the map cannot be traced back to any person or drive. There is currently no in-app switch to disable this reporting; if that matters to you, contact us (Section 14).
5Stories, facts, interests, and ratings
When the app generates a story or scores facts, it sends the following to the Road Nerd server: the place name, your coordinates (see Section 3), a chosen voice, your interest keywords, and the target length. Ratings you give are used to influence scoring; they are processed to produce cached scores rather than stored as a personal profile.
To control cost and speed, the server caches generated content. Caches are keyed by the content (for example, a place name plus an interest fingerprint), not by your identity:
- Generated stories — up to 365 days
- Fact scores — up to 30 days
- Fact records (revalidated against Wikipedia) — about 90 days
- Synthesized audio — up to 90 days (stored in Amazon S3)
Generated narrations that prove broadly useful may be promoted into a longer-lived content library so they can be served to any listener without regenerating them. That library is keyed by place, and its entries contain the narration text and audio only — no user data, coordinates, or install identifiers.
The server keeps short operational logs for debugging and for tracking usage against spend limits. These logs record the resolved place name and an install identifier; they are not used to build an advertising or behavioral profile, and Road Nerd does not serve ads.
6Install identifier
On first launch the app obtains a per-install token from the server, which the app then sends with its requests so the server can apply rate limits and basic usage counts. The server stores only a hashed form of this token, along with a request count and a last-seen timestamp. This token is tied to the app installation, not to your name or account — Road Nerd has no user accounts or logins.
7Collaborative plate-spotting (optional)
Road Nerd includes an optional license-plate game. You can play entirely on your own device. If you choose to share a session, the app sends a display name you choose, the U.S. state plates you mark as spotted, and timestamps to the Road Nerd server, which relays them to other participants who have the session code. Shared sessions are held in memory on the server and are deleted automatically after roughly four hours without activity.
Please note: shared plate sessions are joined with a session code and are not protected by a password or account. Anyone who has the code can see the session's display names and spotted plates. Do not use a display name you would not want other participants to see, and only share a session code with people you intend to play with.
8Your choices and deleting your data
- Location. You can grant or revoke location permission at any time in Android's system settings. Without location, the app's core features will not function.
- Local data. You can clear Road Nerd's on-device data from the app's Settings, and uninstalling the app removes all on-device data.
- Notifications. Foreground-service notifications can be managed through Android's notification settings.
9Third-party services
Road Nerd relies on the following services. Data sent to them is governed by their own privacy policies:
- Google Cloud — Geocoding, Gemini / Vertex AI, and Text-to-Speech, called server-side by the Road Nerd server to resolve place names, generate story text, and synthesize audio. Google Cloud Privacy Notice.
- Google Firebase — Crashlytics and Google Analytics for Firebase, used in the app for crash reporting and basic usage analytics (see Section 10). Firebase Privacy.
- Wikipedia / Wikimedia, queried directly from your device for nearby articles and "on this day" facts. Wikimedia Privacy Policy.
- U.S. National Weather Service (NOAA), queried server-side for local weather context. NWS Privacy.
- Amazon Web Services, which hosts the Road Nerd server and audio cache. AWS Privacy Notice.
Road Nerd no longer uses the Google Maps SDK; its map is drawn on-device and does not call Google Maps.
10Crash and analytics data
Road Nerd uses Google Firebase Crashlytics and Google Analytics for Firebase to understand crashes and basic usage. When the app crashes or reports diagnostics, Firebase may collect a Firebase installation identifier, device and operating-system information, app version, and crash stack traces and related diagnostic metadata. This data is sent to Google and handled under Google's and Firebase's policies and retention periods. Road Nerd uses it only to find and fix problems and to understand which features are used — not to identify you personally and not for advertising.
11Children
Road Nerd is a general-audience app and is not directed to children under 13. It does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.
12Permissions Road Nerd requests
ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION,ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION— location-based facts and drive detection (Section 3).INTERNET,ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE— network requests to the server, Wikipedia, and the services in Section 9.FOREGROUND_SERVICE,FOREGROUND_SERVICE_LOCATION,FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MEDIA_PLAYBACK— to keep tracking your drive and to speak facts while the app runs in the background of your screen.POST_NOTIFICATIONS— to show the ongoing drive-session and playback notifications.
Road Nerd does not request background-location or activity-recognition permissions.
13Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change. Material changes will be reflected here before they take effect in a released version of the app.
14Contact
Questions about privacy in Road Nerd can be sent to privacy@pinneyconsulting.com.