Privacy

Last updated 9 October 2026

This page explains what happens to your data when you use tarmacked. The short answer is that it stays on your phone.

What the app keeps on your phone

To colour in the roads you drive, tarmacked records your GPS position while a drive is being recorded. It keeps your drives (the GPS points, times, distance and which roads each drive covered), the roads you've driven, any roads you've marked as private or gone, a few settings like your home county, and a short log of what the app has been doing, which helps with fixing bugs.

All of that stays on your phone. None of it is sent to us or anyone else unless you send us a problem report yourself (see below), and deleting the app deletes it.

Permissions it asks for

Location is how it records your drives and gives directions. It asks for "Always" so a drive keeps recording when your phone is locked, and so auto-detect (if you turn it on) can tell when you've set off.

Motion & Fitness is only used if you turn on auto-detect. It tells walking apart from driving, so a walk to the shop doesn't get saved as a drive.

Notifications are reminders like "Still driving?" and "Save this drive?". They're made on your phone. No push service is involved.

You can change any of these whenever you like in your phone's Settings.

Search and directions

Routes are worked out on your phone, from our road data. Spoken directions are made on your phone too.

When you search for a place or an address, what you type and the rough area you're searching in go to Apple, who find the matching places. The app also asks Apple for the name of a spot when you drop a pin on the map. Apple's privacy policy covers those requests. Where you're going is never sent to us.

The first time you use the app, it asks Apple which country you're in, once, to choose between kilometres and miles. You can change that in Settings.

Sharing a route

You can send a route or one of your drives to someone as a link. The route is written into the link itself, so it isn't uploaded anywhere. Opening the link on tarmacked.com doesn't send the route to us either: the part of the link that holds it stays in the browser. A shared drive leaves out its first and last few hundred metres, so it doesn't show where you started or finished. Anyone who has the link can see the route, so only send it to people you want to have it.

Premium

Premium is bought through Apple's App Store. Apple handles the payment and tells the app on your phone that it's been bought. We never see your payment details, your name or your Apple ID, and you don't need an account with us.

Friends and accounts (optional)

You never need an account. If you choose to make one (to add friends and appear on friends-only leaderboards), you sign in with Apple, Google or an email code.

What we keep: your name and avatar, your friend code, optionally your home county, up to three badges you pin, your friends and requests, and a few totals: the road you've driven in total, the new road this week and this month, and how many badges and scenic drives you've earned. For sign-in we keep an identifier from Apple or Google (not your name or email), or, for email sign-in, a scrambled (hashed) version of your address, so you can sign in again. If you use Apple's private relay address, we never see your real one. We don't see your drives, places, home, routes or when you drive.

Who sees it: your friends see your name, avatar, county (if shown), pinned badges and those totals. Someone who has your friend code can send you a request and sees your name and avatar. You can block or remove anyone, and report a name or avatar, which we review. Friend links (tarmacked.com/f/CODE) contain only the code.

Emails and hosting: sign-in codes are sent through AhaSend (an EU email provider), and the data is kept on Cloudflare. Neither uses it for anything else. We use none of it for advertising or tracking.

Country and county totals (off by default): if you switch on "Share my country and county totals" in your profile, the kilometres you have driven and the total road in each country and county you have driven in are stored so friends can compare on country and county leaderboards. No routes, places or times are shared. Switching it off deletes them from our server. We also store your total distance driven (repeats included), this week and this month, for the distance leaderboard.

Deleting it: Settings → Account → Delete my account (after you confirm it is you with a fresh sign-in) removes your profile, friends, totals and sign-in details from our server straight away. Your drives and map stay on your phone. Accounts you stop using are not deleted automatically; ask us if you'd like that.

What gets downloaded

The app downloads the road maps it needs from tiles.tarmacked.com, which runs on Cloudflare. Like visiting any website, that means your IP address and the area of map being downloaded pass through Cloudflare. We don't use that to identify anyone. Cloudflare's own privacy policy covers what they do as the host.

The map itself is ours too: it's drawn on your phone from map files on tiles.tarmacked.com, the same as the road data. The satellite view comes from Apple (Apple's privacy policy), and those requests show which part of the map you're looking at.

Now and then the app checks tarmacked.com for announcements (news or offers from us). That request carries only the app version and whether Premium is on, no account and no location, and which ones you've closed is remembered on your phone only.

Your drives and locations are never uploaded, unless you choose to send a drive with a problem report.

Backups and problem reports

If you make a backup, the file goes wherever you choose to save or send it.

From Settings → Help → Send feedback or a problem report you can send a report straight to us when you tap Send (test versions also have a Report a problem button). It holds what you wrote, the name you gave if any, the app's log (which holds no locations), your iOS version, a few app and phone settings (like the GPS setting, battery level and Low Power Mode), the country it was sent from, and, only if you add them, screenshots and a drive (its GPS track and the roads it covered). A drive is only included if you pick one. Reports are kept privately on Cloudflare, where only we can read them, and we use them only to find and fix problems.

You can also choose Email the log instead in Settings → Help: a short file about the app (its version, a few counts and its log, with no locations in it), sent from your own email app, so you see exactly what goes.

However a report or backup reaches us, we'll only use it to sort out that problem, and we'll delete it once it's fixed.

Your rights

Apart from problem reports you've sent us and, if you made one, your optional friends account (which you can see and delete in the app), we don't hold your data, so there's normally nothing for us to hand over, correct or delete. It's all on your phone and under your control. If you've sent us a report or emailed us, you can ask us to delete it. You can also complain to the Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.ie.

Kids

tarmacked is made for drivers. It isn't aimed at children.

Who runs tarmacked

tarmacked is run by Killian Hogan in Ireland, who is responsible for your data under this policy.

Contact

Email us at support@tarmacked.com.