Privacy Policy

What we collect

Every account (Parent, Driver, School Admin)

Name, email address, phone number, and a securely hashed password - never stored in plain text.

Parents

Optionally, a home address and an emergency contact, if the school chooses to record one - used only to contact you or reach someone on your behalf in an emergency.

Students

Name, admission number, and - only if the school enters them - date of birth, grade, and a photo. A boarding code (used at pickup/drop-off to confirm the right child boarded the right bus) is also generated per student.

Drivers

Driving license number.

Live bus location

While a trip is actively running, the driver's phone sends the bus's GPS position roughly every 5 seconds, so parents and the school can see where the bus is and when it will arrive. This is the most sensitive data we hold, and we treat its retention accordingly - see below.

Notifications

A record of what was sent to you and when (e.g. "Bus is 10 minutes away"), so delivery can be tracked and retried if it fails.

How long we keep it

Account data (names, contact details, assignments) is kept for as long as the account is active with the school. Raw, second-by-second GPS location for a trip is deleted a few days after that trip ends, once it has been processed into road-traffic data - after that, only a simplified overall route (the general path taken, not a precise minute-by-minute trace) is kept for that trip, for historical playback.

Who we share it with

We never sell your data, or any child's data, to anyone. Data only ever flows to these services, each for one specific purpose:

• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) - delivers push notifications to your phone. Only receives a device identifier and the notification content, never location history.
• Email delivery (Gmail SMTP) - sends account-related emails (e.g. a welcome email when your account is created).
• Nominatim (address search) - if you or your school searches for an address while setting up a stop, only the text you typed is sent, to find its map coordinates.
• Google Analytics - only on the School Admin/Driver dashboard, and only after you explicitly accept the cookie-consent banner. It sees which dashboard pages are visited and general usage patterns - never a specific student, parent, trip, or location. Any record identifier that would otherwise appear in a page's address is stripped out before it is sent.

Route mapping and directions are computed using our own, self-hosted mapping service - no location or route data is sent to any third-party mapping provider.

Children's data

Information about students is entered by the school, not collected directly from children, and is used solely to run and track the school's bus service - who is assigned to which stop and bus, and confirming they boarded and were dropped off safely. It is never used for advertising, and never shared outside the school and the services listed above.

Your rights

To view, correct, or request deletion of your (or your child's) data, contact your School Admin, who can act on this directly, or email admin@pingmybus.in.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that meaningfully affects how your data is handled, we'll update the date at the top of this page.