Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

BushNav is operated privately from Australia. For the purposes of this policy, "BushNav", "we" and "us" refers to the operator of the BushNav service. You can contact us about privacy at [email protected]. This is our nominated contact channel for all privacy questions, access and correction requests, and complaints.

2. What personal information we collect

We only collect what's needed to run the parts of BushNav that require an account or cloud sync. This includes:

• Account details — your email address and a password. Your password is hashed by our authentication provider before it ever reaches our database; we never see or store your raw password.
• Optional profile information — a display name, if you choose to set one.
• Location data — only while you are actively using turn-by-turn navigation or recording a trip. See section 3 below.
• User content — trips and saved places you create, GPX tracks from recorded trips, reviews, star ratings, photos, track condition reports, and POI or track suggestions you submit.
• Feedback — the message and any optional contact details you submit through the in-app feedback form.
• Device and crash data — if crash reporting is enabled, basic technical data (device model, OS version, app version, stack traces) is sent to our crash-reporting provider to help us fix bugs. This does not include your location, trips or content.
• Subscription status — whether you hold an active BushNav Pro subscription, and its renewal date, as reported to us by Google Play. We never receive or store your card details — Google handles all payment information.

3. How we use location data

Location is one of the most sensitive types of personal information, so we're deliberately narrow about how BushNav uses it:

• BushNav accesses your location only while you are actively navigating (follow mode / turn-by-turn) or actively recording a trip.
• BushNav does not track your location in the background at any other time. When navigation or recording is not active, location access is off.
• While navigation is active, your device may keep reporting location briefly in the background (e.g. screen locked, app minimised) so your position on the map stays current — this stops automatically when you end navigation or arrive at your destination.
• Location shown on the map during navigation is processed on your device and is not transmitted to us.
• If you record a trip, the resulting GPX track is stored locally on your device and, if you have an account and sync is enabled, uploaded to your own BushNav account so you can access it on other devices. It is not visible to other users unless you choose to share it.
• We do not sell, rent or use your location data for advertising — BushNav has no ad network and no advertising SDKs.

4. Why we collect your information

We collect and use personal information to: provide and operate the service (account access, syncing trips and saved places across devices, displaying your reviews and photos); improve the app (diagnosing crashes and bugs, reviewing feedback); process subscriptions (verifying your BushNav Pro status through Google Play); and communicate with you about your account or in response to a request you've made.

5. Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes. We use a small number of service providers to run BushNav, each of which processes data on our behalf for the specific purpose listed:

• Cloud database and authentication provider — stores your account, saved trips, reviews and related data behind row-level security so users can only access their own private data.
• Cloud storage provider — stores photos you upload (reviews, POI submissions).
• Google Play Billing — processes BushNav Pro subscription payments and reports subscription status back to us. Google, not BushNav, handles your payment details.
• Crash-reporting provider — receives crash and error reports (technical/device data only) to help us fix bugs.
• Map tile provider — serves the map tiles displayed in the app. Tile requests may include your device's IP address as a normal part of delivering the correct map imagery, but no account or personal data is sent to the tile provider.
• OpenStreetMap — the source of the POI and track data shown on the map (see section 11). We query OSM-derived data; we don't send OSM your personal information.

We may also disclose information if required by Australian law, or to protect the safety of our users.

6. Overseas disclosure

Some of our service providers store or process data outside Australia — for example, our cloud database provider may host in Australian or overseas regions, Google Play operates globally, and our crash-reporting and storage providers operate overseas servers. Where personal information is handled overseas, we rely on our service providers' own security and privacy commitments, and we choose providers with strong data-protection practices. By using BushNav, you acknowledge that your information may be handled outside Australia as described in this section.

7. Cookies and local storage

The BushNav web app uses your browser's local storage to keep you logged in — this is functional, not tracking. The marketing website and web app do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics/ad-tracking scripts of any kind.

8. Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect your personal information, including encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS), access controls, and row-level security policies on our database that restrict each user's data to that user. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to keep your information protected against misuse, loss and unauthorised access.

9. How long we keep your information

We keep your account information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account (available in-app under account settings), we delete your account data, including your saved trips, recorded tracks and profile information, subject to any residual copies in backups that age out over time. Content you've made publicly visible (such as reviews or photos) is removed or de-identified where reasonably practicable. Feedback submissions may be retained for longer to help us track product issues over time, and where possible we retain these in a form that isn't tied back to you personally.

10. Your rights — access, correction and deletion

You can access and correct most of your personal information directly in the app (profile, saved trips, reviews, photos). You can permanently delete your account and associated data at any time from within the app. If you'd like a copy of your data, or need help correcting or deleting something you can't manage yourself, contact us at [email protected] and we'll respond within a reasonable time.

11. Map and track data

POI and track data shown in BushNav is derived from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). This underlying map data is not personal information about you — it's geographic data about places and tracks. Attribution is shown on the map within the app.

12. Data breaches

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm to you, we will comply with our obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), including notifying affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) where required.

13. Children

BushNav is not directed at, and is not intended for use by, children under the age of 13.

14. Complaints

If you believe we've mishandled your personal information, please contact us first at [email protected] so we can try to resolve it directly. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time as BushNav's features change — for example, as we add iOS support or new sync features. We'll update the "last updated" date at the top of this page when we do. Continued use of BushNav after an update means you accept the revised policy.