Privacy
Last updated 16 July 2026
Platform Pal shows you train platforms. To do that it needs remarkably little about you, and this page sets out exactly what. The short version: there are no accounts, no ads and no third-party trackers, your favourites live on your phone, and your location never leaves your phone. The only usage data is our own anonymous feature counters, described below.
What the app sends us
When you open a departure board or a train's detail page, the app asks our server for that station or that train. The request carries a station code and the train's identifier, and nothing about you. There is no account, so no name, email address or password exists anywhere in Platform Pal.
Our server is hosted in London. Like almost every server on the internet, it keeps short-lived operational logs of incoming requests, which include the IP address the request came from. We use these to keep the service healthy and for nothing else, and they are not tied to any profile because there is nothing to tie them to.
Live Activity updates
If you track a train and allow notifications, the app gives our server two things: the train's identifier and a push token issued by Apple, so the server can update the Live Activity on your Lock Screen as the platform firms up. The token identifies that one Live Activity, not you. It is kept while you are tracking the train and discarded afterwards.
What stays on your phone
Your favourite stations, recent searches, tracked trains, journey history and settings are stored on your phone and nowhere else. We cannot see them. Deleting the app deletes them.
Location
If you allow it, the app uses your location on the phone to sort the nearest stations to the top. That sorting is the only thing your location is used for: it happens on the device, nothing is written down, and your location never leaves your phone. The app works fine if you say no.
Feature counters
The app counts how often its features are used: plain totals like "boards opened: 41 times" or "trains tracked: 6 times". Once a day it sends those totals to our server. The counts carry no identifier of any kind: not your device, not an install code, not your location, nothing that could link them to you or to each other. We use them to learn which features earn their keep, and for nothing else.
Things we do not do
No accounts. No advertising. No third-party trackers or analytics services. We do not sell or share data with anyone, which is easy to honour because the counters above are the only usage data we hold and they describe features, not people.
If this changes
Platform Pal may one day carry advertising. If that happens, this page will change first: we will describe exactly what is collected and why, date the change in the list below, and update the app's privacy label on the App Store to match. Nothing new will be collected before this page says so.
Your choices
Location and notification permissions live in your phone's Settings and can be switched off at any time; the app keeps working. Deleting the app removes everything it stored. There is no data about you on our server to ask us to delete, but if you have any question about your data, write to us and we will answer plainly.
Contact
Changes to this policy
- 16 July 2026: anonymous feature counters added, described under Feature counters.
- 14 July 2026: first published.