FlockHopper Privacy Policy
Last updated October 8, 2026
Summary
FlockHopper is a navigation app and website that route around license-plate-reader cameras. Open Road Labs LLC runs it. There are no accounts, no ads, and no analytics or tracking tools. We do not sell or share your personal information, and we never sell or share location data.
This policy covers the FlockHopper app for iPhone, the FlockHopper app for Android, and the website at dontgetflocked.com. The first part applies to all of them. Each app and the website then have their own sections, because they use different services.
Who we are
Open Road Labs LLC, 30 North Gould Street, Suite R, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801. Email flockhopper@openroadlabs.org with any privacy question or request.
Our servers
The apps and the website use FlockHopper's own routing servers. A route request carries your starting point, your destination, any stops, and your route options. The server uses them to build the route and then discards them. It does not log or store route requests.
The routing servers keep one kind of record. For each request they note the minute it arrived, whether it worked, how long it took, how many cameras the fastest route passed, and the camera distance you chose. These records contain no IP address and no location, and they are deleted after 30 days. To stop abuse, our servers hold IP addresses in memory for about a minute to rate-limit requests, and then forget them.
Our servers sit behind Cloudflare, which carries the traffic and blocks attacks. Cloudflare sees your IP address and the address of each request, as every network provider does. It processes them on our behalf under its own privacy policy.
The FlockHopper app for iPhone
What stays on your iPhone
The app keeps these on your iPhone. They are never included in iCloud or computer backups and never sync anywhere:
- Your location while you use the app. The app reads GPS to guide you and to warn you about cameras. It remembers your last position so the map opens where you are. If you turn on Always On, the app also asks for Always location access so it can notice when you start driving.
- Saved places: Home, Work, favorites, and recent destinations. Recents are saved unless you turn off Remember Recent Destinations. Because saved places are never backed up, they don't move to a new iPhone.
- Saved routes, including where each route starts, and offline maps. The app also keeps a cache of the map areas you've viewed.
- Camera log, if you turn on Log Camera Encounters (a Pro feature, off by default). For each camera you pass, it records the camera, its location, and when you passed it. Taken together, that is a record of where you drove. Records are deleted after 90 days. Names you give cameras are kept until you clear them.
- Always On's parked location, if you use Always On. The app remembers where you parked so it can notice when you drive again. Turning Always On off deletes it.
- Crash reports from iOS, up to the ten most recent.
Your app settings, such as units and map style, are ordinary preferences and may be included in backups. They contain no locations.
Camera alerts, Lock Screen notifications, and the Live Activity are all created on your iPhone. FlockHopper does not send push notifications.
What the app sends, and when
| What is sent | Sent to | When |
|---|---|---|
| Your starting point (your current position when you navigate), destination, stops, and route options | FlockHopper's routing servers | When you ask for directions, and each time navigation reroutes you |
| Search text as you type, and the map area you're searching in, which may be centered on your position | Apple | When you search for a place |
| One map point, to look up its street address | Apple | When you save a route that starts at your location, drop a pin, choose a point on the map, add a stop from the map, or name an offline map |
| Which map tiles to draw | FlockHopper's map server | Whenever the Standard map is on screen, when you download an offline map, and when you save a route (the app downloads the map along it) |
| Which map tiles to draw | Stadia Maps | Only when you choose one of the Pro map styles |
| Which traffic tiles to draw | FlockHopper's traffic server, which requests them from TomTom without passing on your IP address or anything else about you | Only while the Traffic layer is on (Pro) |
| Nothing about you | FlockHopper's data server | About once a day, to update the camera database |
| An anonymous purchase ID, a device identifier that Apple gives to each app, your device model, iOS and app versions, your App Store country, and your purchase history | RevenueCat and Apple | When the app opens, and when you view, make, or restore a purchase |
Map and traffic tiles are small squares of map, so the requests show which area is on screen. While you navigate, the map follows you, so those requests follow your drive. This is true of any map app.
The purchase identifier and device identifier are used only to confirm what you've bought. They are not used for advertising or to track you across other apps.
What you choose to share
Nothing in this list leaves your iPhone unless you send it:
- Share Diagnostics sends this session's app log, without locations, and recent crash reports, to whoever you choose.
- Export in History creates a spreadsheet of your camera log, including when and where you passed each camera.
- Links in the app open websites: FlockHopper's feedback board, DeFlock's camera report page, OpenStreetMap, and the App Store. Those sites have their own privacy policies.
Your choices in the app
- Deny location access in iOS Settings. You can still browse the map, search, and preview routes.
- Leave Always On and Log Camera Encounters off. Both are off by default.
- Delete saved places and recent destinations in Settings > Saved Places.
- Delete your camera log in Alert Settings > Clear History, or delete single entries in History.
- Delete saved routes and offline maps in Offline Maps & Routes.
- Delete the app to remove everything it stored on your iPhone. Your purchase history stays with Apple and RevenueCat so you can restore purchases.
The FlockHopper app for Android
This section covers version 2.0 and later, on Android phones and Android Auto.
What stays on your phone
Nothing below leaves your phone unless you share it. None of it, including your settings, goes into Google backups or phone-to-phone transfers. Clearing the app's storage or uninstalling the app deletes all of it.
| What | Kept | To delete it |
|---|---|---|
| Your last position, at full precision, so the map opens where you are | Until a newer position replaces it | Clear the app's storage |
| Saved places: Home, Work, favorites, and your 15 most recent destinations | Until you delete them | Saved Places. Clear Recents, or turning off Remember Recent Destinations, deletes the recents |
| Saved routes (Pro): the start (for a route from your location, where you were when you saved it), stops, the route and its directions, and its settings. Up to 100 | Until you delete them | Offline Maps & Routes |
| Offline maps (Pro): areas you choose, and a 3 km strip along each saved route | Until you delete them | Offline Maps & Routes |
| A cache of map areas you have viewed, about 50 MB | Oldest areas are replaced first | Clear the app's storage. There is no in-app button |
| An interrupted trip: the destination and the stops you had not reached. Not your starting point | 24 hours | Discard trip |
| Camera log (Pro, off by default): each camera you pass, where it is, when you passed it, and whether you were navigating, in Free Drive, or on Always On. Taken together, that is a record of where you drove. It also counts the cameras each privacy route avoided | 90 days, up to 500 entries. Names you give cameras stay until you clear them | Clear History in Alert Settings, or delete single entries in History |
| Always On stopping place: one position, with its speed and time | While Always On is on | Turn Always On off |
| Troubleshooting log: which of 13 kinds of app event happened (such as "route request started"), the minute, and how long route requests took. Never a location, place, search, or route | 7 days, up to 200 events | Clear the app's storage |
| Purchase state: whether Pro or a tip is active, plus RevenueCat's anonymous customer ID and purchase records | Until you clear the app's storage | Clear the app's storage. Email us to have the ID deleted at RevenueCat |
Camera alerts and drive notifications are made on the phone. The app has no push notifications, analytics, or crash reporting.
Permissions
- Location while you use the app, for the map, directions, and camera alerts. By default Google Play services on your phone supplies the position. With GPS-Only Location on, the app reads the GPS chip directly. You can allow approximate location only, or decline, and still browse the map, search, and preview routes.
- Location all the time, only for Always On, asked once from its setup screen. See below.
- Notifications, for the drive card, camera alerts, and the Always On check. The drive card shows your next turn and its street on the lock screen. Camera alerts show only "ALPR Camera Ahead" and the distance until you unlock.
- Run at start-up, to re-arm Always On after a reboot or update, and to reschedule the daily camera update.
- Also: internet, the navigation service (always with a visible notification), vibration, and Google Play billing. Network state, Wi-Fi state, and wake lock come from the map and background-work libraries. The app does not read your Wi-Fi networks.
It does not ask for your contacts, microphone, camera, photos, files, Bluetooth, phone, SMS, or physical activity, and it does not read the advertising ID. Of your other apps, it can see only Google Play, your text-to-speech engines, and whether DeFlock is installed.
Always On
Always On is off by default. When you turn it on, the app has Google Play services on your phone watch a circle about 300 m (1,000 ft) around where you stopped. When you leave the circle, Play services wakes the app. It reads your location for up to five minutes, with a notification, and starts Free Drive with camera alerts if you are moving at driving speed. It stops after you have been parked for the time you choose (5, 10, or 20 minutes). It also reads your location once when you turn it on and when it re-arms, including after a reboot or update, and downloads the camera database if it is missing. It does not use motion or activity sensors. Always On needs Google Play services, so it is unavailable with GPS-Only Location. Turning it off removes the circle and deletes the stopping place.
What the app sends, and when
| What is sent | Sent to | When |
|---|---|---|
| Your starting point (your position, moved up to 50 m ahead if you are moving), destination, stops as coordinates, and route options | FlockHopper's routing servers | Each time a route is built: when you ask for directions, change stops or options, update a saved route, preview on Android Auto, and when navigation reroutes you |
| Search text (from three characters), your phone's language, and the area you are searching, rounded to about 1 km. The ID of a result you pick | Stadia Maps, directly from your phone. Stadia sees your IP address | While you type or speak a search, and when you pick a result |
| The exact position of one map point, to look up its address | Stadia Maps, directly | When you drop a pin, long-press the map, choose a point on the map, or add a stop from the map |
| A category, such as Coffee, and where to search: rounded to about 1 km, or for Search this area when zoomed in to a few kilometers, the exact center and size of the map on screen | FlockHopper's place server, which asks Geoapify without passing on your IP address | When you tap a category or Search this area |
| Nothing about you: a request for our Stadia Maps key | FlockHopper's place server | Once a session, the first time the app needs Stadia |
| Which map tiles to draw | FlockHopper's map server for the Standard map. Stadia Maps, directly, for the Pro styles | Whenever a map is on screen, and when you download an offline map or save a route (Pro) |
| Which traffic tiles to draw | FlockHopper's traffic server, which gets them from TomTom without passing on your IP address | Only while the Traffic layer is on (Pro) |
| Nothing about you: a "has it changed?" check | FlockHopper's data server | About once a day, even with the app closed, and when you tap Refresh |
| An anonymous ID that RevenueCat's software creates on your phone, your Google Play purchase records, your device model and maker, Android and app versions, language, and Play country | RevenueCat. Google Play runs the purchase itself and reports its own usage statistics to Google | When you open the tip jar or Pro screen, or buy or restore. After you have bought or tipped, each time you open or return to the app |
Map and traffic tiles show which area is on screen, so while you navigate, those requests follow your drive. Requests to our servers carry a token that is the same in every copy of the app. It identifies the build, not you.
If you never open the tip jar or Pro screen, the app never contacts RevenueCat or Google Play billing. The RevenueCat ID is not the advertising ID and is used only to confirm purchases.
Voice guidance is spoken by the text-to-speech engine on your phone, usually Google's. The app lists only on-device voices. A network voice picked in an older version stays selected and sends the spoken words, including street names, to its maker. Choose another voice in Settings > Voice to stop that.
Android Auto
The map and alerts run on your phone. To show them in the car, the app hands Google's Android Auto app the next turn, road names, distances, arrival time, search results, and the speed limit. When you say a destination, your car or Google Assistant turns it into text before FlockHopper sees it, and that text is searched like typed text. The app never records audio. It keeps a one-way hash of the car's last request, not the words, to ignore repeats.
What you choose to share
- Share Diagnostics sends the troubleshooting log and crash markers, as a text file, to an app you pick. No locations, searches, or device details.
- Export in History creates a spreadsheet of your camera log, including where and when you passed each camera.
- Open in Google Maps sends a place's name and exact coordinates to Google Maps.
- Rate FlockHopper opens Google Play's review sheet. We never learn whether you rated.
- Links open DeFlock, OpenStreetMap, our feedback board, Google Play, or our website. Camera links include the camera's OpenStreetMap ID. Those services have their own privacy policies.
Your choices in the app
- Deny or revoke location access in Android Settings. You can still browse the map, search, and preview routes.
- Turn on GPS-Only Location to keep Google Play services out of your position.
- Leave Always On and Log Camera Encounters off. Both are off by default.
- Use the Standard map with Traffic off to keep map tiles away from Stadia Maps and TomTom.
- Delete stored items as listed above, or clear the app's storage or uninstall to delete everything. Your purchase history stays with Google Play and RevenueCat so you can restore purchases.
The dontgetflocked.com website
The website has no cookies, no accounts, and no analytics. It stores one preference in your browser: whether sound is on.
| What is sent | Sent to | When |
|---|---|---|
| Your search text | LocationIQ, OpenStreetMap (Nominatim), or Photon (Komoot) | When you search for an address |
| Your starting point, destination, and route options. With "Use my location", your browser's position is the starting point | FlockHopper's routing servers | When you plan a route |
| Which map tiles, map fonts, and camera tiles to draw | FlockHopper's map server | Whenever a map is on screen |
| Nothing about you | FlockHopper's data server | When the camera map loads |
| Requests for map stylesheets | unpkg | When pages load |
Each of these services sees your IP address. Their own privacy policies apply. "Use my location" reads your position in your browser and sends it only to our routing servers as part of a route.
Service providers
We use Cloudflare (network and hosting), Apple (search, address lookup, and payments on iPhone), Google (on Android: location, Always On, payments, in-app review, Android Auto voice-to-text, and usually the voice that reads directions), RevenueCat (purchases), Stadia Maps (Pro map styles, and on Android, search and address lookup, contacted directly from your phone), Geoapify (category search on Android, through our server), TomTom (traffic, through our server), and, on the website, LocationIQ, OpenStreetMap, Photon, and unpkg. We give each provider only what it needs to do its job. Each one handles that data under its own privacy policy.
Their privacy policies:
How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Route requests | Not kept. Discarded once the route is built |
| IP addresses on our servers | About one minute, in memory, for rate limiting |
| Request records (no IP, no location) | 30 days |
| Purchase history | Kept by Apple or Google Play, and RevenueCat, for as long as needed to honor your purchases |
| Everything on your phone | Until you delete it or delete the app. The camera log deletes itself after 90 days in both apps. The Android section lists its other limits |
If you are in the United States
We don't sell or share personal information, and we don't use it for targeted advertising. That includes precise location, which we never sell or share. If a U.S. state privacy law gives you rights over your information, email us and we will respond within the time that law requires.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
We don't track you across apps or websites, so there's nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off. We treat every visitor the same whether or not the signal is on.
Children
FlockHopper is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information.
Security
All traffic between the apps or website and our servers is encrypted with HTTPS. Data on your phone is protected by the phone's own data protection.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top. For significant changes, we'll post a notice on this site and in the app at least 30 days before they take effect.
Contact
Open Road Labs LLC, 30 North Gould Street, Suite R, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801, flockhopper@openroadlabs.org.