What Shoo. keeps, and what it doesn’t

A transport app could know a lot about you: where you live, where you work, when you leave each morning. Shoo. is built to need as little of that as it can. There are no ads, trackers or analytics in the app, and we never sell your information.

Here is what it keeps, and where, in plain words.

Family & friendsOn the move

Chloe Nguyen333To Bondi Junction 1:26 pmArrives

Sam WalkerM1To Chatswood 1:21 pmArrives

Marcus ReidT4Walking to Central 1:16 pmArrives

Add Chloe as a friend?

You’ll see each other’s name and photo. Your trips stay private until you share them.

CancelAdd friend

What stays on your iPhone

• Your location. It’s used on your iPhone to show what’s around you, plan trips from where you are and guide your walk. It isn’t kept with your account, unless you choose to share it with friends during a trip.
• Recent searches, reminders and trip progress. Kept on your iPhone only.
• Motion. During a trip, the motion sensor helps tell when you’re on board, underground included. It’s read on your iPhone and never leaves it.
• Your profile photo, until you have a friend in Shoo. to see it.

What reaches our server

Shoo. needs an account, so our server keeps your email address (a private relay address is fine with Sign in with Apple), your name if you share it, and an account identifier. It also keeps what you choose to sync: Home and Work, favourite stops, commutes, and preferences like language and trip options. That’s what lets them follow you to a new iPhone. Each account’s data is locked to that account at the database level, and it’s stored in Sydney.

To show live times and plan trips, the app asks Transport for NSW through our server, never with your name or account attached. When you plan from where you are, your position leaves the phone rounded: to about 100 metres when looking for stops nearby, and about 10 metres for the start or end of a trip. It travels inside the request rather than in its web address, so it stays out of logs, and the server never logs queries or coordinates. The answer to a trip request can be cached on the server for a few minutes, so the next person asking the same thing gets it faster, but it isn’t linked to you.

Friends, only if you add them

Friends are optional. If you add some, they see your name and photo. The friends you share trips with also see the service you’re on and when you’ll arrive.

Your location is off by default. For each trip you choose which friends, if any, can see where you are. Your phone then sends your position about every 10 seconds, for that trip only, and stops when you arrive. Whatever a phone asks, our server won’t keep a shared trip going for more than six hours, and ended trips and positions are deleted soon after.

Who else is involved

• Apple Maps for maps and walking directions, and Apple Weather, which gets your approximate location for the weather. Apple doesn’t link either to you.
• OpenStreetMap, asked for station entrances the Trip Planner leaves out. Only the station’s position is sent.
• Google, only if you choose to sign in with Google, to confirm who you are.
• Apple’s push service, to bring a friend’s trip to your Dynamic Island.

To leave, delete your account in Settings. Everything synced or shared through it goes too, including your photo, friends, shared trips and any shared location, within 30 days. The full policy is in the app under Settings, and at shooshoo.app/privacy.