Privacy policy

Last updated 14 November 2026 (version 1)

ParkScout is run by Reede Rozowsky trading as Rozolabs (ABN 30 978 278 001), in New South Wales, Australia ("we", "us"). This policy explains how we handle personal information in the ParkScout app and at parkscout.app. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Small businesses can be exempt from these principles, but we follow them anyway: this policy says what we actually do, and we keep to it.

Questions, requests or complaints: parkscout.app@gmail.com.

1. What we collect

You can use the map, search and spot details as a guest, without an account. Adding signs, alerts, handovers, points and saving vehicles needs an account.

Account

• Email address and username. Your username is public (see section 4).
• If you sign in with Apple or Google: the email address, name, account identifier and profile picture link they give us (with Apple you can hide your real email). We never see your Apple or Google password.
• If you sign up with email: your password is held by our sign-in provider (Amazon Cognito) in a form we cannot read.
• When you joined, when you last signed in, and how you sign in.

Location

• While you use the app: your phone's location centres the map and finds parking near you. The area of the map you search is sent to our servers to fetch the spots in it.
• Parked car: when you park (or confirm a detected park), the car's location, the time and when the park expires (24 hours unless you change it).
• Automatic parking detection (optional, off unless you turn it on): uses location in the background, and your phone's motion and activity sensors, to notice when you stop driving. It can also use other signs that you have parked: on Android, your car's Bluetooth disconnecting (the car's name stays on your phone) or your phone sensing you have left a vehicle; on iPhone, CarPlay disconnecting. This runs on your phone; your position is not sent to us unless you save the park. We do record, as usage events (see “Device, usage and diagnostics” below), that a prompt was shown, whether you saved or dismissed it and what set it off, without a place.
• Spot handover (optional): when you offer your spot, its location and when you are leaving; when you look for one, where you want to park and how far you will walk, plus your live location every few seconds while you are looking or on your way, so the leaving driver can see you approach on their map.
• Sign photos: when you photograph a sign in the app, where your phone was and how accurate that was, to check the photo was taken near the sign; after 90 days, or when you delete your account, we keep only how far that was from the sign and how accurate the phone's location was.
• Things you place on the map: the location of signs, spots, zones and community alerts you add.

Photos

• Sign photos you take or choose. Your phone crops and shrinks them and removes their hidden metadata (including any location stamp) before upload. Please photograph the sign, not people or other cars' number plates. A photo of a street can still catch a passer-by's face or a parked car's plate by accident; that is personal information about them, and we handle it as this policy describes.

Your vehicles

• Nickname, number plate, size, colour and body type, and which is your default.

What you contribute

• Parking spots, signs, rules, prices and notices; ratings ("thumbs"), with how far you were from the spot, and problem reports; community alerts (type; location; how accurate and recent your phone's location was, and whether your phone said the location came from a location-faking app, which we check to stop fake alerts; an optional number plate of the car concerned; and whether you posted anonymously); handover ratings, including a private "felt unsafe" mark (the thumbs up and down you receive are added up into the short record other drivers see, section 4).
• Feedback and bug reports you send from Settings: your message, any screenshots you attach, the email address you give us to reply to (only if you type one in), the app and operating system version and the phone model. We keep who sent it, your account or, without one, a scrambled form of your install ID, so we can follow up and stop abuse.

Points, referrals and sharing

• Points, levels, achievements, your weekly league and medals, and the activity that earned them.
• Thank-yous you send and receive on alerts and rule changes.
• People you block.
• Which version of these terms and this policy you accepted, and when.
• A trust score for what you add (based on how your photos were read and reported), used for the automatic decisions in section 3.
• Your referral code, and whose code you used.
• Share links you create, and who opened them (so we can award points). A share link made as a guest is tied to your install ID.

Notifications

• Your phone's push notification token and platform (iOS or Android).
• Your notification settings: which kinds you want, quiet hours, a weekly limit, your time zone offset and language.
• The notifications we send you (for example "Your sign was read", a community alert about a car with your plate near where it is parked, or handover updates), and whether they were delivered.

Device, usage and diagnostics

• A random install ID created by the app when first opened. It is not your phone's advertising ID and is not shared with anyone else. A guest's activity is linked to this ID only. If you later sign up on the same phone, that phone's usage events from the last 30 days as a guest, and the share links you made as a guest, are linked to your new account.
• Usage events we record ourselves (no third-party analytics): for example app opened, map searched (with the map's centre, which is often where you are), time window changed, sign photo submitted and its result, share link opened, sign-in prompted, signed up, parked, unparked, reminder scheduled and parking detection prompts. We use these to see which features help people find parking, and to make statistics about parking demand from which no one can reasonably be identified (see section 3).
• Your IP address is used to stop abuse (rate limits) and is recorded in our security logs (see section 6). The app's own server logs record a scrambled form of it, not the address itself.
• Crash and error reports: when the app or our servers crash or hit an error, a diagnostic report (what went wrong and, from the app, the app and operating system version and the phone model) is sent to our crash-reporting provider, which also receives your phone's IP address because the report is sent from your phone. We do not deliberately include your name, email, location or plates in these reports.

When you contact us

• Your email and what you tell us.

We do not collect payment details (the "Pay in …" buttons open the parking operator's own app), your contacts, or audio recordings, and we do not use advertising IDs.

2. What stays on your phone

Some things never leave your phone: your parking reminders, the motion and activity readings used for parking detection, and settings such as appearance and map type. Which tutorials you have seen is kept on your phone; we record only a usage event when you finish or skip one. A guest's parked-car location is kept only on the phone too: to show the sign and street beside the car, the app asks our servers about that place, as a map search does, but we don't keep it, and usage events record only the city it's in. If you sign up as a guest with a car parked, the app offers to move that car into your account.

3. How we use it

• To run the app: show parking near you, read signs, save your parked car, remind you before time runs out, send the notifications you asked for, and match drivers for a spot handover.
• To build the shared parking map from everyone's contributions, and to check and correct readings.
• To run points, levels, referrals and the leaderboard.
• To alert you if someone reports a problem with a car carrying your plate, or a parking check or another problem, within about 300 m of your saved parked-car location (we compare the report's place with it).
• To keep the service safe: an automatic check of every sign photo for sexual, violent or self-harm content, rate limits, spotting spam and abuse, investigating reports, and suspending accounts that misuse the app.
• To fix bugs and improve the app, using usage events and crash reports.
• To make statistics about parking demand from which no one can reasonably be identified (see below).
• To reply to you and to tell you about important changes.
• Where the law requires it.

What we never do. We never sell personal information, and we never give it to anyone for their own use, except as this policy says. Personal information includes your name, email and username; where you go, search or park, and your location history; your number plates and vehicles; who you handed a spot over to or took one from; your device identifiers; what you send us; and who posted an alert. We share it only to run the features you use (section 4 says what other people in the app see); with the providers in section 5 that run ParkScout for us; and as section 5 describes (when the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or to a buyer of ParkScout). Sightings of rangers and parking checks are never sold, licensed or published outside the app, and we never give them to anyone to build products that show where or when enforcement happens.

Parking data we may license or sell. Signs, rules, prices, spot locations, sign readings and how fresh they are; and sign photos once faces and number plates are blurred and nothing says who took them (see below). These are about streets, not about you. We may use, share, license or sell them, for example as datasets for maps, councils, car makers or other businesses. They never say who added anything, and never carry your name, email, username, car, plate or device.

Statistics about parking demand. We may combine many people's activity, such as how often an area is searched or how long cars stay, into statistics from which no one can reasonably be identified, and publish or license them, for example to councils and other public bodies, car-park operators and mapping companies. We release a figure only when it is built from enough people, over areas and times wide enough, that no one can be picked out, and we never release one person's trips or parks, even without a name. Anyone we license statistics to must agree in writing not to try to identify anyone. We release none yet; before we do, we will add a setting in the app, “Include my activity in parking statistics”, that you can turn off.

Links to car parks and businesses. Some links and booking buttons may carry a code that tells the car park or business the visit or booking came from ParkScout, so they can pay us a referral fee. The code never identifies you. If you book or pay with them, their own terms and privacy policy apply.

Sign photos. Sign photos are shown in the app to people signed in to ParkScout, so they can check a reading. A photo can catch a passer-by or a parked car by accident, so the app shows only a copy in which the faces and number plates we detect are blurred. The sign itself is never blurred, and our detection can miss a face or plate, especially a small or distant one. We keep the unblurred original privately for 30 days, only to read the sign, check the blurring and handle reports; after that the blurred copy replaces it. Before we share any photo outside ParkScout (for example in a licensed dataset or our marketing) we blur or remove faces and number plates and strip anything that says who took it; the providers in section 5 that run ParkScout for us, such as OpenAI, receive the original, unblurred photos, only to do their job for us. Anyone can report a photo that shows them or their number plate. We aim to hide it in the app within 7 days of the report; we remove it from storage, or blur it, before it is used anywhere outside ParkScout.

Advertising. ParkScout shows no ads today. If we add them, they will be chosen by the place you are looking at, using parking data and statistics from which no one can reasonably be identified, not by who you are, and sponsored places will be labelled. We will not use your personal information (such as your location history or your account) to choose ads unless you agree first (on iPhone, through Apple's tracking prompt), and we will update this policy before we start. We never show ads in CarPlay, Android Auto, widgets or notifications. Privacy is the same for everyone: paying for ParkScout never changes these promises.

Decisions made by software

We use computer programs to make some decisions about your account and what you add, and to do part of the work for others.

• Information they use: your sign photos and what the safety check and the reading find in them; how your earlier photos were read (real signs, unreadable, repeats); when and where your photos were taken; reports and ratings other people make about what you added; and your handover history (let-downs and ratings).
• Decisions made only by software: (1) accepting or rejecting a sign photo, which decides your points and any prize-draw entries; (2) deleting a photo the safety check flags as sexual content (we keep a short fingerprint of it and automatically reject a new upload that matches it), and, when that happens, hiding all your other photos, taking back what you added that nobody else has confirmed, and suspending your ability to add photos, parking details, alerts and handovers until a person has looked; (3) hiding a photo the safety check flags as violent or about self-harm until a moderator looks at it; (4) reading your photos more slowly, or saving them to read later, when many of your recent photos were not parking signs; (5) hiding a photo or taking down an alert once several different people report it; and (6) pausing your spot offers, or your searches for a spot, for 30 days after three let-downs in that role within 30 days (a let-down is not turning up for a spot you accepted, not keeping a spot you offered, or cancelling after the other driver is on the way).
• Decisions where software helps and a person decides: whether to keep a suspension, remove content or restore access.
• If you think a decision is wrong: you can appeal a suspension or a pause from the notice in the app, or email us. A person aims to review every automatic suspension within 24 hours and appeals within 7 days, and will look at any other decision on request; we reply to emails within 30 days.

4. What other people can see

• Everyone, including people without an account: the signs, rules, prices, notices and spots you add, and your username, rank and points on the leaderboard.
• People signed in to ParkScout: your sign photos, so they can check a reading. They do not see who took them. When they open your profile they also see your level, achievements, weekly league and medals, your scores and ranks by category, your streaks, how many spots, signs, rules, alerts, reviews and referrals you have added, a heatmap of the days you contributed and roughly how recently you were active (not the exact time).
• The person whose referral code you used: your username.
• The other driver in a handover: when your spot is offered to a driver looking for one, they see, before they accept, your username, your car's colour and body type, and a short record: the share of thumbs up you have received (once you have three ratings), how many handovers you have done, and how many times in the last 90 days you did not keep a spot or did not turn up. Once they accept, they also see your number plate so they can find the car. The leaving driver sees the looking driver's username, car colour and body type only once they accept, and no record. While you are on your way to a spot you accepted, the leaving driver sees your position on their map and how far away you are; it updates every few seconds and disappears when the handover ends.
• People who receive a community alert: the alert's type and place, never who sent it. A plate you enter is used only to notify that car's owner, if they use ParkScout.
• Someone who opens a link you shared sees the parking spot, not your account.
• Everyone, including people without an account, may see a count of people signed in to ParkScout who used it in an area in the last day (shown only from 3 up; fewer show nothing), never who they are.

5. Service providers, and where your data goes

We use these providers to run ParkScout. Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, Expo, LocationIQ and Sentry handle your information under their published business terms, which restrict how they may use our customers' data. Apple and Google (sign-in, maps and push delivery) also handle it, and Google also runs our support email, under their own privacy policies (Apple, Google).

Sending information overseas

We store your account and your photos with Amazon Web Services in Sydney, Australia, with encrypted copies of the database backups in Melbourne, Australia. Access logs for this website (your IP address and the pages you open) are kept in the United States. Amazon's staff and systems outside Australia may be able to reach that data, only to run or support the service for us. When you submit a sign photo we send it to OpenAI's servers in the United States so software can check the photo is safe and read the sign. The photo may show people or number plates by accident. We send no name, email or account details with it and we ask OpenAI not to keep it; OpenAI may keep it for up to 30 days to check for abuse, and longer if the law requires it or its own safety systems flag it. We also send your push token and notification text to Expo, Apple and Google (the United States and the other countries Apple and Google operate in), place searches to Apple on iPhone (the United States and other countries) and to LocationIQ (United States), address lookups to Apple or Google through your phone's built-in service, crash reports to Sentry (European Union), and support emails to Google (United States).

Before we send information overseas we take reasonable steps to make sure the company handles it consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, mainly by choosing companies whose published business terms restrict how they may use our customers' data, and we send each one only what its job needs. Apple's and Google's own privacy policies cover what they collect directly through your phone and your Apple or Google account.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it (for example a court order), to protect someone's safety, or to a buyer of or successor to ParkScout if the business or its assets are sold, merged or transferred. A buyer would take over the data under this policy, and we would tell you before any change to how it is used.

6. How long we keep it

• Account, vehicles, settings, points: until you delete your account (points are kept afterwards without your name, section 7).
• Parked-car location: until you unpark, or within about a day after the park expires. If you choose "Keep until I unpark" there is no expiry, so we delete it 365 days after you last updated it.
• Your live location while looking for a handover: deleted as soon as that search ends. The handover's outcome, closest approach and ratings stay in both drivers' history.
• Sign photos: kept with the sign they show, so readings can be checked. Photos that turn out not to show a parking sign are deleted. Where we blurred a face or number plate, the unblurred original is deleted 30 days after upload and the blurred copy is kept in its place. Photos of a spot that has been removed, or of a reading that a newer photo has replaced, are deleted 30 days later, unless a complaint about that spot is on record. A photo the safety check flags as sexual content is deleted from our storage straight away, unseen; we keep only a record that it was flagged and its short fingerprint. Any other deleted photo is gone from our storage about 30 days after it is deleted, so a photo of a removed spot or a replaced reading can stay up to about 60 days in all. A photo reported as showing a person or number plate is hidden from the app (we aim to do this within 7 days) but stays in our private storage until a person deletes or blurs it, and is never used outside ParkScout before then.
• Photos sent to OpenAI: we ask OpenAI not to store them; it may keep them for up to 30 days to monitor abuse (longer if the law requires it, or if its safety systems flag a photo for review), and does not use them to train its models.
• Security and server logs (they include your IP address and the addresses of the pages and app requests you made, and are used only to investigate security problems and abuse): about 30 days.
• Sign-in records: the log of our sign-in functions (including Google and Apple sign-ins) is kept about 90 days. Our security audit log, which records each sign-in event including your IP address, is kept about 1 year. We keep these to protect accounts, prevent fraud and fix faults.
• Database backups: 7 days, in Sydney and in an encrypted copy in Melbourne. Information you delete can stay in them for up to 7 days. If we ever remove the database and take a final backup, we keep it no longer than we need to and then delete it.
• Reports of content or people (what was reported, the reason, your note and what we did about it): kept as our record of complaints, including after you delete your account, when your name and email are removed from them and they are no longer linked to your account. We have no set end date for these records; we keep our decisions on them for at least five years.
• A number plate typed on an alert: erased once the alert has ended and new reports about the same car can no longer be added to it. A one-way code of the plate is kept 7 days after the report, to stop duplicate alerts. The alert itself (type, place and time) is kept without who sent it.
• Crash and error reports: kept by Sentry for the period its plan allows; we have not set a shorter one.
• Feedback and bug reports: until you delete your account, when they are deleted with their screenshots. Sent without an account, until you ask us to delete them.
• Usage events: the map position in an event (the map's centre, or the place of a spot) is kept exactly for 90 days, then rounded to about a kilometre. An event about a spot (for example a spot you opened, shared or got directions to) keeps which spot it was. The rest of the event is kept for counting how the app is used. Tapping "Walk me back" does not record where your car is.
• Notifications you received: 90 days. Push receipts, which name your phone's token, 7 days.
• Handover history: kept in both drivers' history, but 90 days after a handover offer or request ends we remove the car details and the pin or destination label and round the places to about a kilometre.
• Contributions and usage events: kept after you delete your account, without your name, email, car or device, and without the map positions in your usage events; an event that names a spot keeps the spot, not you (see section 7). Sign photos you added stay with their sign and can still show a person or plate by accident; report it and we aim to hide it within 7 days.
• Blocks and thank-you notices: until you delete your account. Thank-yous are kept afterwards as counts, without who sent or received them.
• Weekly league results, achievements and your record of accepting the terms: kept after you delete your account, each under an ID of its own, without your name.

7. Deleting your account

In the app: Profile › Settings › Account › Delete account. If you cannot use the app, email parkscout.app@gmail.com from the address on your account. Full details: parkscout.app/delete-account.

Deleted straight away: your profile, email and username; your sign-in account with Amazon Cognito (usually at once; if that step fails we retry it daily; Apple and Google may still list ParkScout among the apps you signed in to until you remove it there; see below); your vehicles and plates; your parked-car location; your notifications, their settings and your push tokens; your referral code; your share links; the feedback you sent and its screenshots (if a screenshot cannot be deleted at once it stays in storage until we remove it by hand); your blocks and your thank-you notices; and the link between your usage events and your install ID.

Kept, without your name, car or device: signs, rules, prices, spot locations and sign photos you contributed; ratings and problem reports; reports of content or people, kept as our record of complaints; community alerts; points and history, weekly league results, achievements and your record of accepting the terms (deleted accounts never appear on the leaderboard); handovers, without your car's details, so the other driver's history still makes sense; and anonymous usage counts. Your name, email, car and device are removed from them, and they are no longer linked to your account or to one another: each record moves to one shared “deleted user” or gets an ID of its own, the map positions in your usage events are removed (an event that names a spot keeps the spot, not you), and a handover's destination is kept only to the nearest kilometre or so. So that a sign-in issued before the deletion cannot be used, we keep an empty, inactive placeholder for the account, holding only the ID of the deleted sign-in account and when and how it signed in, and no name or email; we delete it too once any such sign-in has expired, a day or two after your sign-in account is deleted. We still protect these records under this policy.

Copies in our database backups disappear within 7 days (see section 6). If we ever have to restore a backup, we delete again any account that was deleted after that backup was made.

If you signed in with Apple, also stop sharing your Apple ID with ParkScout on your iPhone under Settings › Apple Account › Sign in with Apple.

8. Your choices and rights

• Permissions: location, camera, photos, motion and physical activity, nearby devices (Bluetooth, Android) and notifications are each optional and can be changed in your phone's settings. Without location the map still works, but cannot centre on you.
• Notifications: choose which kinds you get, set quiet hours and a weekly limit in Settings.
• Access, correction and deletion: you can see and edit your username and vehicles in the app. Email us from the address on your account to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete some of it without closing your account. If you write from another address we will check it is you first, by email to the address on the account. We will reply within 30 days and will not charge you. The copy comes as a file listing what we hold about you; we leave out other people's personal information, and anything the law lets or requires us to withhold, and tell you why.
• Without an account: a guest's usage events carry only the random install ID, which the app does not show and which we cannot connect to you unless you later sign up on the same phone (then those from the last 30 days join your account and are deleted or de-identified with it, as in section 7; older guest usage events are not linked and stay under the install ID only), so for a guest who never signs up we cannot find, copy or delete them on request. They hold no name, email or contact details, and their places are rounded after 90 days like everyone's. Feedback you sent without an account is deleted on request if you tell us roughly when you sent it and what it said.
• A photo of you or your car: if a sign photo in the app shows you or your number plate, tell us (you don't need an account) and we aim to hide it from the app within 7 days of your report. We then remove it from storage, or blur it, before it is used anywhere outside ParkScout.
• Complaints: email us first and we will respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992 (as a small business we may not be covered by the Privacy Act, and then the OAIC may not be able to act).

9. Security

Everything between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Data is stored in access-controlled Amazon Web Services systems in Sydney (with backup copies in Melbourne), and only we, and Amazon to run the service for us, can reach the database. No system is perfectly secure. If a data breach is likely to cause serious harm, we will tell the people affected and, where the law requires it, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as soon as practicable, say what happened and what they can do, and fix the cause.

10. Children

ParkScout is for drivers and is not meant for children. You need to be at least 18 to create an account. If you think a child has given us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

11. Changes and contact

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will show you what changed in the app and ask you to accept it before you carry on (the version list is on the terms page). The date at the top shows the latest version.

Reede Rozowsky trading as Rozolabs (ABN 30 978 278 001), New South Wales, Australia. Email: parkscout.app@gmail.com.