Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

SG Car Buddy is an independent Singapore driving companion made by MJ Codeworks (“we”, “us”). It is not affiliated with the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the Housing & Development Board (HDB), the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the National Environment Agency (NEA), PUB, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) or any charging operator. Questions about this policy: support@mjcodeworks.org.

2. Information that stays on your phone

The following is stored only in the app’s private storage on your device. We cannot see it.

• Your vehicle type (car, electric car with plug types, or motorcycle) and settings such as theme, walking pace, navigation app and filters.
• Saved places (for example Home and Work), saved carparks and chargers, and recent searches.
• Your parked car: where and when you parked, any note you type (such as the deck or lot), and the reminders you set.
• Cached public data (the carpark list and the latest free-lot counts) so the app opens quickly, including with a weak signal.

If Android backup is turned on for your Google account, Android may include this app data in your device backup, which is handled by Google under Google’s Privacy Policy, not by us. Uninstalling the app or using Settings → Apps → SG Car Buddy → Storage → Clear storage deletes it.

3. Location

The app asks for location permission only when you use a feature that needs it (carparks and chargers near you, walking time, road alerts and rain near you, saving where you parked). You can refuse, or choose approximate location, and search for a place instead.

• Your position is processed on the device to sort carparks and chargers, estimate walking time, pick road alerts within 4 km and find the nearest rain gauge.
• Your coordinates are never sent to our server or stored by us. The app uses location only while you use it (no background location).
• When the map is shown, the map provider receives requests for the map tiles of the area on screen, which may reveal the general area you are looking at (see section 4).

You can turn location off at any time in Android Settings → Apps → SG Car Buddy → Permissions.

4. Information sent over the internet

To show live information, the app connects to the services below. Like every internet request, each one receives your device’s IP address and basic technical details (such as the app’s user agent) as part of the connection. None of these requests contains your name, account, contacts, advertising ID or location coordinates.

When you tap Navigate or Show on Google Maps, the app opens Google Maps or Waze with that destination. When you share a carpark, Android’s share sheet sends what you choose to the app you pick. Those apps handle the information under their own privacy policies.

What our server keeps

• Request logs: Cloudflare keeps short-lived operational logs (request time, path such as /v1/carparks/availability, status and IP address) so we can fix errors and stop abuse. These are kept for a few days under Cloudflare’s standard retention and then deleted automatically. We do not combine them with any other data or use them to identify you.
• Rate limiting: your IP address is counted for about one minute to block excessive traffic.
• Shared cache: public responses (free lots, chargers, cameras, place-search results) are cached for everyone, keyed by the data set or search text, for up to 7 days. The cache does not record who asked.

5. Notifications

If you save where you parked and turn on reminders, the app schedules them on your phone (for example “Free parking ends at 10:30 pm”). No push server is involved and nothing about your parking is sent to us. You can turn notifications off in Android Settings at any time.

6. Advertising (planned)

The current version of SG Car Buddy shows no ads and contains no advertising code. To keep the app free, we may add ads in a future version:

• A banner at the bottom of the main screens and at most one ad in the camera feed. No full-screen ads, and never inside the full-screen camera viewer.
• Ads would be provided by Google AdMob. When ads are shown, the AdMob SDK collects and shares with Google: your device’s advertising ID, IP address (from which an approximate location can be derived), device and app information, and how you interact with ads. Google uses this to serve ads, measure them and prevent fraud, as described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and Google’s Privacy Policy.
• Where the law requires it (for example in the EU, UK and Switzerland), the app will ask for your consent before showing personalised ads. Without consent you will see non-personalised ads.
• Your parked car, saved places, settings and location coordinates will still stay on your phone and will not be given to advertisers by us.

Before releasing a version with ads, we will update this policy and its effective date, the app’s Google Play Data safety section and its “Contains ads” label.

7. Security

All connections from the app use HTTPS (encrypted in transit). Our data-provider keys are kept on the server and are not built into the app.

8. Your choices and rights

• Deny or revoke location or notification permission at any time; the rest of the app keeps working.
• Delete all app data by clearing the app’s storage or uninstalling the app. Because we hold no account or profile, there is nothing else to delete on our side; short-lived server logs expire automatically.
• Under Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (PDPA) and similar laws, you may ask us about personal data we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing support@mjcodeworks.org. We will reply within 30 days.

9. Children

The app is a general-audience driving tool and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

10. Data sources and attribution

Carpark availability, EV charging points, traffic cameras, incidents and travel times: Land Transport Authority, via LTA DataMall. HDB carpark information, weather, rain radar and flood alerts: HDB, NEA and PUB via data.gov.sg. Place search: OneMap, Singapore Land Authority. These are used under the Singapore Open Data Licence. Map tiles by OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles; map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Parking costs are estimates from published HDB and URA rates; always check the signs at the carpark.

11. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the effective date above. Significant changes will also be noted in the app’s release notes on Google Play.

12. Contact

MJ Codeworks · 25A Palandiamman Koil Street, Pallikaranai, Chennai 600100, Tamil Nadu, India · support@mjcodeworks.org