Privacy policy
CrimePing, a free iPhone app that maps police-reported crime from official city open data, has no account, no ads and no tracking. Your phone sends its search point only to the city’s open data, and your saved places stay on your phone.
The short version
- There’s no account, no advertising and no analytics or tracking SDKs.
- CrimePing doesn’t sell your data or share it for advertising.
- CrimePing runs no servers that receive your data. Your phone asks the city’s open data for reports directly.
- Your watch zones and settings are stored only on your phone. Deleting the app deletes them.
What this policy covers
This policy explains how the CrimePing iPhone app (“CrimePing” or “the app”) handles information about you.
What CrimePing doesn’t do
- It doesn’t ask you to create an account.
- It doesn’t show ads.
- It doesn’t include analytics or tracking SDKs.
- It doesn’t sell your data or share it for advertising.
- It doesn’t send your data to any server run by CrimePing. There isn’t one.
Your location
CrimePing asks for location access “While Using the App”. It uses your location only while you’re using the app, to center searches on where you are. You can decline, or change the permission at any time in the iOS Settings app.
City open-data portals
To fetch nearby reports, your phone sends the search point (a latitude and longitude) and the search radius directly to the open-data portal of the city you’re looking at. These portals are hosted on Socrata, a platform from Tyler Technologies. As with any request on the internet, the portal can also see your device’s IP address.
Each portal is run by its city, which has its own privacy policy: the City of Buffalo, the City of Chicago, the City of New York and the City and County of San Francisco.
Neighborhood names
On iPhone, CrimePing uses Apple’s geocoder, part of iOS, to turn the search point into a neighborhood name such as “Lower West Side”. Apple handles that request under its privacy policy.
Watch zones and settings
Watch zones (places you save, such as Home or Work) and your app preferences are stored only on your device.
Alerts
If you turn on alerts, the app asks for permission to send notifications. iOS may then run brief checks in the background. Each check queries the city portals for new reports in your watch zones, the same way the app does when it’s open, and shows a local notification on your phone. Nothing is sent to CrimePing.
App Store review prompts
CrimePing may ask you to rate it using Apple’s built-in review prompt. Apple runs that prompt and handles any rating or review you leave.
Deleting your data
Deleting the app deletes all the data it stored on your device, including your watch zones and settings.
This website
crimeping.com is a static site hosted by Vercel. It sets no cookies and uses no analytics, and its fonts are served from crimeping.com itself. Like any web host, Vercel keeps standard server logs (such as IP address and pages requested) to run and protect the service, under its privacy policy.
Children
CrimePing is not directed to children under 13.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date.
Contact
Questions about privacy: support@crimeping.com.