Privacy Policy for Campus Park

Last updated: August 27, 2026

Campus Park ("the app") helps you find nearby parking. This policy explains what data the app uses and why.

Location

The app requests access to your device's location while you are using the app. This is used to:

• Show your current position on the parking map
• Calculate the nearest parking recommendations
• Provide walking or driving directions to a selected parking spot

Your location is used in real time, on your own device, to power the features above. It is not stored. The only time any part of it leaves your device is when you file a parking report. The section on Data You Submit explains exactly what gets sent and who can read it. It is never shared with any other company or service.

Optional background location (Community Parking Reports)

If you turn on Community Parking Reports in Settings, the app also requests background location access. While that setting is on, the app watches your position in the background using geofencing so it can tell when you have parked in a JMU lot. When that happens, it may send you a notification asking whether the lot is full, has some spaces, or is empty.

Your background location is used only on your device, to notice this parking event and work out which lot you are in. It is not uploaded and it is not stored for monitoring. The app is not building a trail of where you go. If you answer a notification by filing a report, that report includes the position it was filed from, exactly as a manual report does. See Data You Submit. If you dismiss or ignore the notification, nothing is sent at all. You can turn this feature off at any time in Settings, which also stops all background location monitoring.

Data You Submit

A parking report can only be filed from at or near the lot it describes, meaning from inside the lot or roughly within a block of it. That rule is what keeps the crowdsourced availability other students rely on honest, and checking it means the app has to send the position it checked. If you submit a report, either manually or by answering a Community Parking Reports notification, the app stores:

• The lot you reported on
• How full you said it was
• Whether the report came from a manual submission or from an automatic parking notification
• An anonymous device identifier, generated by Firebase Anonymous Authentication, used only to enforce a reporting cooldown for each lot and to prevent spam
• The time the report was submitted, and the local time you observed the lot
• The location reading your device produced when you filed it, and how accurate that reading claimed to be

That last item is worth being precise about, because it is the only location data the app ever sends anywhere.

• It is stored separately from the report, and only you can read it. The report itself is visible to other users of the app. That is how everyone sees how full a lot is. The location reading is not visible to them. It is kept in a separate place that only your own device's identifier can read, so no other user can see where you were, and the two are never shown together.
• It is sent only when you actually file a report. Browsing the map, getting directions, or being detected parking somewhere sends nothing. Dismissing a notification sends nothing.
• It is used to verify one thing: that you were close enough to the lot to see it. It is checked against that lot's boundary and then kept as the record of why the report was accepted.

The anonymous identifier is not linked to your name, your email, or any other personal information, and no account or sign in is required to use the app. Reports are combined together to show other users a general sense of how busy a lot is.

Optional Accounts, Usernames and the Leaderboard

You can use every part of Campus Park without an account. Creating one is optional, and it is the only way the app ever stores something you typed.

An account is a username and nothing else. There is no email address, no password, no phone number, and no sign in. The app asks you to pick a username, discourages using your real name, and attaches it to the anonymous device identifier your device already had. If you create an account, the app stores:

• The username you chose, and a lowercased copy of it used only to stop two people claiming the same name
• When the account was created, and when you last changed the username
• Your points totals for all time, this week and today, and the day and week they belong to
• How many reports you have filed, and which one was scored most recently
• Your current and longest run of consecutive days with a scoring report

Your username and points are public inside the app. That is the point of the leaderboard: other users can see the username and the score, and nothing else. They cannot see your email, because there is not one. They cannot see your location, your reports, or when you filed them.

If you see a username you think is offensive, you can report it by pressing and holding it on the leaderboard, or through Settings, then Contact and Report a Problem.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time under Settings, then Delete Account. There is no form to fill in and nothing to email. Deleting it removes, permanently:

• Your username, which is released so someone else may claim it
• Your points, streaks and report count
• Your activity history
• The stored location readings behind every report you have ever filed

The parking reports themselves stay, because other students are relying on them to know how full a lot is, but they carry nothing linking them back to you once the above is gone. Deleting your account does not stop you using the app. It returns you to using it anonymously, exactly as before you made one.

Crash Reporting

To find and fix bugs, Campus Park sends an automatic report when it crashes or hits an unexpected error. These reports are handled by Sentry, a service that collects crash reports, and they are used only to diagnose and fix problems in the app.

A crash report contains:

• The error message and the technical stack trace showing which part of the app's code failed
• Your device model, your operating system version, and the version of Campus Park you are running
• The time of the crash, and a short trail of recent events inside the app (for example, "the app was brought to the foreground" or "a background parking check ran")

A crash report does not contain:

• Your location, in any form. Coordinates are stripped out of crash reports before they leave your device, and no crash report identifies which parking lot you were in or near.
• The anonymous identifier used for your parking reports. Crash reports carry no identifier at all, so they cannot be linked to your parking reports, to each other, or to you.
• Your IP address. IP collection is switched off at both ends. The app does not send it, and Sentry is configured not to store it.
• Screenshots, screen recordings, session replays, or anything you typed or searched for. Sentry offers all of these and they are all switched off.

One thing to be aware of, in the interest of being precise: if the optional Community Parking Reports feature is on and its background parking check runs into an error, the resulting crash report will show that a background parking check ran and failed. It will not include your coordinates or say which lot you were at, but the fact that the report exists does indicate the app was doing a parking check around that time.

You can turn crash reporting off at any time under Settings, then Crash Reports. Turning it off stops all future crash reports.

Data We Do Not Collect

Campus Park does not:

• Require you to create an account or sign in to use the app. Accounts are optional, and even then consist only of a username, never an email address or a password. See Optional Accounts, Usernames and the Leaderboard above
• Collect names, emails, or other personal identifiers
• Use advertising, marketing, or tracking software, or any analytics software that records what you tap, search for, or look at in the app
• Send your search history or map filter preferences anywhere. Which parking types you have chosen to show is saved on your device so the map looks the same next time you open it, and it never leaves the device. Your searches are not recorded at all
• Sell your data, or share it with anyone else for advertising, marketing, or profiling. Crash reports are processed on our behalf by Sentry, as described above, under terms that forbid any other use.

Outside Data Sources

The app fetches public parking availability data from James Madison University's public parking feed. Those requests only read public information. No personal or location data is sent to that service as part of them.

Children's Privacy

Campus Park does not knowingly collect data from children under 13. The app is meant for general use in finding parking near the James Madison University campus.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will be revised. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to: sammrackley@gmail.com