Legal
ChiTransit Privacy Policy
Effective September 20, 2026
ChiTransit shows live Chicago Transit Authority train positions, arrival times, service alerts, and journey plans. This policy explains what the app does with information. It is short because the app does very little.
This is the privacy policy the ChiTransit app links to from Settings, also published at commit-team.github.io/chitransit-privacy. What this website itself handles is set out separately, in This website at the end.
The short version
ChiTransit has no accounts and collects no personal information. There is nothing to sign in to, nothing to sign up for, and no profile. Your location is used on your device and is never sent to us. Saved stations stay on your phone.
We do not collect
- Names, email addresses, phone numbers, or account identifiers — the app has no accounts.
- Advertising identifiers. ChiTransit contains no advertising, analytics, attribution, or crash-reporting software.
- Contacts, photos, camera, microphone, calendar, or files.
- Biometric identifiers or information of any kind. Nothing in ChiTransit collects, stores, or uses biometrics, so the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act does not apply to it.
- Any record, on any server of ours, of the stations you view, the trips you plan, or where you have been.
Location
ChiTransit asks for approximate and precise location while you are using the app. It never asks for background location and cannot access your location when the app is closed.
Location is used for two things, and both are computed entirely on your device:
- Centring the map on you when you press the locate button.
- Ranking nearby CTA stations when you plan a journey.
Your location is never transmitted to our servers and is never stored. Station ranking runs against transit data the app already carries. Declining the permission is fine — the map, arrivals, alerts, and journey planning all keep working; only the two conveniences above stop.
Stored on your device
Saved stations and preferences such as light or dark mode are written to the app’s private storage on your phone. This never leaves your device and is deleted when you uninstall the app.
What our servers receive
To show live transit information, the app asks our service at chitransit.onrender.com for the station, route, or journey you are currently looking at, together with a key that identifies the app — not you. As with any internet service, our host processes the network information inherent in delivering a response, including your IP address, and uses it to serve the request and to limit abuse. We do not use it to build a profile of you.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We have never done so.
Others involved
| Service | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Render (United States) | Requests to the ChiTransit service, with IP address at the network level | Runs our backend |
| Neon (United States) | CTA station and timetable reference data only — nothing about you | Stores transit data |
| MapTiler | Requests for map tiles covering the area you are viewing, with IP address | Draws the base map |
| Chicago Transit Authority | Nothing about you — our servers ask, your device never does | Source of live transit data |
Your device contacts MapTiler directly for map imagery. Their policy is at https://www.maptiler.com/privacy-policy/.
Children
ChiTransit is a general-audience transit app, not directed at children, and collects no personal information from anyone — children included.
Your choices
- Location: grant or revoke it any time in your device settings.
- Stored data: clearing the app’s storage or uninstalling removes everything it kept.
Because we hold no personal information about you, there is nothing for us to look up, export, correct, or delete on request — everything ChiTransit keeps about you is already on your own phone and under your control.
Changes
If this policy changes, the effective date above changes with it, and the new version is published here before the change ships in a release.
Terms of Service
Using ChiTransit is also covered by the Terms of Service, which explains what the app promises about transit information — in short, that arrival times are predictions rather than guarantees — and states that ChiTransit is not affiliated with the Chicago Transit Authority.
Contact
ChiTransit is operated from Chicago, Illinois, United States, and all data described above is processed in the United States.
Questions about this policy can be sent to the developer email address shown on the app’s Google Play listing, under “App support”.
This website
What this website handles
The policy above covers the ChiTransit app. This website is separate from the app, and unlike the app, two of its forms ask for information. This is what happens to it.
- Launch sign-up. If you enter your email address in the sign-up form, we receive that address and nothing else. We use it only to tell you when ChiTransit launches and about early-member perks, and keep it until we have finished sending launch updates or you ask us to remove it.
- Contact form. If you send us a message, we receive your name, email address and message, and keep them as long as we need to reply.
- EmailJS delivers both forms to our inbox, so it handles what you enter in them on our behalf.
- Google Fonts. The site loads its typeface from Google Fonts, so your browser contacts Google’s servers, which receive your IP address. Google’s policy is at https://policies.google.com/privacy.
- No advertising or tracking cookies. Our hosting provider may keep short-lived technical logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.
To opt out of launch emails, or to have your sign-up email or messages deleted, email chitransitsupport@gmail.com.
See also our Terms of Service.