Privacy policy

What we collect and why

We collect only what the product needs to work. Here is the whole list.

We do not knowingly collect special-category data (things like health or ethnicity). Free-text notes are the one place it could arrive by accident, which is why notes are never included in any anonymised export and are removed when an account is erased.

Lesson recordings and location

This is the part of Drivio that handles the most sensitive data, so it gets its own section.

When a lesson is being recorded, the app collects a sequence of location points with an accuracy reading, and the position of each fault the instructor marks. That is what lets Drivio draw the route afterwards and put every fault on the exact junction, roundabout or lane where it happened.

• Recording only happens while a lesson is actively being recorded. Drivio does not track you between lessons.
• A recorded lesson is visible to the learner it belongs to and to the instructor who recorded it. Nobody else in Drivio can see it.
• A location trace can reveal where somebody lives or where they are picked up, so it is treated as sensitive throughout, including in the anonymised map rules below.

The legal basis for each thing we do

Under UK data protection law we need a lawful basis for every use of your data. Ours are:

• Contract. Almost everything Drivio does with your data is simply providing the service you asked for: your account, your diary, your lessons, your payments.
• Legitimate interests. Keeping the service secure, preventing abuse, fixing faults and supporting you. We only rely on this where it would not override your own rights, and you can object.
• Legal obligation. Financial records have to be kept for a set period, and some security records have to be retained.
• Consent. Used for exactly one thing: contributing your anonymised drives to the national map. It is opt-in, off by default, and you can withdraw it at any time.

The anonymised national map

Drivio can build a shared picture of where learners across the UK keep making the same mistakes, near the same test centres. It is genuinely useful, and it is also the thing most likely to worry you, so here are the rules in full.

It is off unless you turn it on. The setting lives in your profile and starts switched off. Each recording stores the answer that applied at the moment it ended, so there is never any doubt about whether a particular drive was included.

When a drive is included, we strip it before it goes anywhere:

• Your identity goes. Your account, your instructor, the lesson it belonged to, and every internal reference number are removed and replaced.
• The start and end of the journey go. We drop every location point within 500 metres of where the drive started and within 500 metres of where it ended, and we drop any fault that falls inside those trimmed sections. That is what stops the map revealing a home address. If a drive is so short that trimming would leave nothing meaningful, the whole drive is excluded instead.
• Exact dates and times go. Fault timing becomes "so many seconds into the drive", and the date is coarsened to the month.
• All free text goes. Notes, lesson labels and route names are never exported, under any circumstances.

Nothing is published until it is genuinely crowded. We do not publish anything about a test-centre area until it holds at least five separate drives from at least five separate people. A rare route cannot be used to single anyone out.

What remains is the middle of the route, the kinds of faults, how serious they were and roughly when in the drive they happened. At that point it is no longer personal data.

If you change your mind, switch it off. Every drive recorded after that is never eligible, immediately. Drives already recorded are dropped from any batch we have not yet published. Anything already published has been anonymised to the point where no row can be traced back to you, which also means we cannot find and remove your individual rows. We say so here rather than promising something we cannot deliver.

Learners under 18

Many learner drivers are 17, so we expect minors to use Drivio and we design for it. Explanations are written to be understood rather than skimmed past, the anonymised map is off by default for everyone, and we do not profile learners for advertising or build behavioural profiles of them.

If you are a parent or guardian and you want to know what we hold about your child, or want it deleted, contact us at [DATA PROTECTION CONTACT EMAIL] and we will deal with it.

Who else handles your data

We do not sell your personal data and we do not share it for advertising. We do use a small number of specialist suppliers to run the service. They act on our instructions only, under contract.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

Where your data is stored

Drivio’s primary database is hosted in [UK OR EU REGION]. Some of our suppliers, including our payment processor and our maps provider, operate globally, so data may be processed outside the UK.

Where that happens, we rely on the UK’s approved safeguards for international transfers, which means either a country the UK has judged to offer adequate protection, or standard contractual clauses with the UK addendum. You can ask us for details of the safeguard used for a specific supplier.

How long we keep things

• Your account and your content. For as long as your account is active. When you delete your account we remove your lessons, recordings, faults, roster and notes.
• Financial records. Six years, because tax law requires it. These are billing records, not lesson data.
• Security and audit records. [AUDIT RETENTION PERIOD], then deleted automatically.
• Anonymised map data. Indefinitely, because once it has been through the process described above it is no longer personal data and cannot be linked back to you.

Cookies

This website sets no cookies at all. There is no advertising, no tracking pixel and no cross-site profiling, which is also why you are not being asked to dismiss a consent banner. The Drivio app does store a small amount of information on your device to keep you signed in, which is strictly necessary for it to work.

The full detail, including exactly what the app stores and how to clear it, is set out in our cookie policy.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:

• Give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correct anything that is wrong
• Delete your data, subject to records we are legally required to keep
• Restrict or object to a particular use, including anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests
• Send your data to you, or to another provider, in a portable format
• Withdraw your consent to the anonymised map at any time, without affecting anything that happened before you withdrew it

Email [DATA PROTECTION CONTACT EMAIL] and we will respond within one month. There is no charge.

Two honest limits. Data that has already been fully anonymised cannot be traced back to you, so it cannot be individually retrieved or deleted. And if you are a learner whose instructor added you to their roster, some of that record belongs to the instructor’s own business, so we may need to involve them to resolve a request.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you came to us first so we can put it right.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top of the page. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, rather than relying on you noticing.

Contact us

For anything on this page, email [DATA PROTECTION CONTACT EMAIL]. For everything else, hello@drivio.uk reaches us.