Privacy Policy

Overview

rDetect is a companion app for Uniden R-series radar detectors. We are committed to protecting your privacy and being transparent about our data practices.

Local Data Storage

The following data is stored on your device. Alert history, GPS lockouts, points of interest and settings profiles are additionally mirrored to your own private iCloud database whenever you are signed in to iCloud (see iCloud Sync); nothing else leaves your device unless you enable or use a sharing feature:

• •Bluetooth Connection Data — Device identifiers for your paired Uniden detector
• •Alert History — Logs of radar and laser alerts for your personal reference, including the GPS coordinates where each encounter began and faded
• •GPS Lockouts — Learned and manual GPS lockout locations for false alert suppression
• •Points of Interest — User-created locations for custom alerts
• •Trip History — A saved summary of each drive (duration, alert counts by band, peak and average speed, and the destination if you navigated), kept on the device only, never synced to iCloud, and kept until you delete it
• •GPS Trails — While you drive with the detector connected, rDetect records a breadcrumb trail so a navigated trip can show the route you took. A point is saved whenever five seconds have passed or you have moved 50 m, whichever comes first. Trails stay on the device and are deleted automatically after 30 days
• •Navigation History — Your Home and Work places, up to eight favourites, and your ten most recent destinations
• •Settings & Profiles — Your preferences, configuration choices, and saved settings profiles

This data can be deleted at any time by uninstalling the app or using the in-app data management tools.

Opt-In Anonymous Data Collection

rDetect includes an optional data contribution program that helps improve false alert scoring for all users. When enabled, the app uploads anonymous alert feature data to our servers, one record per alert, along with any real or false-alarm verdicts on those alerts. This data is used solely to train and improve false-alert scoring.

What is collected

Each submitted record is either one alert's features or one verdict on an alert. Both kinds carry your app version and a random code that matches an alert to any verdict on it, and alert records also carry a second random identifier of their own. There are no personal identifiers and no precise locations:

• •Alert characteristics — Band (Ka, K, X, etc.), signal strength, frequency, and duration
• •Contextual data — Speed (and a marker recording whether that speed was normalised from the detector's own units), posted speed limit, road class, hour of day, and day of week
• •Environmental data — Weather conditions and precipitation (when available)
• •Road context — Whether the alert occurred in a commercial or school zone, how densely traffic signals are clustered nearby, and the road's grade
• •Behavioural signals — Whether you muted the alert yourself, whether the app muted it for you (and which of its rules did so), and whether you slowed down afterwards
• •Coarse location — Latitude and longitude rounded to approximately 1 km accuracy (not your precise position), plus a country/state region code
• •Pattern indicators — Encounter count, spatial spread, nearby lockout presence, multi-band status, and how the alert's peak signal compared with its average
• •Scoring metadata — The false-alert score the app calculated on your device and the version of the scoring rules that produced it
• •Detector verdict — Whether your detector had already recognized the alert as a false alarm, or had muted it for some other reason
• •Verdicts — Whether you marked an alert real or a false alarm, and a false-alarm verdict sent automatically when a lockout (including one rDetect learns on its own) covers an alert from the past 30 days. Each verdict is sent as a small separate record holding that alert's random code, the verdict, how it was given, and your app version
• •A random code per alert — Generated on your device so a later verdict can be matched to that alert's record. It is not tied to your device, install, or account
• •Lockout flag — A legacy yes/no field the app now always sends as “no”; the verdicts above replace it

None of these signals identify you. rDetect has no access to your brake pedal or vehicle bus — “slowed down” means only that your speed dropped after the alert. The list above, together with the random identifiers and app version described at the end of this section, is the complete set of fields this feature transmits. The Analytics screen in the iPhone and iPad app's Settings, where you turn the feature on, gives a shorter summary of it. The Mac app does not offer this feature and sends none of this data.

What is NOT collected

• •Your name, email, Apple ID, or any account information
• •Your precise GPS coordinates (locations are coarsened to ~1 km)
• •Your device's unique identifiers (UDID, serial number, etc.)
• •Your driving routes, trip history, or movement patterns
• •Any data from other apps on your device

Data is transmitted securely over HTTPS and authenticated with an API key. Each alert record carries random identifiers generated for that alert (not derived from your device or Apple ID). If you mark the alert as real or a false alarm, or a lockout later covers it, that verdict is sent separately with the same random code so the two can be matched. Every record also includes your app version for compatibility purposes. Our server keeps only the month in which each record arrived, not the day or time. To guard against abuse it also keeps a count of uploads per hour, which it deletes after two days.

We keep analytics records separate from debug-log submissions, and we never try to re-identify them or link them to you, your device, or a debug log.

Debug Log Submissions

To help us investigate a problem you are experiencing, rDetect lets you send a diagnostic bundle to our support team. It is transmitted only when you explicitly tap Send, and the app shows you what it includes beforehand.

What is included

• •Diagnostic log — the most recent entries of the in-app log of connection, settings-sync, GPS, Bluetooth alert, and navigation events used for troubleshooting, with their dates and times and your time zone's offset from UTC (but not its name), plus a summary of your alert, voice and mute settings. The log also notes whether the app announced each alert or kept it quiet (including when you muted one), which dashboard view was showing, and when the app started and when the log was cleared. Navigation events record a navigated route's length and travel time, each reroute, how the trip ended, and warnings about saved alert locations ahead, with no coordinates, destinations or street names
• •App & device information — app version and build, iOS version, device model, and the connected detector model and firmware, or, when none is connected, the model of the detector last connected
• •A random install identifier — a random ID generated on your device to group repeat submissions; it is not your Apple ID, name, or a hardware identifier
• •Recent alerts — approximately your 50 most recent alert records (band, signal strength, frequency, time, and an approximate location coarsened to ~1 km — never your precise position), to help diagnose detection and scoring issues
• •An optional note — anything you choose to type describing the problem
• •An optional email address — included only if you choose to provide one, and used solely to reply to you about your report

Debug-log submissions are transmitted securely over HTTPS, authenticated with an API key, and stored on our self-hosted backend. They are diagnostic in nature and are routinely deleted within approximately 90 days. If you provide an email address, we use it only to respond to your report and do not share it or use it for marketing.

iCloud Sync

rDetect keeps your alert history, GPS lockouts, points of interest, and settings profiles in sync across your Apple devices using Apple's CloudKit framework. Sync runs automatically whenever you are signed in to iCloud — there is no rDetect account and no in-app sync switch:

• •Data is stored in your private iCloud database — only you can access it; it is not shared with us or any third party
• •To stop syncing, sign out of iCloud or turn rDetect off under iOS Settings › your name › iCloud › Manage Account Storage
• •Trip history and the GPS breadcrumb trails behind it are kept in a separate local-only store and are never sent to iCloud

iCloud sync is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy. We do not have access to your iCloud data.

Website & Analytics

The rDetect website (rdetect.app) uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a privacy-first analytics service that:

• •Does not use cookies or track individual visitors
• •Does not collect personal information
• •Provides only aggregate page view and performance metrics

No other third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking scripts are used on this website.

Beta Program

If you sign up for the rDetect beta program through our website, we collect:

• •First and last name — Required by Apple TestFlight for beta distribution
• •Email address — Used to send your TestFlight invitation (must match your Apple ID)
• •Detector model — Optional, used to prioritize testing on specific hardware

This information is stored securely and used solely for beta program administration. It is not shared with third parties or used for marketing purposes. If you contact us through our support form, we also store your name, email, and message to respond to your inquiry.

When you submit either form, we also record the IP address the request came from and your browser's User-Agent string. These are used only to rate-limit automated abuse of the forms, and are never used to profile you, shared with third parties, or used for marketing. We erase both from the stored submission after 90 days, keeping only the message itself.

Server Backups

Our server is backed up every night so it can be recovered after a failure. The backups include everything this policy describes our server storing: opt-in analytics records, debug-log submissions, and contact-form and beta sign-ups. They are kept on our own hardware and, encrypted before they leave our server, in Cloudflare R2 cloud storage, where Cloudflare cannot read them. Backups are deleted on a rolling schedule, and none is kept longer than about six months.

The deletion periods elsewhere in this policy apply to our live server. A backup made before something was deleted still holds it until that backup expires, so a debug log, or a form's IP address and User-Agent, can remain in backups for up to about six months after it is deleted from the server. Because backups are nightly copies, they also show roughly which day an analytics record first reached us; we never use them to date or re-identify records. Analytics records that arrived before October 5, 2026 were stored with their exact arrival time, and backups made before that date keep it until they expire, by March 2027. We use backups only to recover from a failure, and if we ever restore one, we apply this policy's deletions again before the server goes back into use.

Device Permissions

Bluetooth

Required to communicate with your Uniden radar detector. Used solely for receiving real-time alert data, reading device status, and syncing detector settings.

Location

If granted, location is used to:

• •Display your current speed and heading
• •GPS lockout learning — associating locations with recurring false alerts for automatic muting
• •Nearby lockout indicators and geofence-based alert suppression
• •Camera, enforcement and speed-limit lookups via OpenStreetMap Overpass — your approximate position only, about 110 m, with no name, account or device identifier
• •Turn-by-turn navigation — route guidance, rerouting, and warning you about recorded alerts and cameras ahead on your route

rDetect asks for “Always” location so guidance, GPS lockout evaluation and alert tagging keep working with the screen locked. Location is used while you are driving with rDetect, including in the background with the screen locked.

The location records rDetect keeps — alert coordinates, lockouts, points of interest — stay on your device and in your own private iCloud. Some location does leave your device for lookups. rDetect sends an approximate position, rounded to about 110 m, to OpenStreetMap's public Overpass servers to find cameras and speed limits; you can switch those lookups off in Settings. It also sends your position to Apple for weather, place names, search and routing, which Apple handles under its own privacy policy. We never share your location with advertisers or data brokers.

Notifications

Used to deliver alert, urgent-threat and detector connection notifications while the app is in the background. All notifications are generated on your device — rDetect has no push server and never sends you marketing or remote push messages.

Motion & Fitness

rDetect never prompts for Motion & Fitness. If you have already granted it system-wide, rDetect reads only the coarse stationary/in-vehicle summary at the moment a Bluetooth connection drops, to tell whether your vehicle was switched off or the detector simply went out of range. Raw motion data is never stored or transmitted.

Apple Services

Some features hand your location to Apple, under Apple's Privacy Policy:

• •Apple Weather — Weather is fetched for your current position as you drive and attached to your alerts. This runs whenever location is granted and has no setting to disable it
• •Place names — Alert and area coordinates are reverse-geocoded so the app can show “City, ST” instead of raw numbers. The region code in the opt-in analytics payload is derived from this lookup, and that one lookup uses the full-precision coordinate before the value sent to us is coarsened
• •Maps — Destination search and route calculation send your search text, destination and current position to Apple Maps

Data Sharing & Export

On iPhone and iPad, rDetect allows you to export GPS lockouts and alert history in standard formats (JSON, CSV, GPX, KML), and points of interest as JSON. On the Mac, lockouts and points of interest export as JSON, CSV, GPX or KML, alert history as CSV, and a full backup as JSON. Exported files contain only the data you choose to export. Sharing is entirely at your discretion — no data is transmitted to any server during export.

We do not sell or rent your personal data, and we share nothing with advertisers or data brokers. Some features send your location to Apple and to OpenStreetMap's public servers, as described under Device Permissions and Apple Services.

Children's Privacy

rDetect is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any information from children under 13 years of age.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date. Continued use of the app after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please get in touch through our Support page.