Your data
What leaves my phone?
Your log never leaves: no account, no MileWorks server. Only the lookups you use send a few details:
- The EPA list: the year, make and model.
- A VIN lookup: the VIN, to NHTSA.
- The weekly recall check: the year, make and model, to NHTSA.
- Looking up exchange rates: the currencies and dates, to Frankfurter for the ECB’s, or to currency-api for a currency the ECB doesn’t publish that isn’t fixed to one it does.
- Station names and addresses: the spot, to OpenStreetMap and your phone’s maps service.
- A place you add to a reading, trip, visit, expense, purchase or accident: its spot, to your phone’s maps service only, for the address. A photo’s place goes there as soon as you add the photo to a reading, a purchase or a new invoice (kept only if you tick it).
- A trip you record: where it started and ended, and for a trip across a border, a few spots along the way, to your phone’s maps service only.
- Automatic tracking: each drive’s start and end (and, for a drive across a border, a few spots along the way), to your phone’s maps service only, for the addresses.
- The weather, once you turn it on: rounded places and days, to NASA.
- The Passbook’s map to drag and zoom, once you open it: the area in view, to OpenFreeMap (nothing before).
- Drop a pin on a place, once you open its map: the area in view, to OpenFreeMap, then the spot you choose, to your phone’s maps service only, for the address.
- Driving now’s map and a drive’s route map, while they’re open: the area around the car or the route, to OpenFreeMap.
- The app’s update checks.
The average prices and Canada’s ratings come built into the app. On Android, Google’s ML Kit, which reads photo text and barcodes on the phone, sends Google its own diagnostics, never the photo or what’s read in it.
On your phone
Your log is stored on your phone. There’s no account, and MileWorks has no server, so the app never uploads it.
Your phone’s own backup (iCloud or Google’s) may copy it to your cloud account, and so does the automatic backup when its folder is in a cloud app (Android); otherwise only what you export or share leaves the phone.
Privacy
What’s sent, and only when you use it. Photo reading runs on the phone.
Station names come from OpenStreetMap, which receives the spot a station is looked up for: your location when you tap Use my current location, or a photo’s when you add one to a new fill-up that has no station yet.
Your phone’s own maps service (Apple’s or Google’s) gets that spot too, for the street address. It gets a recorded trip’s start and end as well (and a few spots along the way for a trip across a border), and the spot of a place you add to a reading, trip, maintenance visit, expense, purchase or accident (Use where I am, coordinates, a pin, or a photo’s, looked up as soon as the photo is added; OpenStreetMap gets none of those).
It also turns addresses into map positions (Passbook → Place them on the map).
Once you turn on By outside temperature (Stats → Fuel economy), the places you filled up, rounded to 0.1° (about 6 miles), and the days you drove from each go to NASA’s POWER project for the day’s temperatures.
The Passbook’s map
The Passbook’s map to drag and zoom gets its streets from OpenFreeMap (OpenStreetMap’s data). Opening it, and moving around it, asks for the parts of the map in view (after Where you are, the area around you), as any map does, with the phone’s internet address.
Your stops are drawn on the phone and never sent, and nothing goes to OpenFreeMap until you open that map. The Passbook’s overview map is drawn on the phone.
Drop a pin, on a place field, uses the same streets from OpenFreeMap, at any level, and only once you open it.
Driving now’s map uses the same streets: while it’s open it follows the car, so OpenFreeMap gets the parts of the map around it as you drive. A drive’s route map asks for the area of its route. Your path is drawn on the phone and never sent.
Updates, and nothing else
When it opens, the app asks its update service (Expo) for a new version, with a random install number, the app’s version and the ids of any updates that failed to start.
On an iPhone, after the app crashed as it started, a short error message goes with the next check too (on Android, only when an update itself couldn’t start).
Apart from that and ML Kit’s diagnostics, there’s no crash reporting, no analytics and no ads.
The average prices (the US’s fuel and electricity; the fuel of Canada, the EU’s members, the UK, Norway, New Zealand and Western Australia) and Canada’s NRCan ratings come built into the app’s updates, so nothing is sent for them.
The whole privacy policy and the terms of use open from Settings → Data → About, as do the data sources with the credit each asks for and the open-source licences.
The sample data
The sample data stays on the phone: it’s never backed up, exported, sent to NHTSA for recalls or used for the automatic region, the welcomes or reminders. The weekly summary and the welcome notifications are made on the phone too.