Yalla

Yalla is a shuttle tracker, not a data business. It’s built to know as little about you as it can. Here’s exactly what happens with your information.

What Yalla doesn’t do

Yalla has no accounts or sign-in and no ads. There are no analytics, crash-reporting or tracking tools in the app. We don’t sell, rent or share your information, and we don’t track you across other apps or websites.

If you’ve turned on Share With App Developers in your iPhone’s Analytics settings, Apple may pass us crash reports and anonymous usage statistics. That’s Apple’s feature, and you can turn it off there.

Your location

If you allow it, Yalla uses your location while the app is open to show the stops closest to you, work out your walk to a stop, and plan trips from where you are. It never asks for background (“Always”) location.

Yalla never sends your location to us or to the shuttle data provider. The one place it goes is Apple Maps, to work out your walks (see Maps and street data below). You can turn it off any time in Settings. Yalla still shows live times and plans trips from Old Campus instead.

Live shuttle data

Yalla gets bus locations, arrival predictions, routes and service announcements directly from Yale’s shuttle data provider, Downtowner (operated by Via), at yale.downtownerapp.com. These requests ask for things like a stop’s arrival times. They don’t include your location or anything that identifies you, but like any internet request they show the provider ordinary technical details, such as your IP address. The provider’s own privacy practices apply to those.

Arrival alerts and Lock Screen countdowns

When you follow a bus on your Lock Screen, Yalla uses a small server we run on Cloudflare to keep the countdown up to date and tell you when to leave, even while the app is closed. For that, the app sends our server:

• The stop and route you chose, as the app shows them (names and route colors).
• The timing it needs: how many minutes before the bus to alert you, or, for the Lock Screen countdown, when the bus is due, when to leave, and how many minutes your walk takes. Never where you are.
• Which bus you’re following, when the app knows it.
• An Apple push token: a code from Apple that lets our server send a notification or Live Activity update to your iPhone. It isn’t your phone number, your Apple Account or your device’s name.

Our server uses this only to watch that bus’s arrival time and send your alert or countdown update through Apple’s push notification service. It isn’t tied to your name, an account, or anything else about you.

How long it’s kept: the record is deleted as soon as your alert goes off, the bus arrives, or you tap End, and it never lasts longer than 45 minutes. It’s also deleted if Apple says the push token no longer works. Cloudflare’s storage keeps a 30-day recovery history, so a deleted record is fully gone 30 days later. We never use that history to look at your data.

Like most web services, Cloudflare keeps short-lived logs of requests to our server (such as the time, the address requested and your IP address), which we use only to fix problems. They’re deleted automatically within 7 days. Our own code never writes your push token, your choices or your feedback to those logs.

If our server can’t be reached, Yalla schedules an approximate alert on your iPhone instead, and nothing is sent anywhere.

Feedback you send

You can send a bug report, an idea or a note about wrong information from the app. It goes to our server on Cloudflare, and only the developer reads it. It contains:

• The kind of feedback and what you write.
• Your email address, only if you add one so we can reply.
• If you leave Include what’s on screen on: the route and stop you last looked at in the app, the time on your iPhone, and your versions of Yalla and iOS. Never where you are.

Nothing else is attached, and it isn’t tied to an account or your device. So one iPhone can’t flood us, the app also sends a random code it made itself, which our server uses only to count how many notes come from it in a minute. That code is never stored.

We use your feedback only to fix and improve Yalla, and your email only to reply to you. When the developer plans or fixes something, the app’s Fixed from your feedback list shows a short title he writes, such as “The map shows every route at night”. Never your words, your email or anything else from your note.

How long it’s kept: your note, with your email if you added one, is deleted a year after you send it. Cloudflare’s storage keeps up to 30 days of recovery history after that, which we never use to look at your data. To have a note deleted sooner, email yassin.mudawi@yale.edu.

A note that can’t be sent yet (you’re offline, say) waits on your iPhone and is sent the next time it can.

What stays on your iPhone

Your starred stops, recent destinations, the alerts you’ve set and the bus you’re following are stored only on your iPhone, as are a feedback note you’re still writing and the email you gave for replies. Yalla’s widget gets the next shuttles for your starred stop through storage shared on the same phone (an iOS App Group). Searching campus places and shuttle stops happens on your iPhone, against a list built into the app. Deleting Yalla deletes all of it.

Maps and street data

The map is Apple Maps (MapKit). To draw it, Apple receives what it needs to load the map, such as the area you’re viewing, and Apple’s Privacy Policy applies to that.

When you type a few letters into search, Yalla also asks Apple Maps for matching addresses and places around New Haven, so what you type is sent to Apple, as it would be searching in the Maps app. When you pick one, Apple Maps tells Yalla where it is. None of this goes to our server, and Apple’s Privacy Policy applies to it.

To time your walks and draw them on the map, Yalla asks Apple Maps for walking directions: from where you are, or from a stop, to a stop or to where you’re going. So Apple receives where each walk starts and ends, as it would if you asked the Maps app for directions. Where you are is rounded to about 20 meters, and asked about again only once you’ve moved about 50 meters. None of this goes to our server, and Apple’s Privacy Policy applies to it.

The street drawing on Yalla’s home screen uses OpenStreetMap data that’s built into the app, so it makes no network requests. Street data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Your choices

• Location and notifications are optional. Turn either off any time in Settings, and live times keep working.
• Feedback is optional too. Turn off Include what’s on screen to send only what you write, and leave out your email if you don’t need a reply.
• Tap End on a bus you’re following to delete its alert record right away.
• Delete the app to remove everything Yalla stored on your iPhone.

Children

Yalla isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

If Yalla starts handling information differently, we’ll update this page and the date at the top before the change takes effect.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or anything else? Email yassin.mudawi@yale.edu.