Anonymous route tracking

Overland Navigator can anonymously record how the tracks you drive are being used. This helps us keep the maps accurate - showing how busy a route is, when it was last driven, and where a track may have changed over time.

It’s designed to be privacy-conscious: we only collect what we need to keep the maps good, and nothing that ties the data back to you.

This is not the same as recording a track Recording is something you start to save a route to My Navigator. Route tracking happens quietly in the background and is completely anonymous - you never see it, and it’s never saved to your account.

While you’re driving a track we already know about, the app keeps an anonymous trace of your route. The moment you leave the known track network, it stops - so your trip to and from the track, and anywhere else you drive, is never recorded.

Because it only ever runs while you’re on a known track, and only while the app is open and in use, it adds nothing to your battery beyond normal navigation. The app never turns on location on its own to do this.

It works offline too. If you’re out of coverage, the trace is held on your device and sent later, once you’re back online.

For a drive along a known track, a trace contains:

• The path you drove along the track
• Speed and elevation along the way
• A rough capability score of your vehicle setup - for example whether it’s a stock vehicle or a heavily modified one. This is just a number; your vehicle’s make, model, and details are never included.

That’s it. No names, no account details, no contact information.

We’ve built several protections in so a trace can’t be traced back to you:

• Not linked to your account. A trace carries no user ID or anything that connects it to you. We don’t store a link between a trace and who drove it.
• Only on known tracks. Your location is only ever recorded while you’re on a track we know about - never on the road in, never at home, never anywhere else.
• Fuzzy start and end. The start and end of every trace are trimmed before it leaves your device, so it doesn’t reveal exactly where you joined or left a track.
• Coarse timing. The time of a drive is rounded, so traces can’t be lined up to pinpoint a particular person’s movements.
• Not kept forever. Raw traces are removed from our active systems after 90 days. We keep only the aggregated statistics built from them, like how often a track is driven.

We will never sell your data, and we will never share an individual trace or anything that could show where a particular person drove. Where you go is yours.

We may publish or share aggregated statistics - like how busy a route is or when it was last driven - and over time some of this may appear in the app itself. These are combined figures across many drivers. They never identify an individual journey or person, and they never reveal a specific person’s movements.

It’s also worth remembering that we only record you while you’re on a known track. The moment you leave it, recording stops - so where you go before, after, or away from a track simply isn’t something we hold, let alone something we could ever share.

Route tracking is on by default, but you’re always in control.

Go to Settings → Privacy and turn off Contribute track usage data. Turning it off also deletes any traces still waiting on your device that haven’t been sent yet.

You’ll see a short notice explaining route tracking the first time it’s about to start. You can choose to leave it on or turn it off right there.

Tracks change. Slips happen, routes get re-cut, gates appear, and surfaces shift between seasons. The more we understand how routes are actually being driven, the better we can keep the maps accurate and useful for everyone heading out.

For the full detail on how we handle your data, see our Privacy Policy.