Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect information that you provide directly and information generated through your use of the platform.

Account Information

When you create an account or are invited by a school, we collect:

• Full name and email address
• Phone number
• Role (school administrator, teacher, parent, guardian, or authorized pickup person)
• Profile photo (optional, used for identity verification at pickup)
• Home address (used for distance calculations and scheduling)

Student Information

Schools provide the following student information through our platform:

• Student name, grade level, and section/classroom
• Parent/guardian associations
• Authorized pickup persons
• Any special pickup instructions provided by the school

Usage Data

We automatically collect certain information when you use SmartPickup:

• Device type, operating system, and app version
• Pickup and dismissal timestamps
• QR code scan logs
• Feature usage patterns (e.g., carpool requests, schedule views)

2. How We Use Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Scheduling & Organization: To calculate optimal pickup time windows based on the primary guardian's distance from school, grade level, and section
• Identity Verification: To generate and validate QR codes for secure student pickup, ensuring only authorized individuals can pick up a child
• Real-Time Tracking: To show parents, students, and school staff the live location of an approaching pickup person during active journeys
• Carpooling: To match nearby families for carpool arrangements and coordinate shared pickups
• Communication: To send pickup notifications, schedule updates, and school announcements
• Analytics: To provide schools with aggregate dismissal analytics (traffic flow, pickup duration, compliance rates)
• Safety & Compliance: To maintain audit trails of all pickups for school records and safety verification
• Platform Improvement: To improve our features, fix bugs, and develop new functionality

3. GPS & Location Data

Location data is particularly sensitive, and we take special care in how we handle it.

What We Track

• GPS coordinates of the parent/pickup person during an active journey to school
• Estimated time of arrival calculated from live location data
• Distance from school used to trigger proximity-based notifications

Who Can See Your Location

• School staff: Can see your live position on the tracking dashboard during your active journey
• Your student(s): Can see your ETA and distance during your active journey
• Carpool families: If you are driving a carpool, participating families can see your location during the active journey

What We Do NOT Do

• We do not track your location in the background when the app is not in active pickup mode
• We do not store location history beyond the current day's pickup log
• We do not sell or share location data with third-party advertisers
• We do not use location data for any purpose unrelated to the pickup process

Home Address

Your home address is collected once during onboarding and is used solely to calculate distance from school for time-slot assignment purposes. The primary guardian's address is the one used for scheduling calculations. Your address is never shared with other parents or displayed publicly.

4. Data Sharing

We take a strict approach to data sharing. Your data is shared only in the following circumstances:

With Your School

School administrators and authorized staff can access parent/guardian information, student records, pickup logs, and tracking data as needed to manage dismissal operations. This is core to the service's functionality.

With Carpool Partners

If you opt into carpooling, limited information (your name, student names, and live location during active carpools) is shared with your carpool partners. You control who you carpool with through the request/accept flow.

Service Providers

We use trusted third-party services for hosting, analytics, and notifications. These providers are bound by data processing agreements and may only use your data to deliver services on our behalf.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or government request, or if disclosure is necessary to protect the safety of a child or the rights and property of SmartPickup.

5. Children's Privacy

Protecting children's privacy is at the core of everything we build. SmartPickup is designed with the following principles:

• Minimal data collection: We collect only the student information necessary to operate the pickup system (name, grade, section, parent associations)
• School-managed data: Student data is entered and managed by the school through our administrative portal. Parents do not create accounts for children
• No direct marketing to children: We never market to, advertise to, or directly communicate with students for commercial purposes
• No social features: Students do not have social profiles, messaging, or any peer-to-peer communication features
• Parental visibility: Parents can see all data associated with their children and their authorized pickup persons
• COPPA considerations: We design our platform with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in mind, and we work with schools to ensure parental consent is obtained where applicable

Student data is retained only as long as the student is enrolled at a participating school. When a student is removed from the system, their data is deleted in accordance with our data retention schedule.

6. Data Security

We implement robust security measures to protect your data:

• Encryption in transit: All data transmitted between your device and our servers is encrypted using TLS 1.2 or higher
• Encryption at rest: Sensitive data stored on our servers is encrypted using AES-256 encryption
• Access controls: Role-based access ensures that school staff, parents, and authorized persons can only see data relevant to their role
• Secure authentication: OTP-based phone verification and secure session management protect user accounts
• QR code security: Each QR code is unique and cryptographically tied to a specific person and school. QR codes cannot be forged or reused after expiry
• Regular audits: We conduct periodic security assessments and vulnerability testing
• Data backups: Automated, encrypted backups ensure data availability and recovery

While we take every reasonable precaution to protect your data, no method of electronic storage or transmission is 100% secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, please contact us immediately at info@smartpickup.io.

7. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Access: You can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you and your children
• Correction: You can request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Deletion: You can request that we delete your personal data, subject to our legal obligations and the school's data retention requirements
• Portability: You can request your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Withdrawal of consent: Where processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time
• Objection: You may object to certain types of data processing

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at info@smartpickup.io. We will respond to your request within 30 days. Note that some requests may need to be coordinated with your child's school, as the school is the primary data controller for student records.

8. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests related to this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:

• Email: info@smartpickup.io
• Website: www.smartpickup.io
• Contact Page: smartpickup.io/contact

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, or legal requirements. We will notify users of material changes through the app or via email. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.