Last updated: 15 November 2026
In one look
- No sign-up, no account, no name, no email.
- No advertising, no analytics, no tracking across apps or websites.
- Your location is used to find your nearest stop and time your walk. When you look up a trip, your start and destination are sent to our server to work it out, used once, and not kept.
- Nothing about you is sold or shared.
Who we are
Ghostbus is an independent app for buses in Loughborough, England, made by an independent developer (the seller shown on the App Store). It is not affiliated with any bus operator or with Loughborough University. For anything about privacy, write to hello@getcrude.app.
What the app uses, and why
Your location
With your permission, and only while the app is open, Ghostbus reads your phone's location to find your nearest stop and to work out how long the walk to it takes. Ghostbus never reads your location in the background.
Finding your nearest stop happens on your phone. When you pick a place to go to, the app sends your current position and the place's position to our server so it can work out the trip (which bus, where to get on, when to leave). The server answers and does not store these positions or write them to any log. They are not linked to you, your device or any identifier.
You can turn location off at any time in your iPhone's Settings. Ghostbus will then ask you to turn it on, because it cannot find your stop without it.
Places you pick
The places you search for and pick, and when you picked them, are kept on your phone only, so the ones you use most can come first. They never leave your phone. Deleting the app deletes them.
Searching for a place
Search first looks through a list of Loughborough places stored in the app. It also asks Apple Maps, so what you type is sent to Apple under Apple's own privacy policy.
The map
Map images come from OpenFreeMap (based on OpenStreetMap). To show them, your phone requests map tiles from OpenFreeMap's servers, which, like any web server, see your device's internet address. Ghostbus sends them nothing else.
Reminders and the Lock Screen
If you ask for a reminder, it is scheduled on your phone as a notification and, where your phone allows it, shown on your Lock Screen as a Live Activity. Both live on your phone.
Bus data
Bus times and positions come from the UK government's Bus Open Data Service. It contains information about buses, not about you.
What Ghostbus does not do
- No accounts, sign-in, or profiles.
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No analytics or crash-reporting services from other companies.
- No selling, renting or sharing of personal information.
- No tracking you across other companies' apps and websites.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask what we hold about you and ask us to delete it. Because Ghostbus does not store personal information on its servers, there is normally nothing to return or delete; everything personal stays on your phone and goes when you delete the app. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Children
Ghostbus is not aimed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from anyone.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date. If a change would affect how your information is used, we will say so in the app before it applies.