What we do not do
We do not require an account to use the map or the rest of the site; an account adds a few features of its own, such as saving stations and trains. We run no advertising network. This site sets no cookies (the sign-in service sets only the ones it needs to keep you signed in: see accounts). We do not sell or share data about you, and we do not build a profile of you: nothing described below is joined up into a picture of a person.
Visitor analytics
We count page views using Plausible, which we host ourselves rather than using a third-party service. It is cookieless and collects no personal data: what we see is aggregate numbers, such as how many people opened the live map yesterday, not who they were. Nothing is shared with anyone else and nothing follows you to other sites.
Things kept in your browser
The map remembers a few of your own settings so it can put them back next time: the size of the train markers, whether the train card is minimised, the radius for passing trains, and whether the key is open. These live in your browser's local storage on your own device. They are never sent to us, they identify nothing, and clearing your browser data removes them. If you sign in, your browser also keeps the sign-in itself, so that you stay signed in; signing out removes it.
Accounts
An account is free and optional, and is for people aged 13 and over. It adds features of its own, such as saving stations and trains, seeing them on any device and how they stand today.
Signing in is handled by our own sign-in service at
auth.transportmaps.co.uk, run by Optional Ltd on our servers in London (Amazon Web
Services). If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your name and email address and confirms
that the address is yours; we never see your Google password or anything else in your Google
account. If you sign up with an email address, we keep the address and your password in
scrambled (hashed) form, never the password itself, and we email you to confirm the address and
whenever you ask to reset the password.
What we keep: your email address and name (the one from Google, or the one you give on your account page), the stations, units and trains you save with when you saved them, your journal (the numbers you log, when and where you say you saw them, and your notes), and when you last used the account. The sign-in service also records each sign-in (when, the IP address and the browser) to protect accounts from misuse, and deletes those records after 12 months. Beyond those records, the sign-in service's working log holds only the last few days before it is overwritten, and the account service keeps no log of your requests.
Your journal's places are what you type, or, when you mark a train as seen on the map, the station the train is at or the one nearest to where the map shows it. They never come from your device's location, which stays in your browser (see your location).
Cookies: the sign-in service sets cookies that keep you signed in to it, and no others. They are needed for signing in, so there is nothing to opt out of. This site itself still sets none.
Why: to give you the account you asked for, and, for the sign-in records, to keep accounts secure.
Deleting: the account page has a button that deletes everything you have saved, your journal included, at once. To close the account itself, ask via the contact page and it will be deleted within 30 days. Our backups are overwritten on a rolling schedule, so a deleted account leaves them within a year, except for one copy a year kept for recovering from a disaster, which is never used otherwise and is deleted after three years. A deleted account is gone from every backup within three years at most.
Where: it is stored in the UK, on our servers in London. The emails that confirm an address or reset a password are sent through Amazon's email service in Ireland, and signing in with Google goes through Google. None of it is shared, used for advertising, or joined to anything else on the site, such as the visitor analytics.
Email alerts, and paying for them
You can ask for an email when a saved regular service runs late, is cancelled or changes platform. For each service we keep which alerts you switched on, the days to watch and how long before departure, and a copy of each alert we send you (its subject and text, the day, and the lateness or platform it gave), so that you are never sent the same one twice and so that we can check what you were sent if you ask. Those copies are deleted after 14 days. Alerts go to the email address on your account, through Amazon's email service in Ireland, and every one has a link that stops the alerts for that service.
Paying: late running and cancellation alerts are a paid feature, and payments are taken by Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe and never reach us. Stripe keeps your subscription, payments and invoices, as it has to for tax and accounting, under its own privacy policy, and may handle them outside the UK under its own safeguards. We give Stripe your email address and your account's number, so that a payment unlocks the right account, and we keep which features your account holds. To change your card, see your invoices or cancel, use Manage your subscription on the account page.
Why: to send the alerts you asked for, and to take payment for them.
Your location
The map can centre on where you are and list your nearest stations. That only happens when you press the locate button, and your browser will ask your permission first. The position is used in the page, on your device, to work out which stations are closest. It is never sent to us and never stored.
Sharing a location, if you choose to
The passing-trains panel has a share button, which makes a link that carries an approximate position so whoever you send it to sees the same trains. Three things about it:
- It only ever happens because you chose it. Pressing the button does not share anything: it opens a warning first, explaining what the link reveals, and you have to confirm before anything is created.
- The position is rounded to about half a mile, which is the smallest area the panel works in anyway. The link says roughly where you are, not exactly.
- We still never see it. The link is made in your browser and goes wherever you send it. It does not pass through us, and nothing about it reaches this site.
A link keeps working after you have moved on, so treat it like any other message: send it to people you trust.
Map tiles
The background map is drawn from tiles served by OpenStreetMap and OpenFreeMap, and the label fonts come from OpenMapTiles. Your browser fetches those directly, so those services see your IP address as part of sending the images back, the same as any website you visit.
Server logs
The site is served from Amazon Web Services, and the delivery network keeps an access log of the requests it handles. Each line records your IP address, the time, the page or file requested, the response, the page you came from, and the browser and operating system you are using. An IP address can count as personal data, which is why this section exists.
We keep those logs to find faults, to see whether the site is up, and to deal with abuse such as someone hammering the servers. They are not used for analytics, they are not joined to anything else, and they are not shared.
The logs are deleted automatically after 90 days, by a rule on the storage itself rather than by anyone remembering to do it.
Links to other sites
Where we link out, you are on someone else's site once you follow the link, under their privacy policy rather than ours.
Getting in touch
Train Map UK is run by Optional Ltd. If you have no account, what we hold about you is nothing; if you have one, it is your account details and what you have saved, all of which the account page shows. You are welcome to ask about either, or anything else about this page, via the contact page. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that matters, the change will appear in what's new along with everything else.