Privacy policy

Last updated: 2026-09-14. Ambling Ride was published as "Steady" until September 2026.

This policy covers the website amblingride.com, the Ambling Ride iPhone app and the Ambling Ride laptop app for Windows and macOS, including their test and pilot versions.

1. Who is responsible

Write to this address for every privacy question. We have not appointed a data protection officer, because the law does not require one for a business of this size.

2. This website

This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics. It is hosted on Firebase Hosting, a service of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. When you open a page, your browser sends your IP address, the address of the page, the time and technical details of your browser to Google's servers, because a page cannot be delivered otherwise. We do not evaluate this data.

The pages load their typeface from Google Fonts (Google) and their layout styles from cdn.tailwindcss.com (Tailwind Labs Inc., USA). Your browser connects to these providers directly and transmits your IP address to them. Google may process data in the USA, for which it is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Our legitimate interest is to deliver the website reliably and securely.

3. The iPhone app

The App Store version has no user account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking, and it contains no code that sends data to us.

Motion and location

The app reads the iPhone's motion sensors (acceleration, rotation, orientation) and computes the motion cues from them on the iPhone. While your laptop is connected, the app also uses your location: it keeps the app running in the background, and it provides speed and direction of travel so the cues are right when the vehicle brakes, turns or stops. Your coordinates stay on the iPhone. The cue values calculated from them are sent to your laptop together with the motion data.

The Bluetooth connection to your laptop

iPhone and laptop talk over an encrypted Bluetooth connection. We are not part of it and never see its contents. The iPhone sends:

• motion data and the cue values calculated from them, about 50 times a second,
• a short status every 10 seconds: battery level, whether it is charging, the device temperature level, whether the app is open, the sensor sample rate and how many motion frames were dropped,
• in the App Store version, your signed licence status (section 5).

What the app stores on the iPhone

Your settings (for example the audio cues and how the phone sits in the car), whether the introduction, setup and demo were completed, when the offer was last shown or postponed, when the app last checked your purchases with Apple, and the time of a pending Ask to Buy request. In the Keychain it keeps what the licence check needs (section 5). All of this stays on the iPhone. Deleting the app removes everything except the Keychain entries, which iOS keeps after an app is deleted.

Sound

To keep running in the background during a ride, the app plays silent audio. You only hear something if you switch on the optional audio cues. The app never uses the microphone.

4. The laptop app

Processing on your laptop

The laptop app receives the motion data from your iPhone and draws the cues at the edges of your screen. For troubleshooting, it keeps local log files in your user profile (on Windows in %APPDATA%\Ambling Ride): an event log with settings changes, connection events, licence states and error messages, and the motion data of the last 12 sessions. The same folder holds your consent decisions, the counters for the daily summary (section 4, next part), the signed licence confirmations (section 5) and, if a ride recording is started with its keyboard shortcut, that recording. The Bluetooth helper keeps the identifier of the paired iPhone in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Steady (on a Mac in ~/Library/Application Support/Steady). None of these files is sent anywhere automatically. You can delete them at any time by deleting those folders.

Mac test and pilot versions also look for the iPhone on the local network (Bonjour). Current iPhone versions only answer over Bluetooth.

Daily usage summary (optional, Microsoft Store version)

After a longer ride, the app asks once whether it may send a small summary once a day. Until you say yes, nothing is sent. The summary contains:

• the date, the app version and the Windows version,
• how many minutes the app was open, received motion data and showed cues,
• how many rides there were, sorted into duration bands,
• how often pairing was attempted, succeeded or failed, and how often the connection dropped, stalled or ran into errors,
• how steady the data rate was, counted in bands, and how many screens were connected,
• the settings you chose, such as cue mode, strength and language, with slider positions rounded to a scale of 0 to 10.

It never contains motion data, location, screen contents, window titles, names or your iPhone's identity. The summary is sent with a random installation ID, which the app creates when you agree. We cannot tell from it who you are.

The legal basis is your consent, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. You can withdraw it at any time under Settings, Advanced. From then on nothing more is sent. Right next to that switch, "Request deletion of my data" sends a deletion request: our server then immediately deletes every entry for your installation ID and keeps only a shortened fingerprint of that ID as proof that the deletion happened. Without a deletion request, individual entries are kept for 90 days and then combined into daily totals without the installation ID.

The server is located in Germany, in a data centre of Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, which operates it for us as a processor (Art. 28 GDPR). It stores neither your IP address nor access logs.

Administrators of company computers can switch this question off for all users with the Windows policy TelemetryPolicy = off under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Ambling Ride.

Downloads and updates

The Microsoft Store version is distributed and updated by Microsoft, which acts as an independent controller under its own privacy statement. Pilot and test versions distributed outside the store check our server for updates at launch and every four hours. Our server receives your IP address and a random update ID that the update component stores on your laptop, and it does not store the IP address.

5. Licences and purchases

Purchases in the iPhone app

You buy the subscription or the lifetime licence from Apple. Apple processes your payment and account data as an independent controller, see apple.com/legal/privacy. We receive no payment data and no name.

To check your licence, the app asks Apple on your iPhone which product you own, whether a trial or renewal is running and until when, and it reads the ID of your original transaction. From that ID it computes a shortened, one-way fingerprint. The signed message to your laptop contains the licence state (for example trial, monthly or lifetime), notes such as a failed renewal, the expiry and issue time, that fingerprint, a random installation number with a counter, and a one-time value from the laptop that stops old messages from being replayed. The laptop keeps the signed confirmations of a paid licence so that it also works offline. This file is protected with a key that Windows or macOS keeps for your user account.

If your version offers one free first ride, the app records when it was used: in the Keychain on your iPhone and, if you use iCloud, in your iCloud storage, so that the free ride is not offered again on a new iPhone. For signing, the app also keeps a random device key that never leaves the iPhone.

The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, providing the licence you bought.

Licences provided by your company

If your employer provides Ambling Ride, the company's IT puts a licence key on your laptop. It contains an organisation ID and name, a size band, the expiry and issue date, a deployment reference, a random key ID and optionally the company's email domains. It contains nothing about you. The laptop app passes the key to your connected iPhone, which then shows "Provided by" the company and no purchase offers. The iPhone forgets the key when the connection ends.

Emergency unlock

Versions of the laptop app that can lock cues check a file on our server at launch and every six hours. With this file we can unlock all laptops for a limited time if a licence check ever goes wrong. The request carries no identifier, and the server does not store IP addresses. The laptop keeps the last valid file, so an unlock also works offline until it runs out.

6. Test, pilot and research versions

Versions distributed through TestFlight or directly to pilot companies can send diagnostic data to our server in Germany. They only do so after an explicit consent screen in the app. The data is tied to a random tester ID and consists of connection and usage events, app and system version, device model, battery and temperature levels, error messages, settings changes, comfort ratings and the feedback you type in.

If your employer runs a pilot, your employer is the controller for this data and we process it on its behalf under a data processing agreement. Your employer's agreement governs how long it is kept. You can withdraw your consent at any time in the laptop app's settings or by email to the address in section 1.

In the Research Preview, you can also agree that recordings of your rides are uploaded to our research server in Germany to improve the cues. A recording contains the raw motion sensor data (acceleration, rotation, orientation), speed, direction of travel and its accuracy, battery and temperature levels, the type of movement iOS detects (for example driving or walking), the cue values and diagnostic values, markers or notes you add, the device model and the iOS version, together with the name you enter. The app removes GPS coordinates and their accuracy before uploading, so your location is never transmitted. The legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. From then on nothing more is uploaded, and on request we delete your recordings.

7. Who receives data

We do not sell data and do not use it for advertising. Apart from the providers named above (Apple, Microsoft, Google and Tailwind Labs for distribution, hosting and website assets, Hetzner as our processor), nobody receives data from us, unless we are legally obliged to disclose it.

8. Your rights

You have the right to access your data (Art. 15 GDPR), to rectification (Art. 16), to erasure (Art. 17), to restriction of processing (Art. 18) and to data portability (Art. 20). You can object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21) and withdraw a consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7(3)). Write to the address in section 1.

For the daily usage summary, we can only find your data through the random installation ID. The quickest way to delete it is therefore the "Request deletion of my data" link in the app, which works without telling us who you are.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is the Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen, Kavalleriestraße 2-4, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany.

9. Changes

We update this policy when the apps or the website change how they handle data. The date at the top shows the current version.