Privacy

  As a matter of practice, website privacy descriptions are often very difficult to read and even more difficult to comprehend. While it is somewhat lengthy, we don't believe our policy like this. We try to give it to you straight up in language (hopefully) everyone can understand. Further to this if there is anything that is not clear to you from the below please Contact Us and we'll answer any questions you may have.

  We take privacy on the web very seriously and respect your right not to have your information stored.

  None. We don't store any specific information about our users. Period. That's why we don't force you to login or ask you any personal questions like "What's your email address", "How did you hear about us" or "What was the name of your first pet."

  Through Google Analytics (GA) we derive reports that show aggregate (non-personal) information such as how many users and what pages were visited with specific browsers, screen sizes, mobile devices etc. which allows us to improve the site and get a sense of how often it's being used. GA also allows us to see how many requests were made through WMATA Bus TrackerTM about a specific stop. GA is used just about everywhere on the web and if you have any concerns about the privacy of GA please visit Google's Privacy Page where you can find out more or opt out completely.

  WMATA Bus TrackerTM uses (but does not store) several pieces of data that are sent by your browser, as a default, when you visit the WMATA Bus TrackerTM web page. Things like screen size, browser type (mobile or not) etc. are used to maximize the user experience. We also detect (but do not store) your IP address to help us with things like adjusting the site to improve user experience based on location as WMATA Bus TrackerTM is actually a multi-city product. Your IP is sent, by default, to every site that you visit so this technique is common place on the web. What makes us different is that WMATA Bus TrackerTM doesn't store this data anywhere. We simply use it at "runtime" to provide the best user experience.

  On our "Find Me" page, and only if you agree to share your current GPS coordinates, the page will try to zero in on your location (as best it can) and show stops around you. This happens once and there is no repeat "tracking" of your GPS coordinates. After it shows where it thinks you are on the map in relation to the stops around you it immediately disposes of the information. As a matter of fact, these GPS coordinates never make it to WMATA Bus TrackerTM servers. They happen in an environment refered to as "client side" meaning this information only exists within your browser and Google Maps. The information never passes to WMATA Bus TrackerTM.

  Once you move the map, we do store the new location coordinates within a temporary cookie in case you click on the wrong stop or want to use the back button to find another stop close to the location you moved to on the map. As with everything, this information is never stored by WMATA Bus TrackerTM. Since, in our experience, we found the map and GPS accuracy not always the best on mobile devices, this feature is simply used as a convenience measure so you don't have to move the map every time you want to look for a new stop around you. This temporary cookie is automatically removed by your browser after 20 minutes, or you go back to our homepage, or you refresh the find me page, or you close your browser, whichever comes first.

  WMATA Bus TrackerTM uses cookies to show and refresh your favorite stops and buses lists. Again, we don't store this information anywhere on our servers. Should you choose to delete them or not allow cookies, WMATA Bus TrackerTM will work just fine but will not be able to show you your list of favorites. Cookies are used by almost every single site on the web and are kept on your browser to be served only to the site that created them, each time you visit the site.

For more information on cookies, please visit the Wikipedia page on HTTP Cookies.