What ScanMyCar does with your data

The short version

ScanMyCar reads data from your car through a Bluetooth OBD-II adapter and keeps it on your phone. When you are signed in, the app also copies that data to your account on our servers, so a new phone finds your history and so Obie can read it. We run those servers ourselves on Amazon Web Services in the United States.

A few outside services see a small, specific part of your data: OpenAI and Fireworks AI generate Obie's answers, OpenAI draws the picture of your car's model, Apple or Google handles subscription payments and delivers notifications, Stripe handles scanner orders, Meta learns which website pages are visited and which of our ads lead to scanner orders, PostHog counts how the app's features are used, and public vehicle databases turn a VIN or a make and model into facts. Each one is listed below with exactly what it receives.

Your account

To use the app you sign in with your email address. We send you a one-time code and you type it in; there is no password. Sign-in runs on Amazon Cognito, and your email address is the only identity we hold.

Your account record holds: your email address, a random identifier for each phone you sign in on, and, if you allow notifications, the token Apple gives us to reach that phone. The sign-in session on your phone is kept in the device's secure storage and lasts up to 90 days without a new code.

What stays on your phone only

• Your settings: units, look, dashboard layout and alert thresholds.
• The live readings while you drive, before they are logged.
• Your sign-in session.
• The scanner log: a record of the raw traffic between the app and your adapter, for the newest connections. No part of the app sends it anywhere; only test builds of the app can share it, for a bug report.

Everything else in the next section lives both on your phone and in your account.

What is kept in your account

While you are signed in, the app copies these records to your account, over an encrypted connection, as they are created:

• Drives: start and end time, the adapter used, and trip statistics such as distance, duration and fuel estimate;
• Logged sensor readings for each drive (the parameters your car exposes, with their time stamps; no GPS positions);
• Diagnostic trouble codes, freeze-frame data, emissions readiness and other diagnostic snapshots;
• Your vehicle: its VIN, make, model, year, engine and the parameters it supports;
• Health-check reports, ride analyses, guided-test results and the events you mark;
• Your conversations with Obie, and the photos you add to them.

These are stored in databases and object storage on Amazon Web Services in the United States, encrypted at rest and in transit. They stay for as long as your account exists, except chat photos, which are deleted after 180 days. Records of an AI job in progress are deleted after 7 days.

Obie and the AI features

Obie is ScanMyCar's AI mechanic: the chat, the health check, the ride analysis, the guided tests and the tailored sensor ranges. Obie runs on our own servers, which send the work to OpenAI models through OpenAI's API and, for some health checks and ride analyses, to open models (GLM from Z.ai) hosted in the United States by Fireworks AI through its API. When you use an AI feature, the model receives:

• your question and the conversation so far;
• the car data the answer needs: recent readings, trouble codes, readiness, trip statistics, and your vehicle's VIN, make, model, year and engine;
• for a live check, fresh readings the app takes from the car at that moment;
• the photos you add to that message.

We send requests with storage turned off. OpenAI processes them as a data processor under its API data policies, does not use them to train its models, and may keep them for a short period to detect abuse. Fireworks AI keeps no prompts or answers: it holds them in memory only while it answers, and does not use them to train models. The answers, reports and chat messages are stored in your account like everything else. When a report is ready and you allow notifications, a notification carries its one-line verdict to your phone through Apple's push service.

AI use is limited to a number of jobs per account per day to keep the service available to everyone.

Photos and voice

Photos. You can add a photo to a chat message from the camera or your photo library. The phone first shrinks the photo and removes its metadata, such as location and camera details, then uploads it to your account. OpenAI receives the photo with your message so Obie can answer about it. A photo is kept on your phone and in your account for up to 180 days; deleting the conversation or your account removes it sooner. The app uses the camera or your library only when you add a photo.

Voice. Dictation in the chat turns your speech into text with the speech recognition built into your phone, set to work on the device. On an iPhone the audio does not leave the phone. On Android the app asks for the same; a phone that cannot recognise speech on the device uses its own system speech service instead, under that service's terms. The audio is never sent to us or to an AI provider: only the text you then send is part of your message.

Vehicle look-ups

A few features turn what your car reports into facts from outside sources. Each one receives only the vehicle identifier named here, never your name, email or account:

• VIN decoding. Your VIN is sent to the United States NHTSA vehicle database (vPIC) to find the make, model, year and engine.
• Safety recalls and complaints. Your make, model and year are sent to NHTSA.
• The picture of your car. Your phone asks our servers for a picture of your make, model and year. Our servers send the make and model to NHTSA's vehicle database (vPIC) to find the model's standard name. We keep one picture of each model in our own library; the first time a model is asked for, our servers have an OpenAI image model draw it from the make, model and year alone. The picture is cached on your phone.
• Vehicle history. If you ask for a history report, your VIN is sent to VinAudit, which queries the national title database (NMVTIS). The report is kept in your account for 30 days.

Purchases: the ScanMyCar Pro subscription and scanner orders

ScanMyCar Pro is bought through Apple's App Store or Google Play. They handle the entire payment: we never receive your name, payment details or store account. After a purchase, the app sends the store's signed proof of purchase to our server, which checks it and records the subscription's paid-until date against your account and the phone you bought it on. A subscription can be used on up to five phones and five accounts. Those records expire 60 days after the subscription ends and are kept even if you delete your account, so a refund or a device limit can still be honoured.

Scanner orders. When you order the ScanMyCar OBD-II Scanner on scanmycar.app, you pay in a checkout form run by Stripe, which opens on the scanner page itself or on Stripe's own checkout page, or on the scanner page with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Stripe collects your name, email address, shipping address, phone number if you give one, and your payment details, and processes the payment under its own privacy policy. With Apple Pay or Google Pay, the payment button on the scanner page is Stripe's (Stripe.js, which may also collect device details to prevent fraud): your wallet sends your payment details, name, email address, phone number and shipping address to Stripe, and our server reads them from Stripe to create the order there. Our server keeps no other copy and never receives your full card number. We receive the order: your name, email address, shipping address, phone number if given, what you ordered and the amount. We never receive your full card number. We use these details only to ship your order, to email you about it (a delay, the tracking number, a refund), to answer your questions and to tell Meta about a paid order (see "This website"). To print the shipping label, your name and address go to our label service, Pirate Ship, and to the carrier that delivers the package. An order is not linked to your app account. We keep order records for as long as tax and accounting law requires, then delete them.

Bluetooth

ScanMyCar uses Bluetooth only to communicate with your OBD-II adapter. Your phone's operating system asks for your permission first. The connection carries vehicle data between the adapter and your phone, nothing else, and it is not used for location, beacons or tracking.

Email

We email you sign-in codes from noreply@scanmycar.app, and nothing else unless you write to us or order the OBD-II scanner. If you order it, Stripe emails your receipt, and we email you about your order: a delay, the tracking number or a refund. Mail you send to any scanmycar.app address is forwarded to our support inbox and a copy is kept for 30 days.

Request logs

Our servers log each request the app makes: the time, the route, the result, your account identifier and the IP address the request came from. We use these logs to find faults and stop abuse, for example to limit how often one address can ask for a car picture before sign-in. The logs contain no car data and are deleted after 14 days.

Usage counts in the app

The app uses PostHog to count how its features are used, for example "scanner connected", "health check finished" or "paywall shown", with a few fixed details such as the kind of scanner connection, a health check's verdict and duration, or how many minutes a drive lasted. Each count also carries the phone's model, operating system version, language, time zone and screen size, whether it is on Wi-Fi or mobile data, and the app's version. PostHog knows your phone only by a random ID that the app makes; it is not linked to your account or your email, and we do not build a profile of you. PostHog never receives your car data (VIN, trouble codes, readings), your chats, your photos, your location or your email. PostHog receives the IP address the counts come from, as any server does; the app asks PostHog not to use it to estimate your location. PostHog processes this data for us in the United States. You can turn it off at any time in Settings > Share anonymous usage data, and the app then sends nothing more. No ads, and we do not sell the data.

This website

scanmycar.app is hosted on GitHub Pages. GitHub receives the IP address of each visitor and may log it for security, under GitHub's own privacy statement. We use PostHog to see how people use the website: the pages you open, the buttons you press, the site or link you came from, and recordings of your visit. Anything you type is hidden in the recordings. PostHog stores a random ID in your browser's local storage, not in a cookie, so it can tell your visits apart; it also receives your IP address, which it uses to estimate your country and city. PostHog processes this data for us in the United States. We do not use it for ads, and we do not sell it. The website shows no ads. When you tap a preorder button, the request goes to our own server first, which logs the time, the result and your IP address and deletes that log after 14 days, and then opens Stripe's checkout form on the scanner page or sends you to Stripe's checkout page. On the scanner page the form comes from Stripe (Stripe.js, which may also collect device details to prevent fraud).

Meta ads. We advertise the scanner on Facebook and Instagram. When you open the website from one of those ads, the link carries Meta's click id. The website keeps it for 90 days in a first-party cookie named _fbc and adds it to the preorder buttons. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, the website keeps no click id and sends none to our server. When you start a preorder checkout with a click id, our server stores the click id, your IP address and your browser type with the order record at Stripe, and sends them to Meta. Without a click id, it stores and sends none of them. When an order is paid, our server sends Meta the amount and, in hashed form (a one-way code, not the text itself), your email address, phone number, city, state, ZIP code and country. It does this for every order. If you came from one of our Meta ads, it also sends the click id, your IP address and your browser type, which are not hashed. Meta uses this to measure which ads lead to orders and to show our ads to people who are likely to order.

Meta Pixel. The website runs the Meta Pixel, a script from Meta, after each page has loaded. It tells Meta that a page was opened, that the scanner page was viewed, and that a preorder checkout started, with the scanner's name and price. With each event Meta receives the page address, your IP address, your browser type and a browser id that the pixel keeps in a first-party cookie named _fbp for 90 days, plus Meta's click id if you came from one of our ads. If you are logged in to Facebook or Instagram in the same browser, Meta may link these events to your account. A checkout start goes to Meta from the page and from our server with the same event id, so Meta counts it once. The pixel never sees what you type in the checkout form: your name, address and payment details go to Stripe only, and a paid order reaches Meta only from our server, as described above. Meta uses these events to measure our ads and to show our ads to people who visited the website. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, the website does not load the pixel. You can also block it with your browser's tracking protection or an ad blocker, and manage how Meta uses this activity in your Facebook or Instagram ad settings. The app sends nothing to Meta.

What we never do

• No advertising in the app or on the website, no ad identifiers in the app, and no selling of data. The website uses Meta's click id and the Meta Pixel only to measure and target our own ads (see "This website"). The app uses PostHog only to count how features are used (see "Usage counts in the app"): never your car data, your chats, your location or your email, and you can turn it off in Settings > Share anonymous usage data. The website uses PostHog too (see "This website").
• No selling, renting or sharing of your data, beyond the processing by the services named on this page.
• No collection of your location. Vehicle speed and distance come from the car's own sensors, not from GPS.
• No training of AI models on your data, by us or by our AI providers.

Children's privacy

ScanMyCar is a vehicle-diagnostics tool for drivers and vehicle owners. It is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age in your region), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us at the address below and we will delete it.

Your control over your data

• Delete your account from Settings. This removes your account, every synced record, your conversations, photos and reports, and the sign-in itself, at once. Only the purchase records described above remain, and they expire on their own.
• Delete the app to remove everything on the phone. Your account and its data remain until you delete the account.
• Clear from within the app. Drives, codes and conversations you delete in the app are deleted from your account too.
• Regional rights. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete personal data. Email us and we will answer within 30 days.

How your data is protected

On your phone, data is stored in the app's private storage and your session in the device's secure storage. On our servers, data is encrypted at rest and in transit, access is limited to the services that need it, and every request must carry your signed-in session. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, so we keep what we hold to what the app needs.

Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to how the app handles data, we will update this page, note the change in the app's release notes, and revise the "Last updated" date above. Continued use of the app after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email support@scanmycar.app and we will get back to you.

Read the Terms of Use →