Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 17, 2026

PuddleJumper ("we," "our," or "us") is operated by Andrew Bruce. PuddleJumper helps a rideshare driver decide whether a ride offer is worth taking, by reading the offer shown on their screen and scoring it against their own running costs. This policy explains exactly what we collect to do that, what we do not collect, and how to delete it.

Reading Your Screen

PuddleJumper uses Android's AccessibilityService to notice when a ride offer appears and to capture that screen so the offer can be read. This is the only reason the app uses that permission, and it is the most sensitive thing the app does, so we want to be exact about it:

• It reads ride offer screens only. It does not read banking apps, messages, browsers, or anything else.
• It never types, taps, or acts on your behalf. It only reads, and shows you a result.
• Captured images never leave your phone. The offer card is read on the device itself. Our servers receive the numbers and text extracted from it, never the image.
• Saving copies of offer screens is off by default. If you switch on "Save Offer Screenshots" in Settings, images are written to your own device storage, where they stay until you delete them. You can switch it back off at any time in the same place, and delete anything already saved.

Information We Collect

Account Information: When you sign in with Google, we receive your email address and display name. We use this to create and manage your account.

Offer Details: When an offer is scored, we receive the information needed to score it and to explain the result later: the fare, trip distance and time, pickup distance and time, ride type, and the pickup and dropoff addresses shown on the offer card. The rider's rating shown on the card is read on your phone only and is never sent to us.

Location: Your device's location at the moment an offer arrives, used to work out how far the pickup is and which market you are in. We do not track your location when the app is not running — the app holds no background-location permission at all.

Extracted Text: We keep the raw text our reader pulled from the offer card. When the reader misreads a number, this is what lets us find out why instead of guessing.

Driver Settings: Your preferences, including market definitions, green zones, red zones, your cost per mile, and your earning thresholds. This is what makes the recommendations yours rather than generic.

Decision History: A record of the offers you were shown and what PuddleJumper recommended. We do not know whether you actually accepted or declined a ride.

Device Information: Basic device information (model, operating system version, app version) for troubleshooting. If the app crashes, a diagnostic log is uploaded on next launch, linked to your account.

What We Share With Other Drivers

PuddleJumper's market screens — the heatmap, time grid, and market rate lookup — work because drivers' offer economics are pooled. Here is exactly what that means, and what it does not.

• No other driver ever sees anything tied to you. The pooled screens show aggregated figures — typical pay by area, by day and by hour — and nothing in them identifies a driver, a trip or an account.
• Locations are hexagonal grid cells roughly half a kilometre across, never coordinates and never addresses. The cell is all that is pooled, so a pooled offer cannot be traced to a doorstep.
• What is pooled is the economics of an offer — fare, distance, time, hour of day, ride type — not who received it, and not whether they took it.
• We keep an internal link between a pooled record and the account that logged it. No driver can see it and nothing in the app exposes it, but we can follow it. We keep it for two reasons: to investigate faults in the data, and so that deleting your account can also remove what you contributed. Because of that link, we do not describe the pool as anonymous.

One honest caveat: while only a few drivers are contributing in a given area, the pooled figures for that area are necessarily made up of a small number of people's offers. They are not shown with any name or account, but they are thin. They become both more useful and harder to attribute as more drivers contribute.

How We Use Your Information

To score offers against your own costs, to show you your own decision history, to build the shared market picture described above, and to diagnose faults. We do not sell your data. We do not share your personal data with advertisers, and there is no advertising in the app.

Third-Party Services

• Google Firebase — sign-in and authentication
• Google Cloud Platform — hosting for the service and its database
• Google Maps Platform and Mapbox — turning addresses into coordinates, and drawing maps

Data Security

Data is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored on Google Cloud Platform infrastructure. Access requires authentication, and each driver's settings and history are scoped to their own account.

Data Retention

Your settings and decision history are kept while your account exists. Pooled offer economics are retained as part of the shared market data: they carry no coordinates and no addresses, only the grid cell and the economics of the offer. While your account exists, we can follow the internal link described above from a pooled record back to it.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your data
• Export your data in a portable format

Deleting your account removes your settings and your sign-in, and strips the account identifier from your decision history, within 30 days of the request. The de-identified offer records — fares, distances, times and grid cells — are kept as part of the shared market data. Once the identifier is gone, the internal link is broken and those records can no longer be traced back to you, by us or by anyone else.

If you would rather your past offers were removed from the pooled market data as well, email support@puddlejumper.io before you delete your account, while the link still exists, and we will remove them first.

To exercise these rights, use the account deletion page or contact us at support@puddlejumper.io.

Children's Privacy

PuddleJumper is a tool for working rideshare drivers and is not intended for users under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes through the app or via email. Continued use of the app after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:

Email: support@puddlejumper.io
Website: puddlejumper.io