Background Location

How and why Vamio uses your location in the background

What Vamio Does

Vamio is a real-time group coordination app for road trips. When you join a drive, your live location is shared with other participants on a shared map so everyone in the group knows where each person is.

Why Background Location Is Needed

During a drive, you'll likely switch to a navigation app like Apple Maps, Google Maps, or Waze for turn-by-turn directions. Without background location access, Vamio would stop sharing your position the moment you leave the app.

Background location keeps your group connected even when Vamio isn't the active app on your screen. Your drive group continues to see your real-time position while you navigate.

When Location Is Collected

Starts: When you join an active drive and grant location permission.
During: Your position is shared with participants in your drive group. Location data is transmitted through our servers to deliver it to other participants.
Paused: You can pause location sharing at any time during a drive. Your position stops updating for other participants.
Stops: Location sharing is designed to stop when the drive ends, you leave the drive, or you close the app. In rare cases (e.g. network delays or queued updates), a small number of location updates may be delivered shortly after you stop.

Vamio is designed to collect location data only during active drives. There is no passive or always-on tracking outside of drives.

Who Sees Your Location

Your location is visible to other participants in the same drive. Drives are invite-only — you join by entering a code shared by the drive organizer. There is no public map, no location history shared with strangers, and no social feed.

Your location data is processed by our servers (hosted on Google Cloud via Firebase) to deliver it to drive participants. It is not shared with advertisers or other third parties for their own purposes.

What Data Is Shared

Latitude and longitude — your position on the map
Heading — the direction you're traveling
Speed — your current speed
Timestamp — when the position was recorded

This data is transmitted through our servers to the drive group in real time and stored as part of the drive record. Your account identifier is associated with location updates internally to attribute them to the correct participant, but no additional personal data (such as contacts or browsing history) is collected alongside location updates.

Location Accuracy

Vamio requests precise location (GPS-level accuracy) from your device. On iOS, if you grant only "approximate" location, real-time position sharing may not function correctly. Android similarly requires "precise" location permission for accurate map display.

Location accuracy depends on your device hardware, GPS signal strength, and network conditions. Vamio does not guarantee the precision of location data displayed on the map.

Battery and Performance

Vamio uses optimized location updates to minimize battery impact. Location accuracy and update frequency are tuned for road travel — not high-frequency GPS polling. Most users experience minimal additional battery drain during a drive.

Your Controls

Pause sharing: Tap the pause button during any drive to stop broadcasting your location temporarily.
Leave the drive: Leave at any time to stop all location sharing for that drive.
Revoke permission: You can revoke location access in iOS Settings → Vamio → Location at any time. The app will prompt you to re-enable it when you join your next drive.
Delete your account: Deleting your account initiates removal of your stored location data from our servers. Deletion is typically completed within 30 days. Residual copies in encrypted backups may persist for up to 90 days before being overwritten.

Data Retention

Location data from completed drives is retained as part of the drive summary for as long as the drive record exists. If you delete your account, your location data is queued for deletion and typically removed within 30 days.

Third-Party Services

Vamio uses the following services that may process location-related data:

Firebase (Google Cloud) — real-time data delivery, storage, and authentication
Google Maps — map display (your position is rendered on the map using Google's SDK)
Sentry — crash and error reporting (location data is not sent to Sentry, but device and app state may be included in crash reports)

Each service operates under its own privacy policy. See our Privacy Policy for more details.

Privacy

Location data is not sold, shared with advertisers, or used for tracking outside the App. For full details, see our Privacy Policy.