AreaWise Privacy Policy

Effective date: 2026-06-12

AreaWise helps users understand official SAPS crime statistics for Cape Town SAPS precincts they visit.

Location Data

The app uses location only after the user grants permission. Passive Exposure is optional and uses three low-power, event-driven iOS signals in the background: Visit Monitoring, the significant-change location service, and a single geofence centred on the most recent area. When the user moves outside that geofence, the app requests one location fix, records the new area, and re-centres the geofence. While the app is open in the foreground, it may also refresh the current location about once a minute to keep the Today view current. Active Recording is optional and uses more detailed location updates only while the user visibly starts and runs it. The app never runs continuous background location tracking outside a user-started Active Recording.

Coordinates are resolved on the device to a SAPS police precinct. Raw coordinates are discarded after that local match. The app stores the derived precinct identifier, a display label, arrival/departure timestamps, recording source, optional session ID, and optional horizontal accuracy.

Data Storage

Area visits are stored locally on the user's device. Location and visit data are not transmitted to or stored on a central server. The app has no accounts, no advertising SDKs, no analytics SDKs, and no cross-app tracking.

Crime Statistics

Crime statistics are sourced from official SAPS releases and presented at police-precinct level. Suburb names are shown only as friendly labels for precinct-level data.

Premium Features

Premium insights are calculated from the same local area-visit history used by the free app.

The first premium implementation does not add account sync, server storage, analytics, or payment processing. Location and visit data remain on the user's device.

Active-trip caution prompts use bundled public SAPS precinct statistics and the current area matched on-device. They describe area-level context only and do not predict personal danger or identify safe routes.

Data Sharing

AreaWise does not sell personal data and does not share location or visit data for advertising. Location and visit data remain local to the user's device and are not sent to a central server.

Contact

For privacy questions, contact the app publisher through the support channel listed in App Store Connect.