Privacy
Scout is built for people planning walking routes. It tries to know as little about you as possible.
What Scout collects
- Nothing about you, by default. Scout doesn't include third-party analytics, advertising scripts, or social-media widgets.
- The address you type goes to Scout's servers where it is matched against the District's public Master Address Repository snapshot (MAR). Nothing is forwarded to an external geocoding API for autocomplete and Scout doesn't store what you typed.
- Coordinates from your plan (start and destination) flow through Scout to calculate walking directions. They aren't stored by Scout.
- Your IP address appears in Scout's server logs (used to catch abuse), kept for no more than seven days, then deleted.
What Scout keeps in your browser
Your browser stores a few things locally. None are sent to Scout's servers.
- Your accessibility preferences (which categories to show on the map), in
localStorage. They stay until you clear site data for this site. - A flag that records whether you've seen the intro, in
localStorage, so the onboarding doesn't open every visit. - A flag that records whether you dismissed the data notice this session, in
sessionStorage. It resets when you close the tab.
You can clear all of this through your browser's site-data tools.
Location
Scout never asks for your location until you select “Use my location” in the planner. Your browser controls the prompt and Scout only receives the coordinates if you grant permission.
Cookies
Scout doesn't set cookies for tracking. The browser storage described above is the only state Scout keeps client-side.
Privacy questions
Scout has no accounts and no contact form. For a privacy question, or to flag something on this page, open a GitHub issue. To report a security or privacy vulnerability, use GitHub's private security advisories instead of a public issue.
Changes
If this page changes, the change lands in Scout's public GitHub repo so you can see the history.