MotorClue privacy policy
Version 1.11-draft · 11 November 2026
This is a translation. If it differs from the Spanish version, the Spanish version prevails.
This policy explains which personal data the MotorClue app and the motorclue.com website process, why, on what legal basis, who else receives them, how long we keep them and how you can exercise your rights. It follows Article 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Article 11 of Spain's Organic Law 3/2018 (LOPDGDD).
Summary
| Controller | [NOMBRE TITULAR], tax ID [NIF], [DOMICILIO]. Contact: privacidad@motorclue.com |
| Purposes | Creating and managing your account; generating indicative AI diagnoses, answering your questions about them, repair guides and parts suggestions; storing your vehicles and history; finding nearby garages; sending account emails; keeping the service secure |
| Legal basis | Performance of the contract (the terms of use you accept) and our legitimate interest in the security of the service |
| Recipients | Providers that supply services to us (hosting, AI models, email, error reports, map), some in the United States. We don't sell your data or use it for advertising |
| Rights | Access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and portability. You can download your data and delete your account in the app. You can complain to the Spanish data protection authority (AEPD) |
| More information | In the rest of this document |
1. Who the controller is
The controller is [NOMBRE TITULAR], tax ID [NIF], address [DOMICILIO]. [DATOS REGISTRALES]
For anything about your data, write to privacidad@motorclue.com.
We haven't appointed a data protection officer: given the size and nature of the processing it isn't required (GDPR Article 37 and LOPDGDD Article 34).
2. What data we process
2.1 Account data. Your email address, your password (we only store a cryptographic hash made with bcrypt, never the password), the sign-up date, whether you've verified your email, and the app language. While you verify your email we store a hash of the verification code, its expiry (10 minutes) and the number of attempts, and the same for the code to change your password when you ask for one. We also count how many AI requests you make each day, to apply the daily usage limit, and we store the date of your last activity (when you sign up, sign in or open the app while signed in) and, if we've sent it, the date of the notice that the account will be deleted for inactivity (section 4). We also store the version of the terms of use you accepted and when, and the latest version of this policy we showed you (when you signed up, accepted the terms or closed the notice of a change, section 10).
2.2 Session data. When you sign in, the app stores an access token, which expires after 15 minutes, and your email address in your device's Keychain. Also a refresh token; on our server we only keep a cryptographic hash of that token and its creation, expiry and use dates, with no IP address or device details.
2.3 Your vehicles. Make, model, year, engine, vehicle type and fuel. If you enter them: the vehicle identification number (VIN), the first registration date and the ITV details (Spain's periodic roadworthiness test): the category on the registration certificate, whether it's a historic vehicle, its use (private, taxi, ambulance, school and minors transport or driving school) and the dates of your last and next ITV. We use them to show you the ITV date: the one you enter or, failing that, an estimate. If the ITV reminders are on, your phone schedules them only from the next ITV date you enter, never from an estimate. These details aren't sent to the AI providers. Also, if you choose one, the car's colour (optional; it's only used to show the car's picture in the app and isn't sent to the AI providers either).
2.4 Your diagnoses. The OBD2 code you enter or the adapter reads, the description of the symptoms you write (up to 1,000 characters), the vehicle it belongs to, the result (probable causes, risk level, recommended actions and warnings), the language and the date. We also record whether you opened the repair guide for that diagnosis.
Questions about a diagnosis. If you ask questions about a result (up to three per diagnosis), we keep with that diagnosis each question you type (up to 300 characters), the answer we showed you, its language and the date.
Please don't write personal data in the symptom description or in your questions (names, number plates, addresses, phone numbers, or anything about your or anyone else's health). We don't need it, and that text is sent to the AI providers (section 5).
2.5 Your location, only if you look for garages. If you open the garages tab and allow location access, the app sends your device's position to our server. The server rounds it to a grid of about 1 km before asking Google, doesn't store it in the database and doesn't link it to your history. Google's results (the garages' names, addresses, ratings and opening hours) aren't kept: every search asks for it again and it is discarded once you have your answer. If you use the map view, your iPhone loads the map directly from Google (section 5.9). Our server doesn't record the position in its technical logs. You can withdraw location access at any time in your device settings. If you don't allow location access, you can type a city or a postcode: your iPhone turns it into coordinates with Apple's geocoding service (section 5.4), and only the resulting position reaches our server, where it's handled the same way; the text you type reaches neither us nor Google.
2.6 Bluetooth and the OBD2 adapter. The connection to the adapter happens on your device. Only the fault codes it reads reach our server, and only when you ask for a diagnosis.
2.7 Technical logs. Our server records each request it receives (path, date and result), how long each diagnosis took (without the text you wrote) and errors. These lines can include your account's internal identifier and, when an error occurs, fragments of the request. We never intentionally log your email address, your password or verification codes. To limit abuse, our app uses your IP address for one minute, in memory, without storing it. Separately, the hosting provider (Railway, section 5.1) records in its own request log the IP address and the app or browser version of each request, together with the path, date and result; that log is kept like the other technical logs, for up to 90 days (section 4).
2.8 On your device. Besides the session data, the app keeps in the Keychain the theme, the language, whether you've seen the "Before you repair it yourself" notice, the car you last picked on Home and the cars for which you answered "No thanks" to the fuel question (only their internal identifiers); the iPhone's Keychain keeps these even if you uninstall the app. In a file of its own it keeps whether you've seen the introduction, and in memory the last result and the guides you opened. If you export your data or a PDF, the file is created on your device and you share it yourself. If the app fails, it keeps the error report until it can send it, together with the reporting tool's random installation identifier (section 5.7). The warning-light guide works offline: the app keeps in its cache the latest version it has downloaded from our server, which is public content with nothing about you. When you open the guide, the app asks the server whether there is a newer version without sending your session or what you search for; searching and the colour filter work only on your device.
2.9 Website. motorclue.com uses no cookies, forms or analytics tools. The hosting provider (Cloudflare, Inc. (United States)) technically records the IP address and the page requested in order to serve and protect the site.
2.10 Error reports. If our server answers with an error or the app fails, a technical report is sent to Sentry so we can find and fix the fault: the type of error and the point in the code where it happened, without the content of your request (section 5.7).
We don't process special categories of data (health, beliefs, etc.) and don't ask for them.
3. Why we use them and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Creating and managing your account, verifying your email, recovering your password | Account, session | Performance of a contract (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Generating the diagnosis, answering your questions about it, the repair guide and the parts suggestions | Diagnoses (including your questions), vehicle | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Storing your vehicles and history and showing you the ITV date (yours or an estimate) | Vehicles, diagnoses | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Finding garages near you | Location (with the device permission) | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), at your request |
| Decoding the VIN | VIN | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), at your request |
| Security, usage limits, preventing abuse and fixing errors | Technical logs, error reports, IP, usage counter | Legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and available (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Handling your requests and complaints | Whatever you send us | Compliance with legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
We don't use your data for advertising, build commercial profiles or sell it. We don't use your data to train artificial intelligence models.
Automated decisions. The diagnosis is produced by an automated system, but it's only technical guidance about your vehicle: we don't use it to make any decision that has legal effects on you or similarly significantly affects you (GDPR Article 22).
4. How long we keep them
| Data | Period |
|---|---|
| Account, vehicles and history (with the questions you asked about each diagnosis) | As long as you keep the account. You can delete each diagnosis, the whole history or each vehicle at any time in the app. If you delete a vehicle, its diagnoses stay in your history, without the vehicle; you delete them in History, one by one or all at once. If you delete the account, they're deleted immediately. If you don't sign in or open the app while signed in for 24 months, we delete the account with its vehicles and history; we warn you by email 30 days before, and signing in is enough to keep it |
| Unverified account (the verification code was never entered) | 30 days from sign-up or from the last sign-in, whichever is later; then we delete it with all its data |
| Verification code | Until you verify your email (it's then deleted) or a new one is issued. It expires after 10 minutes |
| Code to change your password | Until you change your password (it's then deleted) or a new one is issued. It expires after 10 minutes and works once |
| Password reset link | Not stored on the server. It expires after 60 minutes and works once |
| Access token | 15 minutes |
| Refresh token | 60 days from issue, renewed with use; revoked when you sign out, change your password or delete your account |
| Server technical logs, including Railway's request log with the IP address and the app or browser version | Up to 90 days (managed by Railway; they can't be deleted per user) |
| Error reports (Sentry) | Up to 30 days. They contain neither your email address nor your account identifier, so they can't be searched or deleted per user |
| Log of sent emails (Resend) | Up to 30 days, and up to 7 more days in Resend's backups |
| Requests to the AI models (OpenRouter and providers) | [CONFIRM: OpenRouter's and each provider's period] |
| Data from your rights requests | As long as needed to handle them and then up to 3 years so we can prove it |
What remains when you delete your account. Your account, vehicles, history and registered devices are deleted immediately. What remains, and disappears on its own within the periods above, is the lines in the server's technical logs, the email provider's log of sent emails and whatever the AI providers keep. A usage count (AI checks, garage searches and emails sent), tied to an encrypted digest of your address that can't be read back, also stays for up to two days. It stops the daily limits being renewed by deleting the account and creating it again. Error reports (Sentry) contain neither your email address nor your account identifier and disappear within their period. [CONFIRM: Railway database backups and their period, or delete this sentence if there are none.] Generated repair guides are stored by fault code and engine, with nothing linking them to you, and are kept.
5. Who else receives your data
We don't give your data to third parties for their own purposes. The following providers receive it only to provide their service to us, under a data processing agreement (GDPR Article 28):
5.1 Railway Corporation (United States): hosting of the server, the database and the technical logs. It receives all the data in section 2 that reaches the server, and its request log records the IP address and the app or browser version of each one (section 2.7). The server and the database are currently in Railway's eastern United States region; we plan to move them to its European Union region. Transfer safeguard: [CONFIRM: Railway's participation in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, or standard contractual clauses in its data processing agreement].
5.2 OpenRouter, Inc. (United States) and the AI model providers it routes each request to: generating diagnoses, answers to your questions, guides and parts suggestions. For each diagnosis they receive the OBD2 code, the symptom description you write, the vehicle type (car, SUV, van or motorcycle) and, if you run the diagnosis on one of your vehicles, its make, model, year, engine and fuel, which are used to rank and explain the causes for your car. To answer a question about a diagnosis they receive your question, that diagnosis (the code or codes, the description you wrote, the result and the earlier questions and answers about it), the entry for those codes in our knowledge base and the vehicle's make, model, year, engine and fuel. For parts suggestions, the code and the vehicle's make, model and year. For a new repair guide, the code and the vehicle's make, model, year, engine and fuel. They don't receive your email address, your account identifier, your VIN or your location. OpenRouter sends each request to a model provider, acting as a sub-processor. Today these are:
- Google (Gemini model), for diagnoses, answers to your questions, guides and parts;
- Anthropic (Claude model), only when the main model is overloaded, possibly served from Amazon Web Services infrastructure;
- OpenAI, which turns the description and the code into a numerical representation used to search our knowledge base. We don't search the knowledge base with your question, so your questions aren't sent to OpenAI.
If we change model or provider, we'll update this list. [CONFIRM: OpenRouter settings that prevent sending the data to providers that retain it or use it for training.] Transfer safeguard: [CONFIRM: OpenRouter and each provider, EU-US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses].
5.3 Resend, Inc. (United States; sending from Ireland): email. It receives your email address and the content of the account emails (verification code, code to change your password with its link and, if it comes to that, the notice that the account will be deleted for inactivity). Transfer safeguard: [CONFIRM: EU-US Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses].
5.4 Apple (on your iPhone): garage search by city or postcode. Only if you type a city or a postcode in the garages tab, your iPhone sends that text to Apple's geocoding service to get its coordinates (section 2.5). Apple isn't a provider of ours and receives nothing from our server: it's a service of your iPhone's system, which handles that text under its own privacy policy.
5.5 Google (garage search). Our server sends Google Places the grid cell of about 1 km you're in and the search radius, with nothing that identifies you. Google's results (names, addresses, ratings, opening hours) aren't retained on our server, neither in memory nor in the database, and we don't keep the places' identifiers or their coordinates either. If you open a garage in Google Maps or a parts link (Google Shopping, Amazon), you leave MotorClue and that service's privacy policy applies.
5.6 NHTSA (the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration): VIN decoding. Only if you tap "decode" in the vehicle form, our server sends the VIN to this US government agency's public vPIC database to get the make, model and engine. Nothing else about you is sent. It's a public body, not a provider of ours: the transfer relies on being necessary for the function you ask for (GDPR Article 49(1)(b)). If you'd rather avoid it, type in the vehicle details yourself.
5.7 Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry, United States; data hosted in the European Union, in Germany): error reports. When our server answers with an error or the app fails, Sentry receives a technical report. From the server: the type of error and the point in the code where it happened (the stack trace), the route and the error code, the date and the server version. From the app: the same, plus the device model, the operating system and its version, the language and region set on the device and the app version. The report doesn't include the text you write, your diagnoses, your email address, your account identifier, your VIN, your location, your time zone, the installation identifier the reporting tool keeps on the device, your session tokens or the AI models' answers: we remove them before sending it, and Sentry is set up not to store the IP address the report comes from and to filter that data again. It isn't used for analytics or to follow what you do in the app. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and available (section 3). Transfer safeguard: [CONFIRM: the data is hosted in the EU, but Sentry is a US company that can access it from the United States; Functional Software, Inc.'s participation in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the standard contractual clauses in its processing agreement].
5.8 Cloudflare, Inc. (United States): website hosting (section 2.9). Transfer safeguard, if any: [CONFIRM].
5.9 Google (garage map). If your version of the app includes the map and you open the map view in the garages tab, the map is drawn by Google's SDK (Maps SDK for iOS) inside the app and Google receives it directly from your iPhone, not through our server: the map requests (the area you see on the map, which is the area of your search), your IP address and the SDK's usage data (for example the app and system version). Google doesn't receive your account or your email from this map, and the app doesn't draw your position on it. The SDK may keep a temporary copy on your iPhone of the parts of the map you have already seen. Google decides on its own how it handles that data, under its privacy policy and the Google Maps and Google Earth Additional Terms, which apply when you use the map. If you don't open the map view, no map is loaded; the list works the same without it.
5.10 Links you open yourself (Google Maps and YouTube). Some buttons open a Google page outside the app, only when you tap them: "View on Google Maps" in the garages tab (the address carries only the garage's public identifier) and "Watch a video" in the repair guide (it opens a YouTube search with the step's title and your car's make and model; never the year, the number plate or the VIN). Before you tap them there is no contact with Google or YouTube. When you open them, Google receives what it receives from any search on its site (the search, your IP address and its own cookies in the browser or app) and handles it on its own, under its privacy policy. We receive nothing from those pages.
5.11 Authorities. We'll disclose data to courts or other authorities only when the law requires it.
Notifications. The app doesn't send push notifications yet (the kind that arrive from a server). The ITV reminders are local notifications: your phone creates and shows them 30 days, 7 days and 1 day before your next ITV date, at 10:00 local time. They don't go through our server or any provider, and nothing new is stored on it. The app asks for permission to show notifications right after you save that date, never when it opens; you can turn the reminders off in Settings or withdraw the permission in your phone's settings. They are cancelled when you sign out and when you delete your account. If we turn on push notifications, we'll explain it in this policy first.
6. Transfers outside the European Economic Area
Several of these providers are in the United States or can access the data from there (section 5). Each transfer relies on the safeguard stated in its section: the European Commission's adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1795) for participating companies, or the standard contractual clauses approved by the Commission (Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914) included in their agreement. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards at privacidad@motorclue.com.
7. Your rights and how to exercise them
You can exercise these at any time, free of charge:
- Access: find out which of your data we process and get a copy.
- Rectification: correct inaccurate data. Vehicles are edited in the app; to change your account email, write to us.
- Erasure: have your data deleted.
- Objection: object to processing based on our legitimate interest.
- Restriction: ask us to keep your data without processing it while a complaint is resolved.
- Portability: receive your data in a structured, commonly used format.
In the app, under Settings → Data and privacy:
- Download my data gives you a JSON file with your account, your vehicles, your full history, with the questions you asked about each diagnosis and their answers, and your registered devices, plus the account's language, the daily usage counter, the markers of the reminders sent, the dates of your sessions, the date of your last activity and that of the inactivity notice, if there is one. If anything is missing, ask us by email.
- Delete account immediately deletes your account, vehicles, history and registered devices after you confirm your password. It can't be undone. Section 4 explains which technical copies remain and when they disappear.
By email, writing to privacidad@motorclue.com from your account's address and saying which right you're exercising. If you write from another address, we'll ask for what we need to check the account is yours. We'll answer within one month; if the request is complex this can be extended by two more months and we'll tell you within the first month (GDPR Article 12(3)).
Complaint to the AEPD. If you think we haven't handled your data properly, you can complain to the Spanish Data Protection Agency (Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, C/ Jorge Juan 6, 28001 Madrid, Spain; www.aepd.es, e-office sedeagpd.gob.es). We'd appreciate it if you wrote to us first, in case we can sort it out.
You grant and withdraw location and Bluetooth access in your device settings.
8. Minors
MotorClue is meant for adults and the terms of use require you to be at least 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we'll delete it.
9. Security
We use encrypted connections (HTTPS) between the app and the server, store passwords and verification codes only as cryptographic hashes, the database can't be reached from the internet, and the app keeps the session in the device's Keychain. No system is infallible: if a security breach puts you at risk, we'll report it to the AEPD and, where the law requires, to you.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll publish the new version on this page, with its number and date at the top. The next time you open the app while signed in, you'll see a notice that the policy has changed, with the date of the new version and a link to read it. You don't have to accept anything: the notice only informs you. When you close it, we record in your account that you've seen it, so it doesn't show again on this or any other device. If the change also affects the terms of use, we'll ask you in the app to accept the new version of the terms, as the terms themselves explain.