Detroit Automation Academy · Legal

Privacy Policy

AutomatedTechnologies d/b/a Detroit Automation Academy

Effective: October 18, 2026 · Last updated: October 23, 2026

Material revision posted October 25, 2026. It takes effect November 24, 2026. Until that date the October 18, 2026 version governs.

1. Who we are, and what this policy covers

This Privacy Policy describes how AutomatedTechnologies, doing business as Detroit Automation Academy ("we," "us," or the "Academy"), handles information in connection with:

  • the website detroitautomationacademy.com, including every page and sub-site published on it — among them Live Transit Detroit (the live map and journey planner), The Signal, the Detroit voter guide, the data and API documentation pages, and the go.detroitautomationacademy.com short links; and
  • the Live Transit Detroit mobile application for iOS, when and as it is made available.

Together these are the "Services," as defined in our Terms of Service. Section 9 of this policy covers the iOS application specifically; every other section covers the website and, where it says so, both.

The Signal also publishes on third-party platforms (for example, LinkedIn), and the Services link to third-party websites. Those platforms and websites are governed by their own terms and privacy policies, not by this one.

2. The short version

No account. No tracking. Your location never leaves this device.

The Services require no account and no sign-up. We run no analytics and no usage tracking on the website, and we set no cookies. Some content pages — The Signal, the Live Transit Detroit installments, and The Press — may carry sponsorship placements that are labeled "Sponsored," sold directly by us, and served as files from this site. A sponsorship placement loads no third-party advertising network, sets no cookie, and reports nothing about your visit. The live map, the trip planner, the voter guide, and Find carry no advertising or sponsorship placements of any kind. The features that remember your preferences store them on your own device and never send them to us. If your browser shares your location with the map, the map uses it on your device only. The rest of this policy states the details, including the few places where third parties are part of how the Services reach you.

3. What we do not collect

  • No accounts. There is no registration, no profile, and no password anywhere in the Services.
  • No analytics or tracking. We operate no analytics service, no usage telemetry, and no crash or behavior reporting on the website. Nothing in the website reports your visit, your clicks, or your activity back to us.
  • No advertising tracking. Sponsorship placements on content pages (§2, §6) are static files served from this site. They carry no advertising identifier, set no cookie, and send us no information about who saw them.
  • No cookies set by the website. The website sets no cookies of its own.
  • No forms or mailing list. The website has no contact forms, sign-up forms, or subscription system, and we maintain no mailing list of visitors.
  • No rider or visitor data in our transit data. The live data files and the public telemetry archive described in §7 contain transit agencies' vehicle data only. They are built from agency feeds, not from anything a visitor or rider does, and they contain no names, no accounts, no device identifiers, and no trip or location history of any person.

First-party measurement — built, disclosed, and not yet active. The website today collects nothing about your visit, exactly as stated above. The site also now carries a first-party measurement script of our own (assets/measure.js), disclosed here before it does anything: it is inactive — its collection endpoint is not deployed, and the script sends nothing. When the endpoint is deployed and the script is activated, it will send only this: for a page view, the event type, the page path, the hostname of the referring site (never the full referring address), and a timestamp; for a button or link we mark for measurement, the event type, a short event name, the page path, and a timestamp. It sets no cookies, uses no local storage, creates no visitor identifier, does not fingerprint your device, and contacts no third party. If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, it sends nothing even when active. Turning collection on is a material revision under §13 of this policy: it will be announced on this page and takes effect no earlier than 30 days after that announcement.

4. Information stored on your device only

Some features keep small amounts of information in your browser's local or session storage so the Services work the way you set them:

  • Live Transit Detroit: your map preferences — which layers you have on (including the SMART layer), panel size and layout, and speed-map settings — and a session-only error and recovery log the page keeps for itself while it runs.
  • The voter guide: your own ballot checklist — which items you have ticked.

This information is stored on your device, by your browser, and is never transmitted to us. We cannot see it, and it is not shared with anyone. You can delete it at any time by clearing site data for detroitautomationacademy.com in your browser's settings; the Services will simply start over with defaults.

5. Location

Live Transit Detroit can center the map on you if you allow it. Location is requested through your browser's own permission prompt, is handled entirely on your device to position the map and compute distances, and is never transmitted to us, never stored by us, and never shared. If you decline or disable the permission, the map works without it. The iOS application does not collect location information (see §9).

6. Third parties in the serving path

We operate no server of our own for the website. One third party is part of how the website reaches you — its host — and a web request necessarily shows it the network information any request carries (your IP address and your browser's user-agent string):

  • Hosting — GitHub Pages. The website, the short links, and the public telemetry archive are hosted on GitHub Pages. GitHub's handling of the information its systems process as host is governed by GitHub's own privacy statement: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement We receive no visitor analytics or visitor logs from GitHub.
  • Fonts — self-hosted. The site's typefaces (Space Grotesk and Inter) are served as font files from this site's own domain. Your browser does not contact Google or any other font service to render these pages.

The map also retrieves public data files from data sources (agency feeds and the MoGo bikeshare station feed) to display them; those are requests for public data, made the same way. Beyond the parties named in this section and §9, the Services load no third-party advertising, analytics, or social-media trackers. Sponsorship placements (§2) are not third-party loads: the creative is a file on this site, labeled "Sponsored" as part of the placement itself.

7. The public transit data and the telemetry archive

The Services display and republish public transit data: schedules, routes, stops, service alerts, and live vehicle positions supplied by the operating agencies (DDOT, the QLINE, and — displayed inside the Services only — SMART).

We also maintain a public telemetry archive: a running, append-only record of agency vehicle positions (agency, route, vehicle identifier, position, bearing, speed, destination, and time) polled from the public live feeds and published in a public repository. The archive contains agency vehicle data only — no personal information of any kind. SMART vehicle records are never included in the archive; SMART data is displayed inside the Services only. Because the archive is a public historical record kept in a public repository, it is retained indefinitely and is readable by anyone. Use of the archive is governed by the license in §6.4 of the Terms of Service.

8. Email correspondence

The only personal information we hold about anyone is correspondence.

If you email us (our published address is justin@detroitautomationacademy.com), email necessarily shares your email address, the name your mail program attaches to it, and the contents of your message, along with the technical headers email always carries. We use correspondence only to read, respond to, and conduct the matter you wrote about. Correspondence is held in the operator's email account and is retained at the operator's discretion, subject to the deletion right in §10.

9. The iOS application and advertising

The Live Transit Detroit iOS application is not yet publicly distributed. This section describes the application as built, and the advertising disclosure in it is written to remain accurate if and when the application is released and its advertising account is activated.

  • The same public data. The application displays the same public transit data as the website, fetched from the same published files. It has no accounts and runs no analytics of our own.
  • No location collection. The application does not collect, store, or transmit your location.
  • Advertising — Google AdMob. The application integrates Google's AdMob advertising SDK. As currently built and tested, the application uses Google's demonstration advertising identifiers: it serves test advertisements only, carries no advertising account of ours, and earns no advertising revenue. If the application is released with advertising activated under our own AdMob account, advertisements will be served by Google under the following terms, which apply from activation: Google may collect and use device information — including your device's advertising identifier — to serve and measure advertisements, as described in Google's own privacy policy and advertising disclosures. On iOS, the application asks your permission through Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt before any use of the advertising identifier for tracking: with your permission, advertisements may be personalized; without it, advertisements are non-personalized. You can change that choice at any time in iOS Settings.

10. Sale and sharing of personal information

We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not disclose personal information to third parties for their marketing. The only personal information we hold is the correspondence described in §8, and we disclose it only where required by law, legal process, or a binding order, or where necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Academy, our users, or the public.

The commercial activities reserved in §9 of our Terms of Service — sponsorship, advertising, licensing of transit data and data products, fare products, and white-label licensing — concern the Services and agency transit data. They do not involve the sale or sharing of personal information held under this policy.

11. Your choices and rights

  • Correspondence. You may ask what correspondence we hold from you, and you may request its deletion. We will honor deletion requests except where retention is required by law or necessary for legitimate record-keeping (for example, records of agreements or disputes). Contact us at the address in §13.
  • On-device information. The preferences and checklist described in §4 are yours to delete at any time through your browser, as described there; we never receive them, so there is nothing on our side to delete.
  • Location. Location sharing is controlled entirely by your browser's or device's permission settings (§5).
  • Advertising identifier (iOS). Controlled through the App Tracking Transparency prompt and iOS Settings (§9).

12. Children

The Services are general-audience services and are not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone through the Services — the Services collect none (§3) — and correspondence is addressed in §8 regardless of the sender. If you believe a child has sent us personal information by email and you want it deleted, contact us under §11.

13. Changes to this policy

We may revise this policy at any time. A revision that is not material takes effect when it is posted at this address, and the "Last updated" date above shows when the current version took effect. A material revision — one that changes what information is collected, stored, or shared, or that changes §3, §5, or §10 — takes effect 30 days after it is posted, and we will note the pending material change at this address when it is posted. If a change would make a representation made in the Services themselves — including "No account. No tracking. Your location never leaves this device." — no longer accurate, the representation and this policy will be updated together, so the Services never display a claim this policy contradicts.

14. Contact

Questions about this policy, and requests under §11: justin@detroitautomationacademy.com.


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