Privacy policy: Location Alarm

Last updated 29 September 2026

Location Alarm is an Android app published by Nessaid Android Studio. It rings when you arrive at, or leave, a place you pick on a map. It also has a GPS panel and a track recorder. Because it works with your location, this policy says exactly where that location goes, and where it does not.

What we collect: nothing

There is no account, no sign-in and no server of ours. We never receive your location, your places, your tracks or anything else from the app. There is no analytics and no crash reporting.

Your location

The app reads your location from the phone's own GPS and network location, and uses it on the phone to decide whether you have reached a place. The app itself never sends a location fix anywhere.

• While an alarm is armed, the app checks your position in the background, with a notification showing for as long as it does. It checks occasionally while you are far away, and more often as you get close. With no alarm armed, it does not track you at all.
• The GPS panel and the track recorder read your location every second, but only while you have them open or are recording. Recording shows a notification too.
• After a restart, the app resumes an alarm that was armed, or a recording that was running. If nothing was armed, it does nothing.

The app asks for the standard location permission, which you grant while using it. It does not ask for the separate "allow all the time" background permission; an armed alarm keeps working through its notification instead.

The map

The maps are Google Maps. Drawing a map means asking Google for the part of the world on screen, so Google learns which area you are looking at, along with the IP address every internet request carries. When location permission is granted, Google Maps also shows your position on the map as a blue dot.

Settings has a switch to turn off the background map on the track screen and the alarm screen. Your route and places are then drawn on a blank background, and no map is requested. The map you pick a place on, when you create or edit an alarm, always loads Google's map.

Google's handling of this is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.

Searching for a place

When you search for a place by name, the words you typed are sent to your phone's geocoding service, which on most Android phones is run by Google, and matching places come back. Only the text you typed is sent, never your location. A search happens only when you press the search button, or once when a link you share into the app names a place without giving its coordinates.

If you share a short link into the app, such as a goo.gl or bit.ly link from a maps app, the app contacts that link service to find out where the link leads, so it can read the coordinates. That request contains the link, nothing else.

What stays on your device

• Your places and alarms: each place's name, position and radius, and each alarm's settings.
• Alert history: for each alarm that went off, the place name, the time, how close you were and how it ended, plus the phone settings that affect alarms, such as volume and Do Not Disturb. It is on by default, holds no coordinates, can be switched off or cleared in Settings, and is deleted automatically after 30 days.
• Recorded tracks: for each point, the position, accuracy, speed and time. Tracks are kept until you delete them.
• Your last position while an alarm was armed, with its time, so an armed alarm can carry on correctly after the app or phone restarts. It is replaced as you move and cleared when you arm an alarm by hand.
• Your settings, and small records the app keeps for itself: when each permission was last seen allowed, and when a full-screen ad was last shown.

All of this is in the app's private storage and is deleted when you uninstall the app.

Backups

Your own backup file. Settings can save a backup file to wherever you choose, and load one back. It contains your alarms and their places, your saved tracks and your settings, but not the alert history. The file goes only where you put it.

Android's backup. The app allows Android's standard backup. If backup is switched on in your phone's settings, Android includes the app's data in your Google account backup, and when you move to a new phone. That includes your places, alert history, recorded tracks and last armed position. It is Android's backup, stored in your Google account, and we cannot see it. You can switch it off in your phone's settings under Google, then Backup.

Sharing

Nothing leaves the app unless you share it. You can share a recorded track as text or as a KML file for Google Earth and other map apps. Either way it goes to the app you pick, and sharing as text also copies it to the clipboard. The About screen can share a link to the app's Play listing.

Spoken alerts

An alarm can speak its message aloud using your phone's text-to-speech engine. Which engine that is, and how it works, is set in your phone's settings, not by this app.

Advertising

The app shows banner ads on the main, alarm editing and settings screens. Occasionally it shows a full-screen ad when you leave the alarm editor or Settings, or after you dismiss an alarm. Both kinds come from Google AdMob.

Ads are never shown on the screen of a ringing alarm or over the lock screen. No full-screen ad appears while an alarm is ringing, when one is about to go off, or in the first two days after you install the app.

Google's ad SDK sends four kinds of information to Google in order to select and measure ads: your device's advertising ID, your interactions with the ads themselves, diagnostic information about how the SDK performed, and your IP address, from which an approximate location can be estimated. The app does not pass your location, your places or your tracks to the ad SDK.

That is Google's processing, not ours. We receive no personal data from it and see only aggregate performance figures. This is also what the app declares on its Google Play data safety page, and the two are meant to say the same thing.

Google Privacy Policy · How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services

You can reset or delete your advertising ID, and opt out of ad personalisation, in your phone's settings under Google, then Ads. The alarms work the same either way; the ads simply become less relevant.

Consent, for users in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland

If you are in one of those regions, the app asks for your consent before any ad is requested, using Google's certified consent platform. If you decline, you will see non-personalised ads or none at all; the alarms work exactly the same either way. Your choice is stored on the device. To be asked again, clear the app's data in Android's app settings.

Permissions, and why

You are asked for only two of these: location, and notifications. Exact alarms, the full-screen alarm screen and battery optimisation are settings the app can take you to, where you decide. The rest are granted at install and never prompt you.

• Location, precise and approximate: to know when you reach or leave a place, and for the GPS panel and track recorder. You are asked for this.
• Notifications: for the notification shown while an alarm is armed or a track is recording, and for the alarm itself. You are asked for this on Android 13 and later.
• Foreground services: to watch your location while an alarm is armed, to record a track, to play the alarm sound, and to keep a snoozed alarm on time.
• Full-screen notification: so a ringing alarm can show its own screen, as an alarm clock does.
• Exact alarms: so location checks and snoozes happen when they should.
• Start at boot: to resume an armed alarm or a running recording after a restart.
• Wake lock: to keep the phone awake while an alarm is ringing.
• Vibrate: for the vibration alert.
• Internet and network state: for the map, place search, short links and ads.
• Advertising ID, and Android's ad services: used only by Google AdMob, as described above. Declared by the ad SDK.
• Basic phone state: declared by the ad SDK. The app does not read it.

The app also reads the phone's motion sensor for the shake-to-dismiss option, its proximity sensor to tell when the phone is in a pocket while you dismiss an alarm, and its compass. None of these needs a permission, and their readings are not stored or sent anywhere. The app does not use your contacts, camera, microphone, calendar or files.

Children

The app is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Selling data

We do not sell your data. We have none to sell.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the current version is always at this address.

Contact

Questions about this policy: nessaid.android@gmail.com.