The privacy policy needed to change because of the release of push notifications functionality for the app. Previously all of the app functionality was local to the device (iPhone, iPad or Mac) and the only information that was sent from the phone was the pair of station codes that went to the National Rail API to load your next three trains.

With the introduction of push notifications, there is now cloud infrastructure that runs 24/7 that needs to know some details about your app setup in order to deliver push notifications. This infrastructure is only used if you have notifications enabled, and any data I hold is automatically deleted if you disable notifications.

Siri requires your permission before it will allow Next3Trains to return your trains this way. This is why there is a prompt at the top of the app to ask for the user to enable Siri - iOS will then pop up a system prompt to give the app permission to be called via Siri. Once this is done, you can ask Siri for your next trains even if the app is not running (ie ask via voice when you’re in the car, pulling into the railway station parking).

Next3Trains uses the publicly available departure board data to source the data in the app. This is a free resource that has a number of limitations:

• The app only shows direct trains - ie trains that leave from the station you specify, and either stop or terminate at the station you want to get to. It doesn’t show connections - if you need to connect you can either put each of the legs you need into the app
• The app only shows departures that leave in the next 2 hours. If there aren’t any matching direct trains in the next 2 hours, the app won’t show any trains.