Drive

TomTom navigation products and services need location data and other information to work correctly. This section explains what kind of information TomTom collects and how we use it.

Devices and mobile phones may run operating system software or other apps, or use communication networks which also obtain and transmit personal and location information. When switched on, your device, that has in-built SIM card or is connected via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to a mobile phone or tablet, is using mobile network that inherently tracks location details about your device. Your network operator may be legally required to retain this location data for law enforcement purposes. TomTom has no control over this. You can consult your mobile operator for more information.

To read who has access to your information, get information about your rights and where we store your data, jump to more information.

TomTom products and services come with features that need location information from your device to work correctly. Your location can be established using satellite, mobile, internal built-in SIM card, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other network-based positioning methods. With your consent, we e collect your location data and additional personal information for different purposes as described hereunder. You can change your consent status at any time via the product privacy settings. To learn how TomTom protects your data, please see section Security.

To improve the quality of our products and services, we ask for your consent to send your location information to TomTom. If you decide to share your location data with TomTom, we can send you real-time information, relevant to where you are, in return such as live traffic data or real-time maps. This way, you can avoid a traffic jam ahead by choosing a different route, or get updated information about your estimate time arrival when you change or edit your route. We also analyze your location information to make your travel more accurate by looking at the causes of deviations, for example when you change your route. This information helps us understand how different events affect your travel.

To make our product related predictions more accurate, for example EV routing, and help you reach a destination, we look at important elements related to your car, such as your car model, engine type, fuel level, charge level, battery level, weight of the car, tires pressure, and other factors that influence your drive, such as the weather, outside temperature, wet surface, air pressure, or road curvature and surface, as well as the traffic and speed changes.

Some features will also allow you to share personal (location) details with others such as friends, family, contact lists or on social media. Information will usually be transferred via a device connection, the connection provided by your smartphone or via your computer when you attach a device to it. When an internet connection isn’t available, the information is stored securely on your device and will be uploaded later.

You can change your permission status at any time via the software privacy settings. Please note that you may need to change the system settings of a mobile device as well to stop background access to your location data. When information is stored on your device, it will be deleted when you choose to stop sending information to TomTom.

Through location feedback from our customer community, we’re able to use de-identified (location) information to continuously improve our products and services, such as our maps, real-time traffic connected services, including services related to (live) traffic events, speed cameras, weather, EV stations, fuel prices, road hazards and parking.

Your de-identified data is further processed in such a way as TomTom products can include aggregated, anonymized content based on traffic patterns, aggregated driver profiles, average speeds driven, and non-personally identifiable driver input such as search queries and reported road closures. Our traffic index about congestion density in major cities for example is built with elements derived from your journey data and our live traffic calculation combines aggregated, de-identified, real-time traffic data with historical data and external data sources. These products and services are also used by government agencies and businesses.

In some TomTom products you can allow TomTom to use certain information about you to help us analyze driving patterns and behavior over longer periods. This journey information includes time, location, direction and other behavioral data without associating this data with your identity and is continuously collected after you have given your consent. We will use your journey information to create aggregated, contextual driver and behavior profiles without identifying you. By ‘contextual’ we mean that we look for user experiences within a certain context, for example ‘users in driver profile X may also like app feature Z’.

You can tell TomTom what happens on the road by actively reporting traffic incidents, hazards, roadworks, speed cameras, danger zones, speed limits, map errors, real-time traffic, EV stations, weather, fuel prices and more. Your reports include location details such as the GPS position of a map error or traffic incident andcould be kept together with information associated with your device or linked to your TomTom account. We use this feedback to improve our products. TomTom only shows non-personally identifiable information in road-related updates distributed to other users. Sometimes this feature runs via third-party software. Be aware that by using this feature you may share your data with third parties. TomTom has no influence on how these parties will use your data. Check their privacy statements for more information.

TomTom uses push notifications to share feedback with you, for example sending updates about road and traffic conditions. You can disable this in the settings or via your device. When you write an online review about your experience, we may use this data to give additional feedback.

TomTom products could contain embedded software from TomTom Maps APIs, Navigation SDK or SDKs. To improve their quality we work with random session identifiers by analyzing search queries and results linked to a unique interaction. These insights help us for example show relevant Points of Interests (POIs) within a certain area and improve your search process. However, we don’t recognize you when you start a new session - we protect your data and can’t link data such as your search queries, location details or destinations directly back to you based on the information that we hold.

Some product features save onboard information on the device, such as home and work addresses, favorite and recent destinations or voice data to make new searches easier. TomTom has no access to this data and you can delete onboard data by using the product settings.

Using Map Share you are able to make map corrections and report map errors. Your corrections, which include location information, are sent to TomTom and associated with your device or MyTomTom account, as long as this account exists. TomTom uses these reports to improve TomTom maps.