Privacy Notice
City Tracker · Last updated 20 July 2026
This notice explains what City Tracker collects about you, why, and how you get rid of it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.
Who is responsible for your data
City Tracker is run by David FitzGerald as an individual. For anything in this notice, including any request about your data, contact contact@citytracker.city.
City Tracker is an independent personal project. It is not operated by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any law firm or employer, and no employer has access to your data.
What we collect
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| An anonymous session identifier, stored in one cookie | As soon as you open the site | So your planner is still there when you come back. This is the only cookie we set. |
| A daily total of how often each City Tracker page or product area is opened | When you move around City Tracker | To understand which parts are useful and where the experience needs work. The total is not stored against your session, account or identity. |
| Your name, email address, profile picture and Google account identifier | Only if you choose to sign in with Google | To link your planner to an account so it survives across devices and browsers. |
| The applications you record: firm, route, deadline and milestone dates | When you use the planner | This is the product. It is stored so you can come back to it. |
| Your opted-in application status check-ins: firm, scheme, status, status date and the time you checked in | Only if you turn on Live Data and make a check-in | To build current anonymous movement, rejection and still-waiting signals, and aggregate waiting-time statistics. |
| Records from the retired discussion, profile, reaction, vault and messaging features | Only if you used one of those features before it was retired | These records are no longer displayed or operational. They remain secured during the rollback window so we can preserve your export and deletion rights. |
| The firms and milestones you want alerts about | Only if you set up firm alerts | To show matching later reports from other opted-in applicants in your Alerts page and to know what to email you about when email delivery is available. |
| An issue report, the page it concerns and an optional reply email | Only if you choose Report Bug and send it | To investigate problems, correct recruitment data and consider improvements you suggest. |
| A firm, scheme, milestone, report time, public forum source and one-way deduplication hash | When a public TCLA forum post explicitly reports an application outcome with high confidence | To add a clearly labelled external signal to Live Recruitment without storing or republishing the forum username or message text. |
We do not use third-party analytics, advertising trackers or cross-site tracking. The owner dashboard shows aggregate totals only. It cannot display a person's name, email, firms, timeline or individual browsing history. We do not profile you, and we do not sell or share your data with anyone for their own purposes.
Our lawful basis
We rely on your consent (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a)) for your account and Live Data contributions. The planner works without Live Data, and historical evidence remains open. You can withdraw Live Data consent without losing your private planner.
We rely on our legitimate interests in operating and improving City Tracker when we handle an issue report you choose to send. Providing a reply email is optional.
We rely on our legitimate interests in improving City Tracker when we count page and product-area use in aggregate. These counters contain no user, account, session or device identifier and cannot be used to reconstruct an individual's activity.
We rely on our legitimate interests in providing timely recruitment-market information when we derive a minimal signal from a public forum report. City Tracker stores no forum username or post text, does not treat the signal as a City Tracker applicant, and does not include it in applicant counts or progression percentages.
We rely on our legitimate interests in keeping retired feature records secure and inaccessible during a limited rollback transition, while preserving account export and deletion. They are not used to operate a discussion service, build profiles or send messages.
The anonymous session cookie is strictly necessary to make the site work at all, so it does not require consent.
What other people can see
This matters more than the rest of this notice, so it is worth being precise.
If you turn on Live Data and keep your status current, other eligible users can see anonymous counts of applicants tracking, submitting, progressing, being rejected and confirming that they are still waiting at a firm and scheme. A current signal can start at one report.
They never see your name, email, account, exact submitted date, exact status date or full timeline. Live Recruitment returns only the firm, scheme, status, aggregate count and a rounded report time. Firm Profiles returns aggregate firm and scheme totals.
Live Recruitment can also show a separately labelled TCLA Forum Report. This means the signal came from an explicit public forum report rather than a City Tracker user. The public display contains the firm, scheme, milestone, rounded time and source thread only. It never republishes the forum username or message text, and it never increases City Tracker applicant counts.
Comparative statistics are withheld entirely until enough people have contributed, so that no figure can be traced back to any one person.
Retired social features are not public. Discussion posts, member profiles, reactions, saved items and messages from the retired features are no longer returned by the service. They remain available only through your own data export or deletion during the transition.
Be aware: while City Tracker is small, a firm and scheme can show one applicant. Someone who already knows where you applied may be able to guess that a report is yours. If that matters to you, do not turn on Live Data. The planner and historical evidence work without it.
Who else processes your data
- Google verifies your identity if you choose to sign in. Google's sign-in code is loaded from Google and Google may set its own cookies, governed by Google's privacy policy. You can use City Tracker as a guest and never involve Google.
- Resend delivers alert emails and issue-report emails. For alerts, they receive your email address and the alert text. For issue reports, they receive the content needed to send it privately to City Tracker.
- Our hosting provider runs the server and stores the database.
Some of these providers operate outside the UK, including in the United States. Where data is transferred outside the UK, it is protected by the safeguards those providers have in place, such as the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
How long we keep it
- Your session cookie expires after 30 days without use. After that the session is revoked and you sign in again.
- Your account and planner are kept until you delete them. There is a button; see below.
- Your Live Data contributions and status check-ins are removed as soon as you leave Live Data, and when you delete your account.
- Records from retired social features are inaccessible to other users and kept only during the rollback transition. They are included in your export and erased if you delete your account.
- Queued alert emails are removed when you turn alerts off or delete your account.
- Issue reports are kept while needed to investigate the problem, correct repeat failures and understand whether the fix worked. If you include a reply email, you can ask us to remove the report.
- Aggregate usage totals are kept for no more than 400 days. They contain only a day, a fixed product-area label and a total count.
- Public forum signals are kept for the relevant recruitment cycle and may be removed sooner if their accuracy is disputed. The one-way source hash exists only to prevent the same report being counted twice.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to get a copy of your data, to correct it, to have it erased, to restrict or object to how it is used, to take it elsewhere, and to withdraw consent. Three of these are buttons rather than requests:
- Get a copy: sign in, open the account menu, and choose Download my data. It downloads immediately as a JSON file.
- Stop Live Data sharing: open the account menu and choose Stop Sharing Live Data. Your contributions and alerts are removed immediately. Your private planner and account are not affected.
- Erase everything: sign in, open the account menu, and choose Delete my account. This erases your account, planner, Live Data contributions, alerts and any records from retired features straight away and permanently. Nobody, including us, can recover them afterwards.
For anything else, email contact@citytracker.city. We will respond within one month.
Complaints
If you think we have handled your data badly, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.
Changes
If this notice changes in a way that affects you, we will say so on the site rather than quietly updating this page.