Last updated 16 October 2026

DriveBai Privacy Notice

Last updated 16 October 2026.

This notice describes what DriveBai collects about you, who sees it, how long it is kept, and what you can do about it. It describes what the app and our systems actually do today. Where something is coming but is not built yet, this notice does not mention it, and it will be updated before it is.

DriveBai connects people who own cars with people who want to rent them, and in some cases buy them. Because of that, some of your information is shown to the other person in a rental or a sale. The sections below say exactly which.

1. What we collect, and why#

When you create an account

Your name, email address, phone number, and a password if you set one. Some accounts sign in with an emailed code instead, in which case we hold no password. A profile photo if you add one.

We need these to identify you, to let the other party in a rental know who they are dealing with, and to contact you about a rental.

When you get ready to rent as a driver

A photograph or scan of your driving licence, and any other document we ask you to upload. These are stored as image files against your account.

We need them so a car owner can satisfy themselves that you are licensed before handing over a car.

When you upload a driving licence, a copy of the picture is also sent to Microsoft's document-reading service, which reads three things off it: whether it is a driving licence, when it expires, and the name on it, so that the member of our staff who reviews your licence can compare that name with your account. The copy we send is reduced in size, and anything the camera recorded about where and when the photo was taken is removed first. What comes back is shown to the reviewer beside the picture. It does not approve or decline anything; a person does that, as before. We keep the three readings and the expiry date against the document, and nothing else the service reads — not the licence number, not your date of birth. Section 3 says what Microsoft does with the picture.

Read this part carefully, because it surprises people. When you send a request for a car, the documents you have uploaded are shared with that car's owner at that moment — not when they accept, but when you ask. The owner can view them for as long as the request exists. If you request five cars and rent none of them, five owners have seen your licence. If you upload a new document later, it is added to the most recent request automatically.

We do it this way because an owner deciding whether to hand over a car wants to see who is asking. We are aware this shares more, and earlier, than it needs to, and we are looking at moving the sharing to the moment an owner accepts. Until we do, this notice describes what happens now.

When you list a car as an owner

The car's details, its photographs, the address or area where it is kept, and its registration and insurance documents. The pickup address is shown to drivers who are renting it, because they have to collect it.

When you pay or get paid

Card payments and payouts are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. Stripe holds that. We store a record that a payment happened, the amount, the last four digits and the card brand so you can recognise which card, and Stripe's own reference for it.

If you are an owner receiving payouts, Stripe collects identity and bank information from you directly to meet financial regulations. That information is held by Stripe under their own privacy policy, not by us. We hold your Stripe account reference and whether your payout setup is complete.

When you use the app

Messages you send in a rental's chat, which the other party can read. The notifications we send you and whether they were opened. A token that lets us send notifications to your phone. Basic technical records of requests to our systems, including your device type and internet address, kept for security and for diagnosing faults.

Where you are — location

We collect location in three specific situations and at no other time.

Centring a map. When you are choosing where your car will be picked up, the app can centre the map near you so you are not dragging a pin across the world. This happens while you are on that screen and nothing is stored.

At handover. When you confirm you have picked a car up, and when you confirm you have returned it, we record roughly where that happened. It is part of the handover record, along with the photographs. You can see it; the other party is not shown it, and support sees it only in the situation described below, where a rental has ended unpaid. We delete it one year after the rental ends.

When a rental has ended without payment and the car has not come back. In that situation, and only then, each time you open DriveBai we record roughly where your phone is, so that the owner can get their car back. We tell you before this starts, a banner stays on your screen for the whole time it is happening, and you can see everything we have recorded in the app.

Some things that are true of all three:

• The location is approximate — about a kilometre. The app asks your phone only for a rough position, so your phone never gives us a precise one even if you have allowed precise location for DriveBai; and we round what arrives to roughly the nearest kilometre before storing it, so a precise position could not be stored even by mistake. We could not tell you which street you are on.
• We never collect location in the background. The app has to be open.
• We never collect it while your rental is paid up and running normally.
• We never collect speed, direction, or a route, and we never build a history of your movements.

Section 4 covers who sees location and for how long we keep it.

If you are involved in an accident or a dispute

What you report to us, photographs you upload, and any signature you provide.

If you buy or sell a car through DriveBai

Both parties' legal name and address go on the bill of sale, along with the vehicle identification number, the odometer reading and both signatures, because that is what a bill of sale is. Each party can see the other's driving licence image as part of that transaction. The completed bill of sale is a record of the sale and we keep it — see section 5.

2. What we do not do#

• We do not sell your information to anyone.
• We do not use it for advertising, and we do not let anyone else use it for advertising.
• We do not track you across other apps or websites. There is no advertising or analytics tracking in DriveBai.
• We do not collect your location in the background, ever.
• We do not store your full card number.
• We do not use your information to train machine-learning models.

3. Who else sees your information#

The other party in your rental or sale

A driver sees: the owner's name, profile photo, the car and its photographs, the pickup address, and the chat.

An owner sees: the driver's name, profile photo, phone number, the documents the driver has uploaded including their driving licence, the payment history for the rental, and the chat. In a rental that has ended unpaid, an owner who asks support may be told the general area — a neighbourhood — that the driver's phone was last in. Never a street, never an address, never a map, and never whether the driver allowed location at all.

In a sale, each party additionally sees the other's legal name, address, signature and driving licence image, on the bill of sale.

DriveBai support

Our support staff can see your account, your rentals, your payments and your messages, in order to help. When a rental has ended unpaid, support can see the approximate locations described above. Every time a member of staff looks at your location, that is recorded with their name, the time and their reason, and you can read that record in the app.

Companies that do work for us

• Stripe — payments and payouts. They receive your name, email and payment details directly.
• Apple — delivering notifications to your phone, and looking up the name of a neighbourhood from a location. The lookup is done on your phone, and from the rounded position, so what Apple receives is no more precise than what we hold.
• MailerSend or SendGrid — sending emails.
• Fly.io — hosting our systems and database.
• Microsoft — reading driving licences. When you upload a licence, the Azure document-reading service receives a reduced copy of the picture, with anything the camera recorded about where and when it was taken removed, and returns what it reads: the kind of document, the name, and the expiry date. Microsoft keeps the picture and the reading for up to 24 hours so that we can collect the result, then deletes both; we also ask for them to be deleted as soon as we have the result. Microsoft does not use them to train its models. We keep only the three readings and the expiry date, as section 1 says.
• The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — we look up a vehicle identification number against their public database to check a car's details. This sends the vehicle number only, never anything about you.

Police and legal requests

If a car is reported stolen we give the police what we hold, including approximate locations, and we keep a record of having done so. We also respond to valid legal process. If police or a court serve us with a written request to preserve information for longer than our normal retention, we do, we log it, and we review it every 90 days.

4. Location, in detail#

Because location is the most sensitive thing we hold, this section says everything about it in one place.

When collection starts. A full day after the rental ended with the car not returned, and only after we have sent you the notification saying it is starting. Not while a payment is merely late, and not during the grace period you have to pay and continue — during that time your rental is still running.

When collection stops. As soon as any of these happens: you start a return in the app, the return is confirmed, support closes the rental, or 30 days pass from the first location we recorded. If the car has been reported stolen to police, 90 days instead of 30.

Starting a return stops it for good. If the return is later cancelled or withdrawn, collection does not simply resume: it can only start again if our support team turns it back on deliberately, with a written reason, and we notify you when they do.

How long we keep it. 30 days after collection stops. So the longest any location can exist is 60 days from the first one, or 120 days where police are involved. Beyond that only on a written preservation request from police or a court.

How to stop it. Return the car in the app; collection stops immediately. Or switch location off for DriveBai in your phone's Settings at any time, which stops the app recording anything. Your rental is unaffected either way, what you owe is unaffected, and we do not tell the owner what you chose.

What you can see. In the app, under Settings then Your data then Location: every location we hold with its date and neighbourhood, every time support looked and why, and a button to request deletion.

5. How long we keep things#

6. Deleting your account#

You can delete your account in the app, under Settings. It asks you to type DELETE and, if you have a password, to enter it.

What is blocked. You cannot delete while a rental is in progress, a car of yours is out with a driver, or a payment is in flight. The app tells you what to finish first, and each of those can be finished in the app.

What deletion removes. Your profile, your documents and their image files, every location we hold about you — overdue-rental and handover alike — and your ability to sign in. Your name is replaced with a placeholder on records that have to survive. No location of any kind survives deletion of your account.

What survives deletion, and why.

• Any balance you owe. Deleting your account does not clear what you owe, and we keep enough to identify the debt and contact you about it.
• Rentals, payments and payouts, for the 7 years tax rules require, with your name replaced by a placeholder.
• Bills of sale, because they are the record of a car changing hands.
• Your Stripe records. Stripe holds its own copy of your customer record, and for owners the payout account with its identity verification. Deleting your DriveBai account does not delete those. Contact Stripe about theirs.
• Messages you sent, because deleting them would remove the other party's side of a conversation they may need.

7. Your choices#

• See what we hold. Location is in the app under Your data. For anything else, ask us and we will provide it.
• Correct it. Edit your profile in the app, or ask us.
• Delete it. Section 6.
• Turn location off. Your phone's Settings, at any time. It changes nothing about your rental.
• Turn notifications off. Your phone's Settings. Note that some things we are required to tell you — that a location is being recorded, that a payment failed — will then only appear inside the app, so we recommend leaving notifications on.
• Complain. Contact us first. You can also complain to your state's attorney general.

8. Security#

Information travels encrypted between your phone and our systems, and is encrypted where it is stored. Your documents are served through links that expire. Access to support tools requires an administrator account, and looking at a driver's location is recorded against the member of staff who did it.

Nothing is perfect, and we will tell you promptly if something goes wrong with information about you.

9. Children#

DriveBai is for adults who hold a driving licence. We do not knowingly collect anything about anyone under 18. If you believe we have, tell us and we will delete it.

10. Changes#

If we change how we use your information, we will update this notice and, where the change matters, tell you in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.

11. Contact#

Email: support@drivebai.com

Mail: DriveBai, 235 Henry Street #16, New York, NY 10002