Last updated 20 September 2026 · applies to the ParkZen iOS app (io.bernhardt.parkzen) and to this page
ParkZen reminds you to buy a Parkschein when you park outside your own Parkpickerl zone. To do that it needs to know that you stopped driving and where you are. Both facts stay on your iPhone.
The short version. ParkZen has no servers, no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party SDKs. The app contains no networking code at all — there is nowhere for your data to go. Nothing about you is sent to the developer or to anybody else.
Who is responsible
ParkZen is made by Manuel Bernhardt, Vienna, Austria — the controller within the meaning of Art. 4(7) GDPR.
Email: [email protected]
What ParkZen reads on your phone
- Motion activity
- Why
- To notice the moment a drive turns into walking — that is what "you parked" means to the app. It reads the iPhone's motion classification (driving, walking, stationary), live and from the last few minutes of history.
- Where it goes
- Memory only. The one thing kept is the time you left the car, which is written into the parked-car record below.
- Location
- Why
- To wake the app when you have moved (visits and significant location changes), to work out which Bezirk and which Parkpickerl zone you parked in, and — only if you switch on "Continuous GPS while driving" — to follow the drive itself so the reminder can arrive within seconds instead of minutes.
- Where it goes
- The single coordinate where you parked is written into the parked-car record. Fixes used only to wake the app are discarded as soon as they have done that.
Which zone a coordinate falls into is worked out on the phone, against a zone file that ships inside the app. No coordinate is sent anywhere to be looked up.
What is stored on your iPhone
The parked car
When you parked, the coordinate you parked at, the Parkpickerl districts that apply there, and — if you told the app about one — when your Parkschein started and how long it runs. Exactly one car is kept: there is no parking history. The record is deleted as soon as you tap "Not needed" or "Done", and replaced when you park again.
Your settings
Your home Bezirk, whether you hold a Parkpickerl, the two detection switches, the critical-alerts switch, and whether you have been through onboarding.
A diagnostic log
Two rotating files of at most 1 MB each, in the app's own Documents folder. They record what ParkZen did while nobody was watching: wake-ups, what the motion history said, detection verdicts, the coordinates and districts of parked cars, and every decision about a reminder. The log exists because the app works in the background, where a reminder that never arrived cannot be explained afterwards without it.
All of this lives in the app's own container on the device. The app writes nothing to iCloud and shares nothing with other apps.
What leaves your iPhone
Nothing. No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no remote configuration, no "anonymous" statistics — the app makes no network requests at all.
There is one exception, and it is yours to make: Settings › Diagnostics offers a share sheet for the diagnostic log, and the same folder is reachable from a computer over USB through the Files app. If you send that log to someone — to the developer, for instance, to ask why a reminder did not arrive — it goes wherever you send it, and it contains the places you parked. The app says so on that screen. What happens to a copy you have sent is no longer governed by this policy.
The permissions the app asks for
- Motion & Fitness — reading driving and walking. Without it the app cannot tell that you parked, and you have to tap "I just parked" yourself.
- Location, Always — "Always" is what lets iOS wake ParkZen after you have driven somewhere while the app is closed. With "While Using" the app still works while it is open, but the reminder you are here for cannot arrive.
- Notifications — the reminder itself.
- Critical alerts (optional) — lets the reminder sound through silent mode and Focus.
Every one of them can be withdrawn at any time in iOS Settings. The app keeps working with less and tells you what stopped.
No tracking, no third parties
ParkZen does not track you across apps or websites and does not use Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, because it has nothing to ask for. It carries no third-party SDKs.
Two sets of files ship inside the app rather than being fetched: the Parkpickerl zone polygons, from the City of Vienna's open data (Datenquelle: Stadt Wien – data.wien.gv.at, CC BY 4.0), and the fonts (Source Sans 3 and IBM Plex Mono, SIL OFL 1.1). No request is made to Vienna, to a font host, or to anywhere else. The zone boundaries are for orientation only and have no legal validity.
This page follows the same rule: no web fonts, no scripts, no cookies, no analytics.
How long anything is kept, and how to delete it
- The parked car disappears when you end it, and is replaced the next time you park.
- The diagnostic log can be deleted in Settings › Diagnostics at any time, and rotates away by itself once the two files are full.
- Deleting the app removes everything it stored, all at once.
- If you back up your iPhone, that backup may include ParkZen's data. The backup is between you and Apple, or you and your computer; the developer has no access to it.
The App Store
Downloading ParkZen, and taking part in a TestFlight beta, happen inside Apple's systems under Apple's privacy policy. If you have agreed to share analytics with developers, Apple passes on aggregated statistics — installs, crashes and the like — which cannot be traced back to you. The developer receives nothing else, and never receives anything the app itself has recorded.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and objection (Art. 21).
Since nothing ever reaches the developer, there is nothing held about you to hand over, correct or erase — the honest answer to a request will usually be "we have nothing". You are welcome to write anyway, and you will get an answer.
You may also complain to the Austrian Data Protection Authority: Österreichische Datenschutzbehörde, Barichgasse 40–42, 1030 Vienna, [email protected], dsb.gv.at.
Children
ParkZen is not directed at children. It collects no data from anyone, of any age.
Changes to this policy
Any change is published here with a new date at the top. If a change ever alters what the app does with your data, it will also be named in the App Store release notes — not slipped into this page quietly.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does: [email protected].