Last updated: November 4, 2026
Defense Buddy ("the app") is a personal-safety app published by Mobile Fitness LLC. This policy explains what the app collects and why.
When you turn on Area Watch, the app collects your device's precise location to rate how safe your current surroundings are and to show the nearest police stations and hospitals.
If you also turn on "Alert me when the app is closed", the app collects your location in the background, even when the app is closed or not in use, so it can notify you when you move into an area that calls for more caution. While this is on, Android shows a persistent notification. You can turn it off at any time in the app or in your phone's settings.
Each location check is sent over an encrypted connection to the Defense Buddy server, which looks up nearby places with Google Maps (Google Places API) and uses Google's Gemini AI to write the safety rating. To give street-level and crime-report alerts, the server also looks up the approximate area (rounded to roughly 300–400 m, with no identifier attached) in public data: street layout from OpenStreetMap (via the Overpass API) and, in cities that publish it, police incident reports from the city's open-data portal (currently San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and New York City) and, where a city publishes them, the police calls officers were recently dispatched to (currently San Francisco and Montgomery County, Maryland). Calls about sexual assault and other calls the city marks sensitive are never shown.
When the in-app map is shown, the map itself is drawn by Google Maps (Google Maps SDK), which receives the area being displayed, as with any map app.
For Area Watch, your location is used only to produce the rating and alerts: it is not stored, not logged, not used for advertising and not sold or shared beyond these lookups. Results are kept briefly in server memory for an approximate area (about 150–400 m) so repeat checks are fast; they contain no identifier and are discarded within 15 minutes for ratings, 6 hours for police-report counts, 5 minutes for recent police calls and 24 hours for street layout.
The app keeps your most recent rating, the nearby street layout and which alerts it has already shown on your phone, so it can warn you about an alley or underpass ahead without sending every step to the server, and so it doesn't repeat the same alert. Your alert preferences are also stored only on your phone.
A parent or guardian can see where a Defense Buddy watch is, for example a child's watch, but only after the watch has been connected on purpose: the watch shows a one-time 6-digit code that the parent types into the phone app. While sharing is on, the watch always shows who it is sharing with and a notification that location is being shared, and the person wearing it can stop sharing at any time.
While sharing is on, the watch sends its precise location and battery level to the Defense Buddy server every few minutes, and when SOS is pressed. The server keeps only the latest location and the trail from the last 24 hours; older trail points are deleted automatically. The names typed in when connecting (for example "Sam" and "Mom") are stored with the connection, and so is the parent's phone number if they add one, so the watch can show a button that calls them. If the parent's phone allows notifications, its push-notification address is stored so an SOS can reach it.
Only the phones connected to that watch can see its location. It is not used for advertising and not sold or shared. When sharing is stopped on the watch, or the last parent removes the watch in the app, the connection and every stored location for that watch are deleted.
Seeing a watch's location is part of Defense Buddy Premium on the parent's phone.
Text you type into the AI Assessment tab is sent to the server, analyzed by Google's Gemini AI, and stored with its result so the service can be reviewed and improved. Stored assessments are not linked to you and are deleted automatically after 30 days. Don't include names or other personal details.
The AI Assessment and Area Watch are part of Defense Buddy Premium, a monthly subscription bought through Google Play. Google handles the payment; we never see your card or payment details. To check that a subscription is active, the app sends the Google Play purchase token for your subscription to the Defense Buddy server, which asks Google Play for its status. The token is kept only briefly in server memory and is not stored or linked to you. You can cancel at any time in Google Play → Payments & subscriptions.
The app has no accounts and does not collect contacts, photos or advertising identifiers. Apart from the names and the optional phone number typed in for family sharing, it does not collect your name or number.
Google Cloud (hosting, Gemini AI) and Google Maps Platform (place information) process data on our behalf under Google's terms: policies.google.com/privacy.
Street data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (openstreetmap.org/copyright). Police incident counts come from the public open-data portals of the City and County of San Francisco, the City of Chicago, the City of Seattle and the City of New York; they show reported incidents only and may be incomplete or delayed.
The phone app is not directed to children under 13. A child may wear a Defense Buddy watch that a parent or guardian has connected for family sharing; the parent sets this up and decides to use it, and can remove it at any time, which deletes the watch's stored locations. We don't knowingly collect anything else from children. A parent who wants a child's data deleted can remove the watch in the app or email us.
You can stop family sharing at any time on the watch (Family → Stop sharing) or remove a watch in the phone app's Family tab. You can use the app without location. You can turn off Area Watch or background alerts at any time, and revoke location permission in Android Settings → Apps → Defense Buddy → Permissions.
Questions: mobilefitnessapp@gmail.com