Bump

Is Bump safe?

Bump is a well-made app from a team with a long track record, and Google Play's data safety page says it shares no data with third parties. But it is built around something risky: a live map that shows your friends exactly where you are, how fast you are moving, how much battery you have left and where you spent the night, all the time, from age 13. Sign-in is a text-message code with no password. We score it 48/100.

Bump comes from amo, a Paris company started by members of the team behind Zenly. Snap closed Zenly in February 2023, and Bump arrived on the App Store in December of that year. It has more than 10 million downloads on Google Play and on 25 October 2026 ranked second in Social Networking on Japan's App Store, where Zenly was hugely popular. In a 2024 survey of 448 Japanese university students, half said they had used Zenly.

What can friends see on Bump?

More than most people expect. According to the App Store description and amo's own service page, friends can see:

• your live, precise position on the map, shared in the background unless you change the phone's location permission;
• your speed, battery level and how long you have been somewhere;
• who you are with and what you are listening to;
• notifications when you travel to another state or country.

Bump also builds a "scratch map" that automatically logs your home, your workplace, the places you have spent the night and the places you visit often. The App Store listing even promises to "keep track of where you've spent the night and who was with you". Home, work and nights are not shown to friends, but they are stored. A school feature lets students join their school and see a directory of everyone there.

None of this is hidden; it is the product. The question is who ends up on your friends list.

The risk for teenagers

Bump's terms set 13 as the minimum age, and Google Play rates it Teen. At sign-up you give only a year of birth; there is no ID check.

Three defaults matter for a teenager. First, when a new friend joins your list, they can see your location by default unless you change their access at that moment. Second, anyone on amo can see your name, profile picture and friend list, which makes it easy for someone to find a teen through mutual friends. Third, a scratch map and a school directory reveal routines: where a child sleeps, studies and spends weekends.

Live location sharing with close friends can help teenagers meet up and feel safe. Location sharing with loose acquaintances, or with an ex, is how it turns into stalking or control. Bump has reporting tools, but it cannot know which of your friends you no longer trust.

Privacy and security

The App Store label lists precise location, name, phone number, user content and user ID as linked to you, and identifiers as used to track you. amo's privacy policy, updated in July 2026, describes collecting location and location history from GPS, Wi-Fi, cell towers and motion sensors, plus the IDs of nearby Wi-Fi routers, and analysing "the movements of users over time". Google Play's data safety page says no data is shared with third parties. The policy is less absolute: besides service providers and aggregated data, it mentions integrated third parties that process data for their own purposes. amo, as a French company, applies the GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary to all users.

Security is thinner. There is no password: you sign in with a code sent by text, so anyone who gets hold of your number, through a SIM swap or a stolen unlocked phone, gets your live map. Data is encrypted in transit, but amo does not claim end-to-end encryptionEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary for chats. We found no reported breach.

How to use Bump more safely

1. When you add a friend, set their access level straight away rather than accepting the default.
2. Use ghost mode for anyone you would not want to see your home or your evenings.
3. Put a strong lock screen on your phone and ask your carrier for a SIM-swap PIN.
4. Remove friends you no longer see in person; there is no reason to keep sharing with them.
5. Parents: go through the friend list together, and talk about why location is private.
6. To erase location history, delete the account through support chat or [email protected].

How we scored it

The regulatory record (86) is the strongest factor, since no regulator has acted against amo. Privacy (42) reflects continuous precise location and stored routines, security (48) the password-free text-code sign-in, and scams and harmful content (40) a live map open from 13 with location-on defaults for new friends. Life360, a family location app that has sold data, scores 48 and Snapchat, whose Snap Map also shares location, scores 52.