Moovit

Is Moovit safe to use?

Moovit is safe for what most people use it for: checking when the next bus or train is coming. We found no fine or regulator order against it and no confirmed breach of its users' data. What deserves attention is how much location data it gathers. Its privacy policy states, in capital letters, that "Moovit collects your location data in the background even when you are not using the app", and Moovit sells advertisers ads built on riders' routes.

We score Moovit 57/100, below Citymapper (70), which reads location mostly while its app is open, and close to Google Maps (60).

The label understates the policy

Apple's privacy label for Moovit looks moderate. Identifiers are used to track you across other companies' apps. Location is linked to you for analytics, personalisation and app functions, and identifiers are linked for third-party advertising. Search history is collected but not linked to you.

The privacy policy describes more. Moovit collects GPS and motion sensor data to build "a detailed location history of your public transit trips", and keeps collecting in the background unless you opt out under the app's privacy settings. Advertising partners, which the policy names as including Facebook Ireland and Unity Technologies, may use SDKs to collect advertising and device identifiers, IP addresses and "location data (including segmented data and/or derived location data)" to show you interest-based ads in Moovit and elsewhere. Moovit may also turn your email address or phone number into a matching code to target you on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

The business side confirms why location matters. Moovit's ad pages offer location-based ads that use "a public transit rider's current location and route points during their journey — origin, destination, and points of transfer", with a virtual fence around a chosen shop, and segmented ads based on "daily riding habits". When the policy says more than the label, we score privacy on the policy.

Who owns Moovit, and why it matters

Intel bought Moovit in 2020 and folded it into Mobileye, its self-driving car company. Mobileye said at the time that large-scale mobility data was a key reason for the deal, according to Calcalist. Mobileye's 2025 annual report says its integration of Moovit "may provide us with access to personal information of its users".

The ownership is uncertain. In April 2026 Calcalist reported that Mobileye had hired Barclays to sell Moovit, naming Uber, DiDi and Lyft as possible buyers. In July it reported that Moovit was cutting 60 of its 200 jobs as Mobileye refocused it on robotaxis, with plans to put the Mobileye logo on Moovit's US app. Moovit's policy says personal data can move to a new owner in a merger or sale. Users' data is stored in Israel, which the EU recognises as offering adequate protection, in Ireland and with cloud providers such as AWS.

Security record

In August 2023 SafeBreach researcher Omer Attias described three bugs in Moovit that let him collect registration details of new users worldwide and take over accounts without logging their owners out. That would have let an attacker buy train tickets on someone else's stored card. Moovit said it was already fixing the problem when it was reported, that there was no evidence anyone had exploited it and that users did not need to do anything. We found no breach since. Moovit now runs a public bug bounty on Bugcrowd that covers its Android and iPhone apps and pays $100 to $7,000, but it has published no security audit.

Children and ads

Moovit has almost no user-to-user contact, so harassment and scams are rare. The gap is age: the App Store rates Moovit 4+, while the privacy policy says users must be over 16 and that Moovit may ask for proof of age. Its ad formats include full-screen interstitials that cannot be skipped, which is a poor fit for a 4+ app and for anyone reading a map in a hurry.

How to use Moovit more privately

1. In Moovit's privacy settings, switch off background location collection.
2. In your phone's settings, set Moovit's location access to "While Using the App".
3. Open the ads preferences tab in Moovit's settings and refuse personalised ads. On an iPhone, tap "Ask App Not to Track".
4. To leave, delete your account under More, Settings, Privacy on an iPhone, or send a "Personal Data/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" request through the feedback form on Android; uninstalling alone does not remove your account data.

How we scored it

The regulatory record (87) and scams and harmful content (76) are Moovit's strongest factors: no fines and little user-generated risk. Privacy (30) is its weakest, because background location collection is on by default and ad partners can collect location data. Security (63) reflects the 2023 account-takeover bugs, with credit for a paid bug bounty. Transparency and control (60) credits in-app account deletion, which so far works only on the iPhone.