Driver reports & your data
What happens when you report an incident. This covers driver reports only — for payments, solicitor enquiries and everything else, see the main privacy policy.
What we collect
Only what makes the report useful to another driver:
- Where it is — the road, the location you describe, and the GPS coordinates from your phone if you allow it. The coordinates place the pin on the map and nothing else.
- What happened — the type, direction, severity, and whatever you tap or type.
- A photo, if you add one.
- A display name, if you give one. Leave it blank and the report says Anonymous.
- A social handle, if you want the shout-out. Entirely optional.
We used to have an email field. It was removed in July 2026 because nothing ever used it, and holding an address we had no purpose for was the wrong thing to do.
What is public
A published report shows the road, the location, the type, the time, your description and your display name. That is the point of it — another driver needs to know what you saw and roughly who saw it.
Your GPS coordinates place a pin. They are not shown as numbers and they are not attached to you — only to the incident. Two reports from the same person carry no visible link between them.
Behind the scenes
- A hashed IP address. Not the address itself — a one-way hash we cannot reverse. It exists so somebody deliberately posting nonsense can be blocked, and for nothing else. It is never shown to anyone but staff.
- A random id in your browser. It remembers your name between reports and tracks your standing on the leaderboard. It is not linked to your identity and you can clear it by clearing your browser data.
How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| The report itself | Kept as a record of what happened on that road. It stops appearing as live once it clears. |
| Photos | Removed 21 days after the report clears. |
| Your reporter profile (name, handle, standing) |
Deleted if you have not filed a report for 24 months. |
| Blocked reporters | Kept. A block that expires is not a block. |
What you allow us to do with it
When you submit a report you keep ownership of it. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual licence to use, publish, adapt and share it — including with traffic services, navigation providers and the emergency services — so it can reach other drivers.
It covers the report — the road, the incident, what you saw. It does not give anybody the right to identify you.
Comments on reports
Anything you post in the chat under a report is public. The same hashed IP is stored for the same reason.
Some messages are folded behind a "may be upsetting" warning rather than published straight out — a description of an injury at the scene, for instance. They are still readable in one tap. Nothing is hidden because we disagree with it, and nothing is quietly deleted: a removed message is removed by a person, and it can be put back.
We may occasionally edit a message to take out something that cannot stay — a phone number, or a distressing detail. When that happens the message says so and says why.
Having it removed
Email privacy@uktrafficupdates.uk and say which report. Tell us the road and roughly when, and we will find it.
We will remove your name, your handle and your description. The road, the time and the fact that something happened there stay, because other people relied on that at the time and it is part of the record of that road — but nothing in it will point to you.
You can also ask for a copy of everything we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or object to us holding it at all. We answer within one calendar month and there is no charge. If you are not happy with how we handle it you can complain to the ICO.
Who we are
UK Traffic Updates, operated by Vera Sambo. We are the data controller for driver reports. Full contact details and complaint routes are in the main privacy policy.
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