Privacy Policy

Who We Are

CheckPetrol (checkpetrol.com.au) is a free Australian fuel outage tracker and petrol price comparison tool. We aggregate publicly available fuel pricing data from official government APIs and display it alongside community-submitted outage reports.

Information We Collect

Information you provide

When you submit an outage report or price correction, we store the report details (station, fuel type, and report type). Using the website, or using the mobile app without signing in, does not require an account or any personal information such as your name or email address. Signing in to the mobile app is entirely optional — see Mobile App below.

Information collected automatically

• IP address — We store a hash of your IP address with each outage report and price correction. We use it to limit how many reports one address can send and to find abuse. The hash is made with a secret key held on our server, so it cannot be turned back into your IP address without that key. We do not store the raw IP address, and we do not show the hash publicly.
• Browser location — If you grant location permission, your coordinates are used locally in your browser to show nearby stations. Location data is not sent to our servers.
• Cloudflare analytics — Our site is served through Cloudflare, which collects standard web analytics (page views, country of origin, browser type). This data is aggregated and not personally identifiable.
• Google Analytics — We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used: the pages you visit, the site that sent you, your device and browser, and your approximate location (worked out from your IP address). Google Analytics sets its own cookies on checkpetrol.com.au to tell visits apart (see Cookies).
• Advertising — The site loads Google AdSense, which can show ads and measure how they perform. Google may use cookies and similar identifiers to do this, including to show ads based on your interests where that's allowed. You can manage ad personalisation at adssettings.google.com.
• Requests your browser makes to other services — To draw the map, show text and work out some figures, your browser fetches files directly from other services, which receive your IP address and browser details as part of any web request: map tiles from CARTO, fonts from Google Fonts, and, on the fuel excise page, exchange rates from Frankfurter.

Mobile App

The CheckPetrol app for iOS and Android is fully usable without an account — you can browse prices, view the map, plan trips, and save favourite stations on your device without signing in. The following applies only if you choose to use the optional features below.

• Sign in with Apple or Google — If you sign in, we receive your email address and (where available) your name from Apple or Google, solely to create your account and sync your saved stations across your devices. We do not receive your password. We do not use this information for advertising and never sell it.
• Saved stations & alert settings — When signed in, the stations you favourite and the price-drop alerts you enable are stored against your account so they follow you across devices. Signed out, they remain only on your device.
• Push notifications — If you enable price-drop alerts, we store an anonymous device push token (issued by Apple/Google via Expo) so we can notify you when a saved station's price falls. The token cannot identify you personally. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device settings.
• Location — If you grant location permission, your coordinates are used on your device to show nearby stations and provide directions. Your location is not sent to or stored on our servers. When you plan a trip, the route's start, end, and waypoint coordinates and the place-search text you type are sent to our routing and geocoding providers to calculate the route; they are not linked to your identity or account.

Deleting your account

You can permanently delete your account and all associated data (email, name, saved stations, alert settings, and push tokens) at any time from within the app: open the Saved tab while signed in and tap Delete account. Deletion is immediate and irreversible. You can also request account deletion without the app by emailing [email protected] from the address on your account.

How We Use Your Information

• To display fuel prices and outage information to all users
• To prevent abuse and rate-limit submissions
• To improve the accuracy and reliability of the service
• To publish fuel outage alerts and daily price summaries on our social media pages (Facebook, X/Twitter)

Social Media

CheckPetrol publishes automated posts to Facebook and X (Twitter) about fuel outages and daily price summaries. These posts contain publicly available fuel data and do not include any personal information from users. Our social media presence is managed through the Facebook Graph API and Twitter API v2.

Cookies and local storage

• Your theme — CheckPetrol stores one setting in your browser’s local storage: whether you chose the light or dark theme. It stays on your device.
• Google Analytics sets cookies on checkpetrol.com.au (named _ga and _ga_ followed by an ID) to count visits and tell them apart.
• Google AdSense may set or read cookies to show and measure ads.
• Cloudflare may set security cookies, for example for bot detection, and Cloudflare Turnstile checks your browser before live prices load.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser’s settings.

Data Sharing

We do not sell or trade your personal information. The services listed below receive the data described above so the site can work, be measured and show ads, and each handles it under its own privacy policy. Aggregated, non-identifiable fuel data (prices, outage counts) may be shared publicly through our social media accounts and API.

Data Retention

Community outage reports expire automatically after 24 hours, and price corrections after 12 hours. We keep the stored reports and their IP hashes after that so we can review abuse. We do not yet delete them on a set schedule. Price data and historical snapshots are retained indefinitely to support trend analysis. Mobile app account data (email, name, saved stations, alert settings, and push tokens) is retained until you delete your account, after which it is permanently removed.

Third-Party Services

• Cloudflare — CDN, DDoS protection, and bot management
• Cloudflare Turnstile — Checks your browser is not a bot before live prices load, and on reports (replaces a CAPTCHA)
• Railway — Application hosting
• Google Analytics — Measuring how the site is used
• Google AdSense — Showing and measuring ads
• Google Fonts — The site’s typefaces
• CARTO — Map tiles
• Frankfurter — Daily exchange rates, on the fuel excise page
• Facebook Graph API and the X API — Automated social media posting
• Apple & Google — Sign-in providers for the mobile app (authentication only)
• Expo push service — Delivery of price-drop notifications to the mobile app
• OSRM — Route calculation for the trip planner in the mobile app
• Photon (komoot) — Place search (geocoding) for the trip planner in the mobile app

Children's Privacy

CheckPetrol is a general-audience informational service. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be reflected on this page with an updated "Last updated" date.