How Moda Works

What stays on the phone, and what reaches us

This is the distinction that matters most, so it is worth stating precisely.

Never leaves the device

• The route of each drive, recorded as a series of points while you drive
• The coordinates and city names where a drive started and ended
• A supervisor's phone number, email address, and driver's licence number
• The driver's date of birth

Synced to Moda when signed in

• How long each drive lasted, and when it started
• How far it went, as a distance, with no path attached
• Day or night, road type, and weather at the start
• Which supervisor rode along, by name and relationship
• How much of the drive was moving versus stopped, how many stops, and how many turns

The second list is what a parent sees and what an export is built from. None of it says where a drive happened. A distance and a stop count describe how a drive went, not where it was.

Why the route is recorded at all

After a drive, the app can show a map of it, coloured by how fast the car was moving, with a slider to scrub through the trip. That needs the path, so the path is stored on the phone.

Because it lives only on the phone, it is lost when you move to a new one. Settings has an optional Transfer Mode that includes the app's data file in your iPhone's own encrypted backup so your drives move with you. It is off unless you turn it on, and when it is on that file goes to Apple as part of your backup, under your Apple Account, never to us. Your hours, dates, and supervisors move to a new phone either way, because those sync.

How hours are counted

A drive counts the time between pressing start and pressing end, minus any time you paused. The app does not round up.

• Drives shorter than one minute are discarded, which covers accidental taps and clock changes. The app tells you when this happens rather than dropping it silently.
• A drive counts as night driving based on the sun at the drive's start, using the rules of the state you selected, not a fixed clock time.
• If you leave a drive running and the car stops moving, the app can end it automatically and keeps only the time up to the last real movement. This is off by default.
• Requirements come from the state on your profile. Some states reduce the total if the driver completed a driver education course, which is a setting you turn on yourself.

A parent linked to the driver can require that each drive be reviewed before it counts toward the total.

What the export contains

The export is the document you take to the licensing office. It lists every drive with its date, duration, day and night split, weather, road type, and supervisor, along with the totals your state asks for.

It does not contain coordinates, routes, or maps. Nothing in the export reveals where anyone drove.

Families

A parent creates a six digit family code in the app. The driver enters that code, and the parent approves the request. After that the parent can see the driver's hours and progress, but never their locations or routes.

More than one parent can follow the same driver, each with their own account. The second parent creates their own code and the driver enters it from Settings, under Family. One purchase covers everyone in a family; a second parent joining an already-paid family is not asked to pay again.

Deleting your data

Settings has two separate options. One deletes your driving logs and leaves the account. The other deletes the account and everything attached to it, including family links and supervisors.

Deleting logs starts a two hour countdown you can cancel, because it is not recoverable afterwards. Deleting the account removes the data from our servers and from the device.

Questions

If something here does not match what you see in the app, that is worth telling us: support@modadriving.com.