The short answer: Steady Pace does not sell your data, and the reason it can say so is that it does not gather your data to begin with. There is no account, no analytics, and no network connection, so your runs, your location, and your habits never leave the phone. A promise not to sell what a company has collected depends on trust and can change. Steady Pace has nothing to sell because it collects nothing in the first place, and that is a property of how the app is built.
How running apps end up selling data
Location data is valuable. Running apps generate a lot of it: where you live, when you leave, the routes you repeat, how far and how often you go. Once that is collected and sitting on a server, it becomes an asset. Some apps sell or share location data with partners. Others pass it to advertisers to target you. Still others hold it until a new owner or a new policy decides what happens to it. Most of this is disclosed in the terms of service, but the practical result is that your movements have become a business product.
Even when a company intends to protect your data, collecting it creates risk. Servers get breached, policies change with acquisitions, and defaults shift in an update. The mere existence of data off your phone is the exposure.
Nothing collected, nothing to sell
Steady Pace removes the asset. It has no account to tie your runs to an identity, sends no analytics about how you use it, and makes no network connections that could carry data off the device. Your pace, routes, and history are computed and kept on your phone, and the GPS offset is thrown away on the device during processing, so even what is stored locally is not a clean map to your door. There is no pile of location data anywhere for anyone to sell or share, because it was never assembled.
| Steady Pace | A data-monetizing app | |
|---|---|---|
| Collects your location data | No, it stays on your phone | Yes, on its servers |
| Sends analytics | None | Usually, often to third parties |
| Can sell or share your data | Nothing to sell | Possible, per its policy |
| Your privacy depends on | The app collecting nothing | A policy staying favorable |
Because Steady Pace keeps your runs on your phone and collects nothing, there is no stored data that could be sold or breached.
Privacy
A private running app
The full picture of how privacy is built in.
Blog
No network connections
Why nothing can leave the phone.
Privacy
What a data leak looks like
87 real, cited incidents, and why Steady Pace has nothing to leak.
Does Steady Pace sell my data?
No. It has no account, no analytics, and makes no network connections, so it does not collect your data in the first place. There is nothing assembled anywhere that could be sold or shared.
How is that different from a "we don't sell your data" policy?
A policy is a promise about data a company has already collected, and it can change with new owners or updates. Steady Pace collects nothing off the phone, so the guarantee does not rely on a promise holding.
Where do my runs go?
Nowhere. They are computed and stored on your phone. There is no cloud account holding them and no server that could be breached or sold.
Does it track how I use the app?
No. There is no usage analytics of any kind. The app does not report what you do, because it makes no network connections to report anything.