Waze Navigation & Live Traffic

"Depending on your selected device settings and/or your account settings we may collect information about your location and travel (or lack thereof) also while you are not using the app, in order to be able to tell you when to leave for planned drives, notify you about bad traffic in your area, provide you parking assistance, analyze how effective our ads are and more."

Waze collects location data even when you're not actively using the app, including for ad effectiveness analysis — a purpose well beyond core navigation functionality.

"We work with other Google's services (such as Google Display and Video 360) for advertising and ad measurement purposes. In order to help advertisers decide what ads to show on Waze, Google, and websites & apps that partner with Google, we may share information with these services, such as a unique identifier for advertising (i.e, Advertising ID available on Android mobile devices or similar technologies)."

Waze shares advertising identifiers with Google's ad ecosystem and third-party ad partners, enabling cross-platform ad targeting across Google properties and partner sites/apps.

"Periodically, Waze will collect all of the phone numbers which are stored on your device's phone contacts book. Waze may also collect information about apps installed on your device that Waze can link with - such as third party music or media audio service apps (e.g. Spotify). If you choose to activate and use certain Service features like time to leave reminders, Waze may collect calendar information."

Waze periodically harvests the entire phone contacts book, scans for installed apps, and can access calendar data — device data collection that goes well beyond navigation.

"We work with ad partners, including advertisers on our platform and entities that belong to the Google group of companies, in order to show you more relevant and useful ads based on your Waze activity and information associated with your device's identifier (i.e, Advertising identifiers or similar technologies) shared with us by our ad partners. Waze may also share personal information with companies or organizations connected or affiliated with Waze, such as subsidiaries, sister-companies and parent companies (i.e. entities that belong to the Google group of companies)."

Waze uses advertising IDs to link user activity across Waze, Google services, and third-party ad partners, enabling cross-service user profiling within the Google ecosystem.

"Information retained until your Waze Account is deleted - we may keep some data for the life of your Waze Account if it's useful for helping us understand how users interact with our features and how we can improve our services. Information retained for extended time periods for limited purposes - sometimes business and legal requirements oblige us to retain certain information, for specific purposes, for an extended period of time."

Waze retains some data for the entire life of the account and retains other data for undefined 'extended time periods' for broad reasons like business requirements, with no specific deletion timelines.

"Other changes will take effect 7 days after their initial posting on the Website. However, if Waze amends this Privacy Policy to comply with legal requirements, the amendments will become effective immediately upon their initial posting, or as required. You agree to be bound by any of the changes made in the terms of this Privacy Policy. Continuing to use the Services will indicate your acceptance of the amended terms."

Non-substantial changes take effect after just 7 days, legal changes are immediate, and continued use is treated as acceptance — users get no meaningful opportunity to consent to new terms.

"On receiving such a request, Waze will use reasonable efforts to delete such information, however please note that information may not be deleted immediately from our back-up systems. This process generally takes around 2 months from the time of deletion. As with any deletion process, things like routine maintenance, unexpected outages, bugs, or failures in our protocols may cause delays in the processes and time frames defined in this policy."

Account deletion takes roughly 2 months and Waze only commits to 'reasonable efforts,' with various caveats that could extend the timeline indefinitely.