Straight answers to the questions privacy, security, technology and procurement teams ask before approving Tracklet.
For the full architecture, see How the technology works.
Each answer is expanded in the sections below.
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Does it use GPS or geolocation? | Yes — the phone's location is recorded at the moment a tag is detected. The tags themselves contain no GPS and no cellular radio. |
| Does it use Bluetooth proximity? | Yes — Bluetooth Low Energy is how a phone detects a nearby key tag. The app looks only for registered Tracklet tags; it does not record other Bluetooth devices or other people's phones. |
| Can location be disabled? | Yes, by each person on their own phone at any time. A phone with location off does not report sightings. A location-free QR check-out / check-in is also available. See below. |
| What is collected about key holders? | Email address, the key sightings their phone reports (tag ID, location, time) and key custody history. No passwords, contacts, photos, microphone or continuous location trail. See below. |
| Where is data hosted? | Amazon Web Services, Sydney region (ap-southeast-2), Australia. |
| Who can access it? | Your organisation's authorised administrators, each key holder for their own cabinets, and a small number of Tracklet support staff for support purposes. Other customers cannot. |
| How long is it retained? | Sighting and custody history expire automatically after 3 years. Accounts are retained until deleted. See the retention table. |
| Privacy request and cyber security assessment? | We will support both and respond to your questionnaires. See below. |
| Physical sample tag? | Yes — we can send a sample tag for you to test in your environment. See below. |
Tracklet tracks keys, not people. But because the sensor is a staff member's phone, reviewers are right to ask exactly how location and Bluetooth are used.
A small Bluetooth Low Energy beacon. It broadcasts a fixed ID and nothing else. It has no GPS, no cellular, no Wi-Fi, and no microphone, and it cannot read anything from the phone. It never connects to the internet.
The app scans only for registered Tracklet tags, using a filter on the tag's service identifier. Other Bluetooth devices — headphones, watches, other people's phones — are not recorded, stored or reported.
The phone's most recent location is attached to a sighting at the moment a registered tag is detected. Location is not streamed continuously and is not recorded when no tag is nearby. If no location is available, the sighting is discarded rather than guessed.
Yes, at several levels:
There is currently no organisation-wide switch that turns location off while keeping passive background detection. Passive In/Out status and "last known location" depend on location by design — without it, a sighting has no place to be recorded.
| Data | Why it is collected |
|---|---|
| Email address | Identifies the account. Sign-in is by one-time code sent to this address. |
| Sighting records: tag ID, phone latitude / longitude, GPS accuracy, timestamp, and the reporting account | Provides each key's In/Out status and "last known location", and shows who last had it. |
| Custody events: which key, which account, start and end time | The audit trail of who held which key and when. |
| Session records | Keep the user signed in and allow an administrator to revoke a lost phone's access. |
| In-app notifications | Overdue-key and status messages for that user. |
| Basic device and operating system information | Diagnostics and security. |
Not collected: passwords, contacts, photos, files, microphone or camera data (the camera is used only to scan invite and enrolment QR codes on the device), advertising identifiers, other people's Bluetooth devices, or a continuous background location trail. Tracklet does not sell personal information and does not use it for advertising. Full wording is in our Privacy Policy.
ap-southeast-2) in DynamoDB. The API, database, secrets and logs are all in this region. Data is not replicated to other regions.| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Your Site Administrators | Key status, last-known location, sighting and custody history for the sites and cabinets they administer. |
| Key holders | The cabinets they have joined and the keys in them. Not other organisations' data. |
| Tracklet support staff | Account and site records, only to provide support, through a separate authenticated support console. Access is limited to named staff. |
| Other customers | Nothing. Data is isolated by organisation and enforced in every API handler, not just the user interface. |
| Third parties | No data is sold or shared for marketing. See sub-processors in More questions. |
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Sightings (including location) | Automatically deleted 3 years after the sighting. |
| Custody events | Automatically deleted 3 years after the event. |
| Account, site and cabinet membership, notifications | Until the account is deleted. |
| Sign-in codes (OTP) | Valid for 10 minutes, single use, then expire. |
| Sessions | Expire automatically, and are deleted with the account or on revocation. |
| Application logs | 3 months. |
| Support emails | 12 months. |
| Tag registry (tag hardware ID only; no personal information) | Retained, so a tag cannot be enrolled twice. |
Individuals can delete their own account in the app. This removes the account, sessions, memberships and notifications. Historical sighting and custody records are retained for audit integrity until their 3-year expiry. If your organisation needs a shorter retention period, or erasure of specific records, contact us and we will discuss it.
Larger organisations usually need a privacy request and a cyber security assessment completed by their internal team before a service can proceed. We expect that and will work to your timetable.
We will answer your privacy request or privacy impact assessment questions, and can provide the data inventory, hosting, access and retention details on this page in whatever format your team needs.
We will complete your security questionnaire, provide the architecture and data flow detail, and make a technical contact available to your cyber security team to discuss findings.
Where your team wishes to test or evidence a control, we will talk through what can be provided, such as a non-production demo environment, so your assessors are not testing live customer data.
Suggested next steps: (1) your privacy team submits the privacy request to us; (2) we return answers and the data inventory; (3) your cyber security team issues its assessment; (4) we respond and attend a walkthrough; (5) the sample tag is tested in parallel so the departments can run concurrently. To start, email support@tracklet.com.au with your assessment contacts and any template you want completed.
Yes — we're happy to send a sample Tracklet tag so your team can confirm that the tag, and its printed scan face and ID, will survive the environment it will be exposed to.
A production-specification Bluetooth tag with its built-in key ring loop and printed ID number. Send us a delivery address and the number of samples you would like, and we will post it.
Daily use on a key ring: water-resistant, a built-in loop for any standard key ring, approximately 3 years of battery life and up to 50 m of indoor Bluetooth 5.0 range. The manufacturer's specification sheet is available on request.
Wet and cleaning conditions, impact and drop, dust and grime, temperature extremes, chemical and UV exposure, and whether the printed number stays legible and the tag stays detectable. Tell us your environment and we will advise on suitability.
Tracklet is an Australian-built and Australian-hosted service. The model is a software subscription plus per-tag pricing; tags last about 3 years and are replaced at the end of life. Pricing, the contract, purchase order, invoicing and ABN details are provided on request when we prepare a quote. Our Terms of Use are governed by the laws of New South Wales.
There are no advertising or behavioural-analytics SDKs, and no third-party tracking services in the product.
We will notify affected customers without undue delay and support their obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Please let us know your preferred security contact and any contractual notification timeframe.
Tracklet is operated in Australia and handles personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles. Hosting is on AWS infrastructure, which holds independent certifications such as ISO 27001 and SOC 2 for the underlying platform. Tracklet itself does not currently hold an independent certification; we are glad to complete your questionnaire and walk your team through the controls instead.
Your administrators create sites and cabinets and invite key holders by QR code or link. An invite can be regenerated at any time, which immediately invalidates the old one. Administrators can remove members and revoke any session, for example when someone leaves or loses a phone.
Reports for key custody and audit history can be exported from the dashboard. On request, we will provide your organisation's data and then delete it, other than records we are required to keep. Tags are standard Bluetooth devices, so there is no proprietary reader hardware to return.
Support is by email at support@tracklet.com.au and through an in-product support channel. The service is built on managed, multi-availability-zone AWS services. Formal service levels, if required, can be agreed in the contract.
No integration is needed to start. The app installs from the App Store or Google Play on iOS and Android, and the dashboard runs in a standard web browser with nothing to install. The app can be deployed on managed or personal phones. Key status changes can also be sent to your own systems by webhook, if you want to integrate later.
Tags contain a small non-rechargeable battery and should be disposed of as e-waste at the end of life, not in general waste or recycling. See our recycling policy. Tags transmit at low-power Bluetooth levels.
Detection depends on enrolled staff phones being near a key, and location is zone-level (typically 5–20 m outdoors), not room-level. Background scanning varies by phone brand and operating system. The full list is on our technology page.
Email your assessment contacts, questionnaire templates, and a delivery address for the sample tag. We will respond promptly.