The Rejsekort app, which can be used to pay fares on public transport services across Denmark, will now allow users to select the “While using the app” setting for sharing location data between the phone and the app.
That comes after the app was criticised by data experts as well as the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet) because this option wasn’t previously available.
That meant that for Rejsekort to work at all, it had to be set to access the user’s location at all times, including when the app isn’t in use.
Readers of The Local have also observed the issue.
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The addition of the new setting was confirmed in a statement by Rejsekort og Rejseplan, the company which owns the app, and reported by news wire Ritzau and broadcaster DR.
The company’s director for customer services Jens Willars stressed that in practice, data from customers had not been accessed while they were not using the app.
“It’s now finally possible to make sure that the settings reflect the practice that is in place,” Willars said according to Ritzau.
The Rejsekort company said early last year that it had “not been possible” to enable the setting on the app because doing so would make it impossible to check if a ticket was valid if the app was closed accidentally or deliberately during travel.
But the app’s developer has now coded the settings to prevent this being a problem, Willars said.
“We have been aware throughout that this was an important matter for our customers so we have put a lot of energy into it and asked our supplier to code it differently,” he said.
The app will function identically to before but with the additional data privacy option, he notes.
The update was tested on 135,000 Rejsekort app users before being rolled out.
Android users were not affected by the issue and have always been able to restrict the app’s access to data location when not in use.
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