How Privacy Works on Carpool.School
June 12, 2026 · Krishnanand Kamath
Every community on Carpool.School is gated. Parents inside can find each other. Parents outside cannot. That boundary holds regardless of how the community was started.
What you see
When you open the app, you see families in your community: not all families on Carpool.School, only the ones who joined the same community you did. A parent at a different school, camp, or program does not appear in your feed, even if they live nearby.
The feed shows proximity, not coordinates: you see that a family is close, not their address. The map shows a pin at each household's location, visible to community members, but caps zoom level so pins don't resolve to street-level detail.
What stays hidden
- Street address. The map shows a pin at your household's location, visible to community members, but caps zoom so it never resolves to street-level detail. Your street address is never shown as text.
- Phone number. Not shared until you accept a connection with another family. Until then, all contact happens inside the app.
- Your data. We do not sell your data to anyone.
When things unlock
Connecting with another family (both sides accept) unlocks direct calling through the app. That is when phone numbers become available. Not before.
Parent-led and staff-led: same privacy model
Parent-led communities skip the institutional approval step. They do not skip the privacy model. Gating, proximity-only, no phone-until-connect: all of that applies the same way.
Staff-led communities narrow membership down before anyone is visible to others.
How membership narrows down: Interest → Invite → Join
- Interest: Families fill out an interest form to signal they want to join. No one is added automatically.
- Invite: Your org sends a personal invite link to families who expressed interest. No link, no entry.
- Join: Families who create an account and accept the terms become visible to the community. No one else does.
Contact information uploaded to send invitations is not retained for families who never join.
Your community contains exactly who chose to be in it. The privacy model inside is identical to the parent-led path.
What we do not do
- We do not run background checks. Trust gets built when families meet in person.
- We do not push you to expand beyond your community.
- We do not make safety guarantees. The app surfaces families. The parents do the carpool.
Read the full Privacy Policy.
Questions? support@carpool.school