Bird integrates 30 third-party SDKs spanning analytics, infrastructure, and advertising. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Location, Contact Info, and User Content and 3 more categories. It includes 3 advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Bird need?

Bird requests 11 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always), Location (Always & When In Use), Motion & Fitness, Save to Photo Library, Bluetooth, and Bluetooth Peripheral.

What data does Bird collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Bird collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Location, Contact Info, User Content, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics.

How many SDKs does Bird have?

Bird integrates 30 third-party SDKs. 3 for advertising, 9 for analytics, 1 for crash reporting, 3 for payments, 1 for social integration, 7 for infrastructure, and 3 for other.

Does Bird use Facebook tracking?

Yes. Bird includes 3 Facebook SDKs: Facebook AEM, Facebook SDK, and Facebook Core. These are used for ad measurement, attribution, and integration with Facebook's advertising platform (developers.facebook.com).

Does Bird use Google SDKs?

Yes. Bird includes 12 Google or Firebase SDKs: Firebase A/B Testing, Firebase Analytics, Firebase Core, Firebase Remote Config, Google App Measurement, Google Data Transport, Firebase Crashlytics, Google Sign-In, Firebase Core Extension, Firebase Core Internal, Firebase Installations, and Google Utilities. These are primarily used for analytics and cloud services.

Does Bird access your location?

Yes. Bird requests location access. The developer states: "Used to find Birds near you.".

Does Bird access your camera or microphone?

Bird requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "Used to scan QR codes and take pictures of where you parked a Bird". Microphone access is for "Used to record identity verification video". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Bird access your contacts?

Yes. Bird requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "Used to choose friends to invite to Bird.".

Does Bird run in the background?

Yes. Bird registers 4 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Bird?

Other travel apps include Air Canada , Aeroméxico , Air France , Airalo , Airbnb , and Priority Pass+ . Each app takes a different approach to travel and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Travel · Privacy report

Bird — Ride Electric

Free · ★4.9 · Blue Jay Transit Inc.

Is Bird safe?

It leans heavily on third-party trackers.

Our take. Bird is built with more third-party tracking code than 87% of the travel we have scanned.

Privacy footprint · vs 103 travelHeavy

Trackers from other companies12 · a lot

typical travel: 5

Data the app links to you7 types · some

typical travel: 5 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Bird links 7 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Bird ties to your identity.

PurchasesLocationContact InfoUser ContentIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnostics

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 4 companies.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🇺🇸GoogleAnalytics

Firebase, AdMob and Google analytics SDKs, built to record how you use the app and serve ads.

SDKs

🇺🇸MetaAdvertising

Facebook advertising SDKs, built to link app activity to Facebook and Instagram ad profiles.

SDKs

🏢Messaging SDKMessaging

Push notification and messaging platform.

SDKs

🏢Other third partiesanalytics

A third-party SDK.

SDK

How it compares

Where it sits among travel.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one travel app. Bird sits to the right, carrying more third-party tracking than most.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 30 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 12 are third-party trackers.

3advertising

9analytics

1crash reporting

17standard libraries

12 of the 30 are third-party trackers. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

GoogleAnalytics · USA

Firebase A/B Testing · Firebase Analytics · Firebase Core · Firebase Remote Config · Google Data Transport

MetaAdvertising · USA

Facebook AEM · Facebook SDK · Facebook Core

Messaging SDKMessaging

Braze · Braze Location · Braze UI

Other third partiesanalytics

Google App Measurement

Standard libraries17 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v4.391.0, 2026-04-03.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 103 travel in our corpus. Trackers: median 5. Data linked to you: median 5.