Your data stays in Malaysia, or Singapore at most
Why
In October 2026 Malaysia told civil servants to uninstall Waze because its data is controlled under another country’s law. Bound should never be that app.
The risk
Fewer services to choose from. Three we rely on are still abroad today: TomTom (Netherlands), Cloudflare (US) and Proton Mail (Switzerland) for emails you send us. Our privacy policy names them, and we replace what we can.
What it costs
More work, and running some servers ourselves, like our crash reports in Singapore.
Cloudflare, not a Malaysian data centre (for now)
Why
Bound’s server, map and website run on Cloudflare. Malaysian hosts such as Exabytes could run them too, and we priced one. Cloudflare costs less than a pair of Malaysian servers, needs no upkeep, blocks attacks, and has no cap on how many drivers can load the map at once; one Malaysian server would cap it at about ten in the same second. We will move what we keep to a Malaysian server when Bound first stores anything personal, like accounts or subscriptions.
The risk
Cloudflare is a US company under US law. What we store there (hazard reports, places drivers add, toll answers, none of it tied to a person) sits in its Asia-Pacific region, and Cloudflare does not tell us which country. Your searches and routes are handled at whichever Cloudflare data centre your internet provider connects to. We measured on 27 October 2026: Malaysian mobile data reached Singapore; one Malaysian home broadband line reached Los Angeles.
What it costs
Less control over where requests are handled than our own server would give. If a Malaysian mobile network is ever measured going outside Malaysia or Singapore, we move.
No accounts
Why
You don’t need an identity to get somewhere. Accounts bring passwords, personal data to protect, and personal data to lose.
The risk
Nothing syncs between phones. Lose your phone and your saved places go with it.
What it costs
Nothing to run, and nothing to leak.
Live traffic from TomTom
Why
Traffic is the one thing we can’t collect ourselves on day one, and TomTom licenses it for turn-by-turn navigation.
The risk
We depend on one provider, from outside Malaysia, for the arrival times you see.
What it costs
We pay for every route that includes traffic, so Bound rechecks traffic every 10 minutes rather than every second.
Our own map of places
Why
In our tests TomTom found 8 of 12 everyday searches, and 4 of the 12 existed in no dataset at all. Once Bound learns a place, it never has to learn it again.
The risk
It is only as good as the drivers who keep it up to date, so new places and reports need review.
What it costs
Review time, and work to keep spam out.
Serving our own map
Why
Map providers charge per map tile shown. At 100,000 drivers that would be about US$90,000 a month; serving the map ourselves costs about US$190.
The risk
We maintain it ourselves: the map is refreshed from OpenStreetMap every month, and if our map server fails, the map is blank until we fix it.
What it costs
Engineering time up front, instead of a bill that grows with every driver.
Think we got one wrong?
Tell us why. Every choice here can change when the facts do. Write to us: hello@get-bound.app