Meet the app that wants you to walk every block of New York

WalkNYC is an app that tracks every unique block you walk in New York City, gamifying each of the city's 83,000 blocks by turning them green as you walk them. It’s been downloaded thousands of times in just a few weeks and, because it relies on your location data, has raised questions about privacy (at least on Twitter). With constant data leaks and increasing skepticism about what tech companies are doing with our data, giving an app the ability to see everywhere you walked sounds risky to a lot of New Yorkers.

So I sat down with founder Joe Puccio to discuss why he built the app, how he's trying to collect as little of your data as possible, and what informs his philosophy. WalkNYC uses your phone's pedometer to detect when you're walking, then activates GPS to count the blocks you've covered. The GPS only turns on when your pedometer detects you're walking, so battery use stays low (less than 3% per day, according to Puccio). Users can track their progress across all five boroughs, compete on a leaderboard, and fill in their map of the city one block at a time.

Puccio is also the founder of Coursicle, a college planning app that he created while at his alma mater, UNC, and is now used by more than 2 million students at over 1,000 colleges and universities. He’s dealt with a lot of data and said he believes technology companies have a moral obligation to protect it. He also believes in the power of a good walk.

Read on to learn about why he walks, the app's leaderboard drama, how your data’s protected, his favorite privacy tips, and more.

Who are you, and what inspired WalkNYC?

My name is Joe Puccio. I'm originally from North Carolina and started an education company called Coursicle. WalkNYC started as a personal project three years ago, but I had the idea for a very long time. I've always wanted to walk the entire city. I originally wanted to take my Google Maps data, but it was too coarse. So I set out to fix that, knowing that I would have to create an app from scratch, to do the tracking, mapping, and privacy.