Pocket Wildlife — Privacy Policy
Pocket Wildlife is a wildlife sighting log with a regional "dex", points, and optional groups with friends. This page explains what the app collects, what is shared, and how to delete it. The short version: your notes, photos and recordings are never shown to other users. Where you saw an animal is shown to other users only if you choose to share it on the community map, and then anonymously.
What the app stores
| Data | Why | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sightings: species, date, star grade, notes, an optional photo and the map location you set | That is the app | On your phone. If you sign in, also backed up to your account. |
| Email address and a password, or an Apple/Google sign-in | To create your account and let you sign in on a new phone | Your account (Supabase, hosted in North America) |
| Trail name (the nickname you choose) | Shown on the leaderboard and in groups | Your account; visible to other users |
| Approximate location while the app is open (only if you allow it) | To centre the map, pick your region's species list and drop a pin | On your phone; a pin is stored only if you save the sighting |
| Photos you attach | Kept with the sighting; optionally sent for identification | On your phone and in your private backup |
| Short sound recordings for bird sound ID | Sent for identification when you tap "Identify" | Processed and discarded; never stored |
Profile picture. You can choose a private photo for your own character sheet. It is stored only on your device, is not backed up, and is never shown to other users. What others see is your avatar, picked from pictures built into the app.
Gear and time of day. You can note which camera or lens you used and what time you saw the animal. If you attach a photo, the app reads the camera model, lens model and capture time from it to offer these; it never reads the photo's GPS tag. Like the rest of a sighting, these stay on your phone and in your private backup and are never shown to anyone else.
Importing your records. You can bring in your own records from an eBird or iNaturalist export file. The file is read on your device and is not uploaded. The sightings it creates (species, date, time, location, your notes, and the record's id in that service) are stored like any other sighting: on your device, and in your private backup if you are signed in. Locations that iNaturalist had obscured stay marked as approximate. To keep the public board fair, a short summary of each import (how many rows, and any automatic warnings such as impossible dates) is kept with your account, and we may check whether the same outside records appear under more than one account. You can undo a whole import at any time.
What other users can see
Only: your trail name, your level, the title you chose to wear and the avatar you picked (always one of the pictures built into the app; nobody can upload an image), how many species you have logged, your points, which groups you are in, and — inside a group — which of the group's target species you have found and on what date. Never your notes, photos or recordings. Your map pins appear to others only through the community map below, only if you switch it on, and never with your name.
The community map (optional, off until you choose)
The community map shows where people have seen wildlife. Nothing of yours appears on it unless you choose "Share my sightings anonymously". The app asks you once, in plain words, with an equal "Keep mine private" button, and records the date of your choice. You can change it at any time in Community map settings; switching it off removes your pins straight away.
If you share, other users can see, for each shared sighting: the species, its rarity tier, the location, and the month it was seen. They cannot see your name, trail name, account, photos, notes, the exact date, or anything else. The app's servers keep a private link between a pin and your account so that your pins can be removed when you delete a sighting, hide it, stop sharing or delete your account; that link is never sent to anyone.
Rules that always apply and cannot be switched off by anyone:
- Sensitive species are never shown at their real location. Species listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered, species on our own protected list, and every Legendary sighting are shown only as an area about 20 km across. The exact location of such a sighting is never sent to other users.
- Home areas. You can mark one or more protected areas (for example your home). Any sighting inside one is left off the community map automatically. Protected areas are stored with your account and are visible only to you.
- Sightings with an approximate location, species you typed in yourself, and sightings you hide are never shared.
- Your live position is never shared. The picture that marks where you are on the map is drawn only on your own device, and a newly logged sighting becomes visible to other users only 2 hours later, so a pin never shows where someone is at that moment.
One thing to understand before sharing: groups show your trail name next to the species you have found and the date you first found each. For a rare species that only you have logged, someone who compares a group page with the community map could work out that a pin is yours. Your home area and sensitive species stay protected as described above.
You can report a community pin that looks wrong. A report stores the pin, your reason and your account, and is read only by us.
Legal basis and your rights. Sharing on the community map is based on your consent (under Canada's PIPEDA and, for users in the EU/UK, Article 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw it at any time in the app, as easily as you gave it. You may also ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it or to delete it, using the contact address below.
Identification services
When you tap "What is it?" on a photo, the photo (reduced in size) is sent to Anthropic's Claude API to suggest species. When you tap "Identify bird sound", the recording is sent to a BirdNET service we run. Neither request includes your name or account; both include the photo's or recording's approximate region and date so the suggestions fit Alberta. Anthropic's handling of API data is described at anthropic.com/privacy. You always choose the final answer; nothing is logged automatically.
Sharing a photo
A sighting's photo can be shared through your phone's share menu, but only when you tap Share photo on that sighting. The app hands over a fresh copy of the picture with its embedded camera data (including any GPS tag) removed. Your pin, notes and location are never part of what is shared. What happens next is up to the app you chose to share with.
Species information
Each species entry includes a photo and summary fetched from Wikipedia the first time you open it and then kept on your phone. That request contains only the species name, nothing about you. Text is used under the CC BY-SA licence and photos show their own author credit.
Conservation status shown in the app comes from public government lists: Canada's Species at Risk Act (Schedule 1), the United States Endangered Species Act list (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) and Australia's EPBC Act List of Threatened Fauna (© Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, CC BY 3.0 AU). These are reproductions, not official versions. Introduced-species information comes from the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species (CC BY 4.0). Locations of sightings of endangered species are always private, like every other sighting location.
The species catalogue and regional rarity are derived from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), using only records published under CC0 or CC BY, and ship inside the app. Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap, built on OpenStreetMap data; loading them sends only the map area you are viewing, as any web map does.
The website and web app
The web app in your browser works the same way as the phone app. Without an account, your sightings, photos and badges are stored only in that browser (its local storage) and disappear if you clear the browser's site data. If you sign in, they are backed up to your account exactly as on a phone. The website sets no advertising or tracking cookies.
If you use the Contact form or join the Premium or Merch waiting list, we store the email address you enter, plus your name and message if you give them. We use this only to reply to you or to send the one notice you asked for, and we delete it on request. The merch shop, when open, is run by a separate print-on-demand provider with its own checkout and privacy policy.
What we do not do
No advertising, no analytics trackers, no selling or sharing of data with data brokers, no reading your contacts, no background location.
Deleting your data
Open the Groups tab and tap Delete my account. This permanently removes your account, trail name, group memberships, and the backed-up sightings and photos. Sightings on the phone itself are removed when you uninstall the app. You can also email us (below) and we will delete the account for you.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their data.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes and the app will point to the new version. Questions or deletion requests: dylan@pocketwildlife.com.