Privacy Policy

Last updated October 2026

Biotadex ("we", "our", or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We collect information you provide directly: email address, username, and display name. When you use the app we collect the photographs and video clips you submit for identification, the GPS coordinates of your finds, and your collection data. Video clips are recorded with sound.

MICROPHONE AND AUDIO

The app uses the microphone only when you ask it to: while you record a video or journey clip, and when you use Listen. Listen records about five seconds of sound and sends it to our identification server, which names the species it hears and then discards the recording. Listen audio is never saved, never added to your collection, and never shared with other users. The sound in a video you post is kept with that video, and is heard by anyone who can see it.

If you sign in with Google or Apple we receive your email address and, where you permit it, your name. We never receive your password.

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use your information to run the app: identifying species, maintaining your collection, ranking the leaderboard, matching sanctuaries, and routing uncertain identifications to nearby collectors for review.

WHAT OTHER USERS CAN SEE

Your username, display name, avatar, rank, badges, and collection are public. Photographs and videos you add to your collection, including their sound, may be shown to other collectors when an identification needs community review, and may appear in public activity feeds.

Exact coordinates are never shown to other users, and are not simply hidden from them: another member's view of your find carries only a position rounded to a grid of roughly one kilometre, and the precise coordinates are not available to them at all. Location is used to place finds on your own map, to determine sanctuary holdings, to decide who is asked to review a find, to place the crates that appear near you, and — if you turn those notifications on — to decide who is told about an event or a notable find nearby. Your approximate position is stored on our servers for those last purposes and is deleted on a schedule. We also use the longitude of that stored position to work out your local time, so that a notification is not sent in the middle of your night.

THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

Species identification is performed by third-party computer-vision services (currently drawn from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, iNaturalist and Pl@ntNet), which receive the photograph or video clip, including its sound, and the coordinates where it was taken. More than one may be tried for a single scan if the first cannot identify the species. Listen recordings are processed on our own identification server, hosted on Google Cloud, and are not sent to these services. Reference photographs of species come from Wikipedia (Wikimedia Commons) and iNaturalist and are shown under their free licences, with credit to the photographer. We use Supabase for authentication, storage, and databases. Purchases are processed by Apple or Google and recorded through RevenueCat, which receives your account identifier and the details of each purchase. Spoken narration, where enabled, is generated by a third-party text-to-speech service. We use Sentry to receive an automatic report when the app hits an error. Such a report contains the error and where in the code it happened, your device model and operating system version, the app version, and your account identifier. Location data is removed before a report leaves your device.

DATA RETENTION AND DELETION

You may delete your account at any time from Menu, Account, Delete Account, or by contacting us. Deleting removes your profile, collection, photographs, badges, friends, and any events you created; sanctuaries you hold are released. Reports you filed about other people are removed with your account, while reports other people filed about you are kept as a safety record. Anonymised service logs that no longer identify you are retained. Some records may persist briefly in backups.

SECURITY

Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit. Access to your account requires your own credentials, and what other people may read is enforced by the database itself rather than by the app asking politely. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and we do not claim otherwise.

ADVERTISING MEASUREMENT

The app shows no ads. We advertise Biotadex on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and in the App Store, and to learn which of those ads work, the app includes Meta's software development kit. It tells Meta when the app is installed and opened and gives Meta an anonymous identifier for that installation, and RevenueCat tells Meta about in-app purchases (the product and price) under the same identifier. Meta uses this to measure and improve our ads. On iPhone, the app asks whether you allow tracking; only if you allow it do Meta and RevenueCat also receive your device's advertising identifier, and you can change your answer at any time in Settings, Privacy & Security, Tracking. Without your permission, Meta receives only its anonymous identifier and reports to us in aggregate. We never send Meta your name, email address, photographs, finds or location. On iPhone, Apple tells us and RevenueCat which App Store ad led to an install, without identifying you.

We do not sell your information or share it with data brokers. Apart from the above and the error reporting described earlier, nothing is reported automatically. Our website sets no cookies.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Our servers, and the third-party services described above, are located in the United States. Using Biotadex from elsewhere means your information is transferred to and processed there.

CHILDREN

Biotadex is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information.

CONTACT

For privacy questions: privacy@biotadex.app