Privacy
Lifer Privacy Policy
Effective date: 28 July 2026 · Version: 2026-07-28 · Data controller: Samuel Scott Lewis · ICO registration no. ZC179934 · sam@getlifer.app
This Privacy Policy applies to the Lifer mobile application, the Lifer website at getlifer.app, and all related services, including the beta waitlist, account system, Audio Catch, Camera Catch, catches, regional species packs, Cloud Vault, map, Nests, social features, bird alerts, and support.
What changed in this version: we added information about optional Nest participation, Nest photos and reports, legal-document and minimum-age declarations, and clarified Camera Catch processing and human review, location and Life List privacy, advertising technologies, push and sign-in providers, international transfers, account deletion, children's use, and local device storage.
1. Information we collect
Information you provide directly
- Account details: email address, username, display name, and optional bio.
- Waitlist signup: email address submitted via the website form.
- User content: catches/sightings, optional catch photos, optional saved audio clips, custom species/card photos, optional Nest photos, optional location attached to a catch, Bird Walks, social posts, comments, reactions, milestone activity, Nest reports, and content you submit through appeals or support requests.
- Preferences and agreements: notification settings, visibility/privacy toggles, Nest participation and automatic-joining choices, biodiversity data-sharing choices, versioned acceptance of legal documents, and your self-declaration that you meet Lifer's minimum age.
We do not require a phone number to use Lifer.
Information collected automatically
- Device and app information: operating system, platform (iOS or Android), app version, device model, advertising and push identifiers where applicable, and crash/error diagnostics. Sensitive fields such as coordinates and authentication tokens are redacted before an error report is transmitted.
- Location data (foreground): precise GPS coordinates when you actively record a catch, use the map, set a Bird Alert area, choose regional species/image packs, review whether a catch falls within a Nest boundary, or open location-based features. Collected only with your explicit permission.
- Location data (background): when you start a Bird Walk, the app tracks your GPS route continuously in the background until you end the walk. This enables the route trace on the map. Background location is used only for this feature and stops the moment the walk ends. You grant this permission separately.
- Push notification token: generated if you enable notifications; used only to deliver alerts you have opted into.
- Usage and event data: feature interactions needed to operate service features.
- Website metadata: IP address and standard request logs from our hosting infrastructure when you visit getlifer.app.
Audio Catch
Camera Catch
Authorised Lifer reviewers may review public Camera Catches for identification accuracy and community integrity. A reviewer may approve a result, correct the species and resulting rarity or points, or mark it as unable to be identified. Corrections can be applied automatically to the catch and are recorded in an audit trail. Private Camera Catches are not included in this routine review queue. You can question a correction by contacting support.
Nests
Information from third parties
- Google or Apple Sign-In: if you choose a third-party sign-in provider, we receive the account identifier and the profile information the provider makes available, which may include your email address and name. Apple may provide a private relay email.
- Subscription providers: RevenueCat provides your current entitlement and subscription status.
- Imported birding records: if you manually import records from eBird, Birda, BirdTrack, or iNaturalist, we receive the sighting data from your export file. We do not pull data from those services without your action.
Information you must provide and optional information
An account identifier and authentication information are required to create and operate an account. A username is required for account and community features. If you do not provide these, we cannot provide an account. Location, photos, audio, notifications, contacts with support, public sharing, advertising consent, and biodiversity sharing are optional; declining them only limits the features that need that information. Precise and background location permissions can be changed in your device settings.
2. How we use your information
| Purpose | Examples | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Service delivery | Running your account, storing catches, rendering the map, operating optional Nests, sending alerts, processing subscription entitlements | Contract |
| Optional Nest participation | Matching your own catch coordinates against place boundaries, recording chosen participation, calculating place-level totals, leaderboards, milestones and Guardian status | Contract and your affirmative feature choice; legitimate interests for integrity, fraud prevention and aggregate statistics |
| Bird Walk route tracking | Recording GPS route during an active walk | Contract; explicit permission for background location |
| Notifications | Sending bird alert and service notifications you have opted into | Consent |
| Crash and error monitoring | Diagnosing app failures to maintain reliability | Legitimate interests |
| Security and abuse prevention | Detecting fraudulent submissions, enforcing community rules | Legitimate interests; legal obligation where applicable |
| Product improvement | Understanding feature usage to improve Lifer | Legitimate interests |
| Community updates | Publishing daily summaries of public leaderboard and catch activity in official Lifer community channels | Legitimate interests |
| Legal compliance | Meeting obligations under applicable law | Legal obligation |
| Billing and subscriptions | Processing and validating in-app purchases | Contract; legal obligation |
| Waitlist management | Sending beta access and launch communications | Consent |
| Lifer AI and photo moderation | Providing requested Camera Catch identification and scoring; reviewing public Camera Catches; checking public Aviary card and Nest photos against safety, privacy and wildlife guidelines | Contract for requested identification; legitimate interests for public-content accuracy, safety, and abuse prevention |
| Advertising | Historical ad delivery and measurement through Google AdMob; maintaining the disabled integration in already-released Android builds | Consent where storage or access to information on your device is required; legitimate interests for limited service funding and non-device processing where permitted |
| Open biodiversity data sharing | Considering eligible bird observations for publication through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) | Explicit consent |
Ad serving was disabled on 24 July 2026. The only active production ad unit was removed. Already-released Android versions still contain the AdMob SDK and may initialise it or attempt a request, but there is no active production ad unit available to serve an ad. Before re-enabling ads in a future version, Lifer will add the appropriate consent choice where storage or access to device information requires consent. We do not sell your personal data for money.
Our legitimate interests are maintaining a secure and reliable service, preventing manipulation, reviewing public content, understanding aggregate feature performance, providing community features users expect, and sustainably funding Lifer. We balance those interests against users' privacy, minimise the data used, honour visibility choices, and provide objection or opt-out routes where applicable.
3. Third-party service providers
We share personal data only with providers needed to run Lifer, or where you have explicitly chosen open biodiversity data sharing. Where a provider acts as our processor, its applicable terms and data-processing agreement restrict how it may use the data.
| Provider | Purpose | Data shared |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, authentication, and storage | Account data, catches, content, location data |
| Cloudflare R2 | Media storage | Private catch audio, private catch photos, private species/card photos, and public/shared images where you choose to share them |
| OpenAI | Lifer AI Camera Catch and content moderation | Camera Catch photos, including optional user-selected library photos, approximate coordinates rounded to three decimal places where available, country and habitat/biome context for identification and photo quality scoring; uploaded image and claimed species name for public Aviary card moderation; and proposed public Nest photos for safety, privacy, place relevance, face, number-plate and wildlife checks. Private-only Aviary images are not sent to OpenAI for public-card moderation. |
| Sentry | Crash and error reporting | App error events, device/OS/version, and Lifer user ID. Default personal-information collection is disabled; coordinates and credential-related fields are redacted before transmission. If you voluntarily submit a feedback report, it may also contain the name, email, and message you provide. |
| RevenueCat | Subscription and entitlement management | App user ID, purchase receipts, entitlement status |
| Mapbox | Map rendering and tile delivery | IP address, approximate location from tile requests, device info |
| Google / Apple | Optional sign-in authentication | Account identifier and profile information made available by the provider, which may include email address and name |
| Expo, Apple Push Notification service (APNs), and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) | Delivering notifications you enable | Push token, platform, and notification title/body and routing data required for delivery |
| Google AdMob | Disabled advertising integration retained in already-released Android builds; historical ad delivery and measurement | An existing build may still send an attempted SDK request containing IP address, device/app information, advertising identifier where available, and coarse region information. The production ad unit was removed on 24 July 2026, so it cannot serve an ad. Historical ad-interaction and measurement data remains subject to Google's retention controls. |
| Discord | Hosting official Lifer community channels and automated daily community summaries | Public usernames and selected public activity such as leaderboard position and points, a highlighted public catch, or Prismwing count. Aggregate catch and Bird of the Day totals do not identify individual users. We do not send email addresses, locations, private profiles, private catches, photos, audio, or private notes in these summaries. |
| GBIF and open-data users | Open biodiversity occurrence publishing, only where you opt in | Eligible observation data such as scientific name, observation date, country, generalised or explicitly permitted exact coordinates, coordinate uncertainty, and method metadata. We do not publish your account email, username, profile, private media, or private notes. |
| Resend | Transactional email (waitlist, notifications) | Email address |
| Netlify | Website hosting | IP address, standard request logs |
| Wikipedia (Wikimedia) | Species description text fetched live on the species detail screen | Species scientific name; device IP address as part of the HTTP request |
| iNaturalist | Species taxonomy and conservation status fetched live on the species detail screen | Species scientific name; device IP address as part of the HTTP request |
| Apple / Google Play | App distribution and in-app purchase processing | Per their platform policies |
Website asset providers: Google Fonts and Ionicons (via unpkg CDN) are loaded from third-party servers when you visit getlifer.app. These are asset delivery requests, not tracking cookies, but they may result in your IP address and browser information being received by those providers.
4. Information sharing
Beyond the providers above, we may share information in these circumstances:
- Business transfers: in the event of a merger, acquisition, or asset sale, personal data may transfer to the successor entity subject to equivalent privacy protections.
- Legal reasons: when required by law, court order, or governmental authority; or to protect the rights, safety, or property of users or others.
- When you share publicly: catches marked public, your public profile, permitted Nest identity/activity, and leaderboard data are visible to other Lifer users according to the relevant visibility settings. Nest identity surfaces respect profile privacy, approved-follower, and blocking settings. Public catch-map locations may be generalised to protect privacy and sensitive wildlife. Life List records may show species, date, country, or region where the feature supports it, but raw Life List coordinates, location names, private notes, and source identifiers are not disclosed to other users.
- Public Camera Catch review: authorised Lifer reviewers can access public Camera Catch photos and catch details to approve them, correct the bird and resulting game values, or mark them as unable to be identified. Review actions are audited.
- Official community summaries: if your profile is public, we may include your public username and selected public activity in automated summaries posted to official Lifer community channels, including Discord. These may show leaderboard position and points, a highlighted public catch, or Prismwing count. Aggregate catch and Bird of the Day totals may include activity without naming you. Private profiles are excluded from named summaries.
- Social sharing: if you choose to share a catch photo with a social feed post, that shared copy is visible according to the post's visibility settings and is separate from your private Cloud Vault copy.
- Open biodiversity data sharing: if you opt in, we may consider eligible future records, and any historical records you separately choose to include, for publication through GBIF under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. GBIF publication is open worldwide and enables reuse by researchers, conservation bodies, and the public. We do not publish your account identity, private media, or private notes. Sensitive species are generalised or withheld, and exact coordinates are only considered where you have explicitly set that individual catch to Exact.
You can withdraw biodiversity data-sharing consent in Lifer Settings at any time. Withdrawal stops future consideration for publication and we will remove records from future dataset versions where possible. Copies already downloaded or reused under an open licence may remain outside Lifer's control.
5. Data security
- Row-level security policies restrict access according to ownership and the visibility choices that apply to each feature.
- Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest by our infrastructure providers.
- New private Cloud Vault media, including private catch audio, private catch photos, and private species/card photos, is encrypted by Lifer before storage using standard AES-GCM encryption. Public/shared media is not treated as private encrypted Cloud Vault media because it needs to be displayed to other users.
- Some older legacy private media may remain in its original storage format until migrated or replaced by newer encrypted uploads.
- Authentication tokens and credentials are never logged or included in error reports. They are redacted at source in our Sentry integration.
- Access to production systems is restricted to authorised personnel.
No method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure. We take reasonable steps to protect your data, but cannot guarantee absolute security.
6. Data retention
| Data | Retention period |
|---|---|
| Account and profile data | While your account is active. An in-app deletion request has a 30-day cancellation period. After that period, primary account and profile data is deleted or anonymised, subject to the limited exceptions below. |
| Catches, sightings, and social content | Until you delete the item or your account, subject to abuse-prevention and legal exceptions. |
| Nest participation, Guardian history and legal acceptance | Participation and competitive records are retained while your account is active. Versioned legal and minimum-age declarations may be retained afterwards where reasonably needed to demonstrate agreement, protect users, resolve disputes, or meet legal obligations. |
| Nest photos and reports | Pending, approved, rejected, or reported submissions are retained while needed to moderate, display, investigate or resolve the submission. Removed media is deleted or made inaccessible, subject to short-lived backups, security, legal and abuse-prevention records. |
| Private Cloud Vault media | Until you delete the item or cloud copy, or until the associated account-deletion process completes. Object-storage cleanup may finish separately from the primary account purge. Limited provider backups may persist until their normal overwrite cycle. |
| Pending Camera Catch photos | Saved locally on your device for retry when you choose "save for later"; normally removed after upload, discard, or expiry. |
| Camera Catch and moderation processing | Lifer retains the resulting catch and any public-review audit record while needed to operate the catch, handle disputes, and prevent abuse. OpenAI API inputs and outputs may be retained in abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days under its default API policy, unless a different approved retention setting applies. |
| Bird Walk route data | Stored as part of your walk record; deleted when you delete the walk or your account. |
| Location data attached to catches | Retained as part of the catch record for as long as the catch exists. |
| Biodiversity data-sharing consent history | While your account is active and afterwards only where needed to demonstrate or manage consent, resolve a request, or meet legal obligations. |
| Waitlist email addresses | Until you request removal, the beta process concludes, or the operational need ends. |
| Push notification tokens | While active and valid; removed when revoked or superseded. |
| Crash and diagnostic data (Sentry) | Typically 90 days per Sentry's data retention settings. |
| Billing and transaction records | Per applicable tax, accounting, and legal requirements (typically 7 years). |
| Website infrastructure logs | Typically 30–90 days per provider policy. |
Account deletion detail: during the 30-day cancellation period, data remains stored and existing public or shared content may remain visible according to its visibility settings. Signing back in cancels the request. After the period ends, deletion from Lifer's primary systems is irreversible. We may retain limited security, consent, financial, dispute, review-audit, and legal records for as long as reasonably necessary, and providers may retain encrypted backups or logs until their normal expiry. Information already copied by other users or lawfully published to an open dataset can remain outside Lifer's control.
7. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the following rights over your personal data:
- Access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification: ask us to correct inaccurate data.
- Deletion: ask us to delete your data, subject to legal retention obligations.
- Restriction: ask us to limit processing while a dispute is resolved.
- Portability: receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
- Objection: object to processing based on legitimate interests.
- Consent withdrawal: withdraw consent at any time where processing is consent-based.
Open biodiversity records: withdrawing GBIF consent stops future consideration and we will remove your records from future Lifer dataset versions where possible. Because published records may be copied and reused under CC BY 4.0, we cannot guarantee removal from third-party copies that were lawfully obtained before withdrawal.
To exercise any right, email sam@getlifer.app. We may verify your identity before processing the request.
Response timelines
- GDPR / UK GDPR: within 1 month (extendable by 2 months for complex requests).
- CCPA / CPRA (California): within 45 days (extendable by a further 45 days with notice).
- PIPEDA (Canada): within 30 days.
Right to complain
If you are in the UK or EEA, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). In the EEA, contact your national data protection authority.
8. Children's data
Lifer is not directed at children below the applicable digital-consent age. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If the law where you live sets a higher minimum age for you to consent to an online service, you must meet that age or have any parent or guardian authorisation required by law.
Some features involve location and public sharing. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian should review your privacy, visibility, location, and notification choices with you. We apply private defaults to catches and provide controls for public sharing.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from children below the applicable minimum age. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us at sam@getlifer.app and we will delete it.
9. Automated decision-making
Lifer uses automated systems to suggest bird species, assign quality scores, classify regional rarity tiers (Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Legendary), calculate points, power social/ranking features, and moderate proposed public photos. Audio Catch runs on-device; Camera Catch and proposed public Nest photos use Lifer's backend and OpenAI. Authorised reviewers may review and correct public Camera Catch results or review moderated content. These systems and corrections affect in-app records and game values but do not produce legal or similarly significant effects on you. You may report content or contest an identification, moderation, rarity, correction, or scoring issue through support.
No other automated decision-making with significant effects is applied to your account.
10. Cross-border data transfers
Because we use global infrastructure providers, your data may be processed outside your country of residence, including outside the UK and EEA. For restricted transfers from the UK, we use an adequacy regulation or an appropriate safeguard such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, together with the required transfer risk assessment. For restricted transfers from the EEA, we use an adequacy decision or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and supplementary measures where required.
You can request more information about specific safeguards by contacting sam@getlifer.app.
11. Cookies and storage/access technologies
Mobile app
The app does not rely on browser cookies. It uses sandboxed local application storage for session information, preferences, downloaded species data, game state, caches, and offline or pending queues. Anyone with access to an unlocked device may be able to interact with locally available app data, so protect your device with its security features.
Already-released Android versions contain an AdMob SDK that may store or access identifiers and other device information when it initialises or attempts an ad request, although the production ad unit was removed on 24 July 2026. Where UK or EEA law requires consent for this storage or access, consent is the appropriate basis. Device advertising controls do not by themselves replace any consent required from Lifer. Future versions will not reactivate ad serving without the appropriate consent choice where required.
Website (getlifer.app)
Strictly necessary storage only. We use browser localStorage to remember your light/dark theme preference. No advertising cookies or tracking cookies are used.
When you visit the website, your browser loads fonts from Google Fonts and icons from unpkg.com (Ionicons). These are asset delivery requests and may result in your IP address and browser information being received by those providers.
If non-essential cookies are added in future, we will implement a consent mechanism where required by law. You can manage cookies and local storage through your browser settings at any time.
12. Policy updates
This policy may be updated periodically. The effective date at the top will always reflect the most recent version. For material changes to what data we collect, who we share it with, or how we use it, we will provide notice through the app, the website, or by email where required by law.
Where an update materially changes the agreement or requires a fresh acknowledgement, Lifer may ask you to review the new documents before continuing to use account features.
13. Contact
For privacy questions, rights requests, or removal of waitlist data:
We aim to acknowledge all privacy enquiries within 5 business days.