Terms of Service

These Terms govern your access to and use of the Lifer mobile application, the Lifer website at getlifer.app, and all related services. By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.

What changed in this version: we made the access and safety rules for Lifer Nests more prominent and specific, explained how Nest locations are assembled and checked, clarified the limits of AI-assisted safety reviews, and updated the liability wording so it clearly distinguishes risks outside Lifer's control from responsibilities that the law does not allow us to exclude.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use Lifer. 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. By creating an account, you confirm you meet the applicable age requirement.

We reserve the right to terminate accounts found to belong to users below the applicable minimum age.

2. Your account

You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for all activity under your account. Contact sam@getlifer.app immediately if you suspect unauthorised access.

• Do not create more than one account without our explicit permission.
• Do not transfer your account to another person.
• Do not use another user's account without their permission.

Account deletion

You can request account deletion in the app. A 30-day cancellation period applies; signing back in during that period cancels the request. After the period ends, deletion from Lifer's primary systems begins and the account cannot be recovered once the primary purge completes. Limited information may remain for security, consent, billing, dispute, audit, backup, or legal purposes, and information already copied by others or published to an open dataset may remain outside Lifer's control. The Privacy Policy and account-deletion page explain this in more detail.

3. Acceptable use

You agree to use Lifer only for lawful purposes and in a way that does not harm other users or the integrity of the Service.

You must not:

• Submit catches or records you know to be false or fabricated with intent to deceive.
• Upload content (photos, audio, text) that is unlawful, abusive, harassing, threatening, sexually explicit, hateful, or that you do not have the right to share.
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your identity.
• Use bots or automated tools to interact with the Service without our written permission.
• Attempt to reverse-engineer the on-device audio model, Lifer AI prompts, service limits, or proprietary scoring logic.
• Interfere with or disrupt the Service or its infrastructure.
• Exploit bugs or scoring edge cases to manipulate leaderboards or rarity outcomes.
• Abuse Camera Catch, Cloud Vault, alerts, social features, or rate limits in a way that harms the Service or other users.
• Use the Service to harvest other users' data or contact information.
• Enter private, closed, restricted, unsafe, or environmentally sensitive land because a location or boundary appears in Lifer.
• Approach, photograph, handle, damage, destroy, or intentionally or recklessly disturb an active bird nest, eggs, young, breeding birds, roost, lek, or other protected wildlife.

Violations may result in content removal, account suspension, or permanent termination.

4. Bird catches and the detection system

Detection results, Lifer AI responses, rarity tier assignments, and point values are algorithmic approximations, not guarantees of ornithological accuracy.

Audio Catch

Audio Catch uses an on-device model and can work offline after the required model setup. Audio detection results are still approximate and should be treated as suggestions.

Camera Catch

Camera Catch is an online feature. Free members receive one successful Camera Catch per day, with a limited number of analysis attempts. Lifer Pro includes unlimited Camera Catch for normal personal birding use, subject to fair use. Automated, scripted, bulk, shared-account, or abusive use may be temporarily limited to protect service availability and other members. Technical safeguards may apply during unusually high usage.

Camera Catch sends a photo captured in the app, or an optional Pro user-selected library photo, to Lifer's backend and OpenAI so Lifer AI can suggest a bird species and photo quality score. Where available, country, habitat/biome context, and coordinates rounded to three decimal places (roughly 100 metres at the equator) may also be used to improve identification. You must review the result before adding a camera catch to your collection or adding a library photo result as a Life List-only record.

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 may be applied automatically to your 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.

Library-photo records do not create a competitive Lifer catch and do not affect points, streaks, challenges, rankings, or maps. They are private by default and appear on Social only when you explicitly choose to share them. Camera Catch availability and provider behaviour may change over time.

Manual catches

You may log sightings manually. Manual catches are marked as such, excluded from public leaderboards, and cannot be submitted for public-visibility review.

Catch visibility and appeals

Catches are private by default. Rare and legendary catches that meet quality thresholds may become eligible for public leaderboards and profiles. You may submit a catch visibility appeal for catches not automatically approved. Appeals are reviewed by Lifer staff.

Rarity tiers and points

Rarity tiers and point values are determined algorithmically and may vary by supported region. We reserve the right to update species rarities, the scoring algorithm, regional species packs, or point values at any time. Changes may affect the displayed rarity or points of existing catches.

Life List records and location privacy

Life List records are archival records rather than competitive Lifer catches. Where a Life List feature makes a record visible to another user, Lifer may show limited information such as species, date, country, or region. Raw coordinates, location names, private notes, and import source identifiers are not shared with other users. Location information may still be processed privately to provide your own maps and records, subject to the Privacy Policy.

5. User-generated content

Your licence to us

You retain ownership of content you upload. By submitting content to Lifer, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to host, store, display, reproduce, resize, crop, process, moderate, back up, and distribute that content solely for the purpose of operating, protecting, and improving the Service. This includes showing your content in your Aviary, catch records, Bird Walks, profile, social feed, maps, public/shared pages, moderation tools, backups, and related app features according to your privacy and sharing settings.

This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except where we are required or reasonably need to retain limited copies for legal, security, audit, backup, dispute, or abuse-prevention purposes.

Your warranties

By uploading content, you confirm that you own it or have all necessary rights, permissions, and consents to share it in Lifer, and that it does not infringe any third party's copyright, privacy, publicity, database, moral, or other rights. You must not upload photos, audio, text, or other material copied from another person, website, app, social media post, image library, field guide, or publication unless you have permission or another lawful basis to do so.

Custom Aviary card photos

Custom species card photos submitted for public display are subject to automated moderation by OpenAI before approval. Photos containing inappropriate content, or that are not bird-relevant, will be rejected or held for manual review. Photos submitted for private Aviary use only are not sent to OpenAI.

You may report another user's publicly visible Aviary card photo if you believe it violates these Terms (for example, copyright infringement or inappropriate content).

Catch photos, audio clips, and Cloud Vault

Private catch audio, private catch photos, and private species/card photos may be backed up through Cloud Vault if you use that feature. New private Cloud Vault media is encrypted before storage. Public or social-shared catch photos are separate public/shared copies and are not treated as private Cloud Vault media.

Comments and social content

Comments, reactions, milestone posts, social feed activity, and Discover activity must comply with Section 3. You may report comments you believe are abusive, harassing, or otherwise in violation of these Terms. Reported content is reviewed by Lifer staff.

Nest photos

Photos submitted to represent a Lifer Nest must be your own work, depict the relevant outdoor place, and must not contain recognisable faces, readable vehicle number plates, inappropriate content, or close-up imagery of an active bird nest, eggs, or young. Lifer strips available image metadata, may crop or resize the photo, and uses automated moderation provided by OpenAI before publication. A photo may be rejected, held for review, hidden, or removed. Uploaders can remove their submission and other users can report it.

Official community summaries

If your Lifer profile is public, selected public activity may appear in official Lifer community channels, including Discord. These summaries may include your public username, leaderboard position and points, a highlighted public catch, or your Prismwing count. Aggregate totals may include activity without naming the users involved. We do not include account email addresses, catch locations, private profiles, private catches, photos, audio, or private notes in these automated summaries. Making your profile private excludes you from future named community summaries.

Copyright and rights complaints

If you believe content in Lifer infringes your copyright or other rights, please email sam@getlifer.app with enough information for us to review it, including:

• Your name and contact details.
• A description of the work or rights you believe are being infringed.
• A link, screenshot, username, species, catch, Bird Walk, or other details that help us locate the content in Lifer.
• A brief explanation of why you believe the use is unauthorised.
• A statement that the information you provide is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.

We may remove or disable access to content while we review a complaint. We may also ask the uploader for information about their rights to use the content. If we determine that content is infringing, unlawful, or otherwise violates these Terms, we may remove it and take action against the account that uploaded it.

Users who repeatedly upload infringing content, or who misuse the reporting process, may have their content removed, upload access restricted, account suspended, or account terminated.

5A. Lifer Nests

Lifer Nests are shared community records for parks, reserves, gardens, and other birding places. They are not the physical nests or breeding locations of birds.

Participation and visibility

Nest participation is optional and requires a separate in-app agreement. If you choose to join a Nest, selected catches made within its boundary may contribute species, points, photos, milestones, Guardian standings, and social activity to that named place. Catch coordinates are not displayed on Nest community screens. Your identity is shown according to your profile privacy, approved-follower, and blocking settings.

Automatic joining is off by default. If you enable it, eligible future catches may be associated with a Nest you visit. You can change that preference or leave an individual Nest in Settings or from the Nest screen.

Boundaries, access, and safety

A Nest is a digital reference to a place, not an invitation or instruction to visit it. A marker, name, photograph, boundary, affiliation, alert, route, or other information in Lifer does not give you permission to enter land and does not confirm that a place or route is public, open, free to enter, accessible, supervised, suitable, or safe.

Before travelling to or entering a Nest, you are responsible for checking current information from the landowner, site operator, local authority, or another authoritative source. This includes checking lawful entrances and rights of way, opening hours, admission charges, membership or booking requirements, permitted routes and activities, age or equipment restrictions, accessibility, temporary or seasonal closures, weather, tides, terrain, and current safety or wildlife warnings. Conditions and access can change without notice.

You must use lawful public access, follow signs and staff or landowner instructions, stay out of private, closed, restricted, dangerous, and environmentally sensitive areas, and decide whether the conditions are suitable for you and anyone in your care. Never trespass, cross a barrier, leave a permitted route where prohibited, or place yourself or another person at risk to earn points, complete a collection, become Guardian, take a photograph, or respond to an alert. Lifer is not a navigation, route-planning, access, emergency, or outdoor-safety service.

Do not approach or disturb active bird nests, eggs, young, breeding birds, roosts, leks, or protected wildlife. Report an inaccessible, unsafe, incorrectly shaped, wrongly located, or otherwise unsuitable Nest through the in-app reporting tool. We may correct, suspend, or remove a Nest while a report is assessed.

How Nests are created and checked

Lifer assembles the Nest catalogue from a combination of public and third-party place information. Depending on the place, this may include official UK settlement datasets, curated European settlement catalogues, OpenStreetMap place and boundary data accessed through tools including Nominatim and the Overpass API, and publicly available National Trust, National Trust for Scotland, RSPB, local-authority, landowner, or site-operator information. We also use automated filtering, human review, user reports, and corrections.

Our catalogue review process includes AI-assisted research. The AI system can consider a Nest's name, approximate coordinates, locality, affiliation, map-source information, and publicly available web information, and can flag possible private or restricted access, cemeteries, military or critical infrastructure, paid or limited entry, closures, sensitive wildlife, water or tidal hazards, cliffs, steep terrain, mountains, and other access or safety concerns. The resulting risk rating and summary are advisory inputs for human review.

An AI check is not a physical inspection, legal access determination, professional risk assessment, safety certification, or guarantee. Source information and AI output may be incomplete, outdated, conflicting, or wrong. Lifer does not physically inspect or continuously monitor every Nest, entrance, path, boundary, or local condition. You must not rely on a Nest's publication, risk rating, absence of a warning, or previous use by another member as proof that it is lawful or safe to visit.

Competition and corrections

Nest points, Guardian status, founding records, milestones, leaderboards, boundaries, affiliations, and catch assignments may be corrected, recalculated, withheld, anonymised, or removed where reasonably necessary to address errors, cheating, privacy, safety, wildlife protection, access restrictions, site changes, or community reports. A Pro subscription never grants access to land or priority at a site.

Independence

Lifer is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by National Trust, National Trust for Scotland, RSPB, OpenStreetMap, local authorities, landowners, or site operators unless we expressly state otherwise. Organisation labels identify a place or operator using public information and may be corrected.

6. Pro subscription

What Pro includes

A Lifer Pro subscription currently unlocks:

• Unlimited Camera Catch with Lifer AI species ID and photo quality scoring for normal personal use, subject to fair use.
• UK and Europe species guide support, including regional image packs where available.
• Cloud Vault backup for private catch audio, private catch photos, and private species/card photos.
• Complete Catch Map beyond the free last 24 hours view, including extended history, date ranges, filters, imported records, Bird Walks, and premium map layers.
• Additional Bird Alerts.
• Offline Bird Walk tools.
• Custom card photos.
• Premium card finishes.
• Expanded profile showcase features.
• Full rankings and competitive features.
• Ad-free social feed where applicable.
• Year in Birds archive access.

The specific features, quotas, and limits included in Pro may change over time. We will not remove core Pro features without notice.

Billing and renewal

Pro is available as a monthly or annual subscription. Subscriptions auto-renew unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current billing period. Payment is charged to your Apple or Google account at purchase confirmation and at the start of each renewal period.

Free trial

We may offer a free trial (currently 7 days) to eligible new subscribers. Eligibility is determined by Apple or Google, and a trial is generally available only once per account. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, it automatically converts to a paid Lifer Pro subscription and your Apple or Google account is charged the then-current price for the plan you selected. You can cancel at any time during the trial through your App Store or Google Play subscription settings, which stops it converting to a paid subscription. If you start a paid subscription, any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited. Trial length and availability may vary by platform, region, or promotion.

Cancellation

Cancel at any time through your Apple App Store or Google Play subscription settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period. Cancellation does not entitle you to a pro-rata refund for unused time.

Refunds

Refund requests are handled by Apple or Google under their respective policies. We do not process refunds directly.

Grace period

If a renewal payment fails, you may enter a short grace period during which Pro access is retained while payment is retried. Access is revoked if payment cannot be collected.

7. Imports from external services

You can import sighting records from eBird, Birda, BirdTrack, and iNaturalist. By importing records, you confirm you have the right to use that data in Lifer. We are not affiliated with any of these services. Imported records are archive catches and do not carry detection-based quality scores.

8. Content moderation and enforcement

We reserve the right to remove content that violates these Terms without prior notice. We reserve the right to suspend or permanently terminate accounts that:

• Repeatedly violate these Terms.
• Engage in fraud or manipulation of the scoring or leaderboard systems.
• Belong to users below the minimum age requirement.
• Are used for harassment or other conduct harmful to the community.

We will generally provide a warning for first-time, non-severe violations, but are not obligated to do so.

Where appropriate, we will explain a moderation or account decision and provide a way to ask for human review through Lifer Support. If you believe a public Camera Catch correction, visibility decision, content action, or account action is wrong, provide enough information to locate the item. We will review reasonable appeals, but in-app scoring and moderation decisions do not create a right to a particular species, rarity, point value, or leaderboard position. We may limit information where disclosure could create a safety, security, legal, fraud-prevention, or privacy risk.

9. Intellectual property

The Lifer name, logo, app design, card artwork, Lifer AI prompts, scoring algorithms, and other proprietary elements of the Service are owned by or licensed to us. The on-device audio detection model and certain supporting components are third-party technologies used under their respective licences; Lifer does not claim ownership of those third-party models. These Terms do not grant you any rights to use Lifer's proprietary elements beyond what is necessary to use the Service for its intended purpose.

© 2026 Sam Lewis trading as Lifer. All rights reserved.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

Lifer is a birding, collecting, and community service. Detection results, maps, Nest information, boundaries, AI reviews, alerts, weather or habitat context, and community content are informational and may be incomplete, delayed, or inaccurate. We do not promise that the Service will always be available or error-free, that every place will remain accessible, or that information obtained from third parties will remain current.

We will provide the Service with the care and skill required by applicable consumer law. Nothing in these Terms removes or reduces your statutory rights.

11. Limitation of liability

We are responsible for losses that are a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for a loss that was not foreseeable when you agreed to these Terms, for business losses arising from consumer use of Lifer, or for loss or harm caused by circumstances outside our reasonable control.

In particular, where Lifer is not at fault, we are not responsible for loss, injury, access charges, travel costs, enforcement action, property damage, or other consequences arising from your decision to travel to, enter, or use a Nest; your failure to check current access, entry, closure, weather, tide, terrain, wildlife, or safety information; your use of private, closed, restricted, or unsafe land; your failure to follow signs, instructions, rights of way, or applicable law; or your reliance on Lifer as a navigation, access, emergency, or safety service.

We are also not responsible, where we have used reasonable care and skill, for inaccurate third-party place information, AI-assisted review output, detection results, rarity assignments, or community content, or for loss of catches or content caused by events outside our reasonable control.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability where doing so would be unlawful. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and your mandatory statutory rights as a consumer.

12. Changes to the Service

We may update, modify, or discontinue features at any time. We will give reasonable notice of material changes that negatively affect existing functionality, where practicable.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will update the effective date at the top and provide reasonable notice through the app, website, or by email for material changes. Where an update requires agreement, Lifer will ask you to actively accept the new version before using the affected feature or continuing to use account features. Changes will not apply retroactively where the law does not permit that.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Disputes that cannot be resolved informally are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, unless mandatory consumer protection laws in your country of residence give you the right to bring proceedings elsewhere.

Please contact sam@getlifer.app first so we can try to resolve a dispute informally. Nothing in these Terms removes any mandatory consumer right to use an applicable court or recognised alternative dispute-resolution body in your country. The former EU Online Dispute Resolution platform has been discontinued.

15. Contact

For questions about these Terms, enforcement actions, or appeals:

sam@getlifer.app

We aim to acknowledge all enquiries within 5 business days.