Privacy Policy

The short version: we collect what it takes to run your account, log your catches, and show you relevant conditions — never more. We don't sell your data and we don't track you across other sites. No ads are served today; if we ever add them, the free tier is where they would appear and paid plans would stay ad-free. We use Google Analytics to see how the site is used. Outside parties that see anything are listed in full in section 4 — the company that hosts this app, the public weather and tide agencies we query with coordinates alone, our email provider, our payment processor, the analytics provider, and the species-recognition service that sees a catch photo if you upload one.

Account info. Your email, a password (stored only as a one-way bcrypt hash — we never see or log it in plain text), the name you give us, your home state or region, and your date of birth. Home state and date of birth are required at signup — the date of birth is used only to confirm you're old enough to create an account (see "Children's privacy" below) and is never shown to other anglers.

Email verification. After you sign up we send a one-time verification link to confirm you own the email address. Choosing a paid plan requires a verified email; the free legality reading never does.

Catches you log. Species, size, whether you kept or released it, bait/technique notes, structure and depth, an optional photo, and the exact location and time — because that's the point of a catch log. We strip a photo's camera metadata — including any GPS coordinates your phone wrote into it — before storing it. Your catch's location is recorded in the log, where the Private/Community/Public setting you chose governs who can see it; it is never carried inside the image file, where that setting couldn't reach it.

Waypoints you save. A name, notes, and the exact coordinates of any spot you choose to save.

Device location. Only requested when you tap something that needs it — saving a waypoint, logging a catch, or "Waters near me" on the water picker. Your browser prompts you every time; declining never blocks the free legality reading. "Waters near me" specifically never sends your location to our servers at all — it's used only inside your browser to re-sort the list you're already looking at.

Your last water. If you're signed in, we store which water and fish you last looked up, so signing in on any device puts you back on that reading instead of a default one. It's the name of a water in our catalog — not a device location — and it's deleted with your account.

Conditions snapshot. When you log a catch, we automatically attach the weather, tide, and barometric conditions at that place and time, pulled from the public sources below and stored with your catch record.

No cross-site tracking by us, and we don't build advertising profiles. We do use Google Analytics to count visits and see which waters and pages anglers actually use — that sets its own cookies (see section 4). No social-login data — sign-in is email and password only, nothing from Google, Facebook, or anyone else. No payment card details, ever: subscriptions are billed through Stripe's own hosted checkout, so your card number goes straight to Stripe and never touches our servers (see section 4). We never send your email address, name, catches, or waypoints to an advertiser.

Every catch has a visibility level you choose, per catch: Private (only you), Community (species, size, photo, and general region are visible to other signed-in anglers — never your email, never the exact water or coordinates, never more than your first name), or Public (the exact water and coordinates are shown too, only if you explicitly choose this). Waypoints are private by default and are never shown to other anglers.

Hosting & infrastructure. The servers and database holding your account, catches, and waypoints are operated by Render; Cloudflare provides DNS and network routing for anglersintel.net. Neither is authorized to use your data for anything but running this Service.

Catch photo storage. A photo you attach to a catch is stored either in the same database as the rest of that catch or in a private object-storage bucket we control at a cloud infrastructure provider — an implementation detail that changes nothing about who can see it. The bucket is not public: an image is served through a link that is specific to one photo and expires. A photo is deleted when the account it belongs to is deleted, and the metadata stripping described in section 1 happens before it is stored anywhere.

Live conditions data. To show flow, tide, and barometric readings we query USGS, NOAA CO-OPS, and Open-Meteo using a location's coordinates only — never your name, email, or account information.

Email delivery. Verification emails are sent through Resend, a transactional email provider. Resend sees the email address and message content needed to deliver that one email — your account name and a one-time verification link — and nothing else about your account.

Payments. Paid plans are billed through Stripe. When you subscribe you are taken to a checkout page hosted by Stripe, and card details are entered there, not here — this Service never receives, transmits, or stores your card number. Stripe receives your email address and the plan you chose, and tells us back only whether the subscription is active and when it renews. We store that answer, plus Stripe's own identifiers for your customer and subscription records, so we know what your account is entitled to. Card updates, invoices, and cancellation all happen in Stripe's billing portal, which you can open from your account page. Stripe's own privacy policy governs what it does with the payment information you give it.

Photo identification. If you upload a photo to identify a catch, that image is sent to Fishial.AI, a third-party species-recognition service, which returns candidate species. They receive the photo itself and nothing else — not your name, email, account, or the water you were fishing. This only happens when you choose to upload a photo; it is never automatic.

Analytics. We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used — how many people visit, which waters and species get looked up, which pages get read. It sets its own cookies and Google receives your IP address and general location as part of that, which is processing we don't control and can't see; Google's own privacy policy governs it. We never send Google your name, email, catches, or waypoints, and we don't use it to build an advertising profile of you.

Advertising. No ads are served today, and no advertising network is connected to this Service. The reading screen carries an empty ad slot on the free tier, but nothing fills it — no ad-network cookie or device identifier is set by us or on our behalf. If we do connect an ad provider, ads would appear on the free tier only, paid plans would stay ad-free, and we will name the provider here before the first ad is served. Whatever we use, we will never hand it your email address, name, catches, or waypoints.

We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we do not share it with data brokers.

Deleting your account. You can delete your account yourself, at any time, from your account page — no email required and no waiting on us. Deleting erases your profile, your login, every catch you've logged (including photos, notes, and coordinates), and every waypoint you've saved. It takes effect immediately, it is permanent, and we can't recover it afterward. We ask for your password and a typed confirmation first, because there's no undo.

Deleting individual items. You can delete a saved waypoint on its own, any time, from your account. There isn't yet a per-catch delete button — deleting your account removes all of them, and we'd rather say that plainly than imply a button that isn't built.

Data is otherwise kept for as long as your account is active.

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored or logged in plain text. Session tokens are stored server-side only as a one-way hash; the real token lives in your browser and is sent only to our own API over HTTPS. No system is perfectly secure, but we don't keep anything we don't need in the first place.

Angler's Intel Net is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Signup requires a date of birth and is rejected for anyone under 13 — this is an active check on account creation, not just a policy statement. If you believe a child has created an account despite that check, contact us and we'll delete it.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete your personal information, or to object to certain processing. Contact us below to exercise these rights.

We'll update the "last updated" date above whenever this changes; material changes will be called out here, not buried in a version bump.

Questions about this policy, or a data/deletion request: admin@anglersintel.net. You don't need to email us to delete your account — you can do that yourself from your account page, or at anglersintel.net/delete-account.