TaleWater Privacy Policy

1 About TaleWater

TaleWater LLC, a Washington limited liability company (“TaleWater,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), operates the TaleWater fishing-journal app and its related processing, journal-sharing and support services (the “Service”). This policy explains how we handle personal information when you use the app, view a TaleWater sharing page, join the waitlist on our website or contact us.

For questions or privacy requests, email privacy@talewater.app. You can initiate account deletion in the app.

In this policy, TaleWater personnel means TaleWater's members, employees and contractors who are bound by confidentiality obligations.

2 Information we collect and why

Account information. We collect your phone number for text-message sign-in codes, assign an account identifier and store your settings, privacy choices and subscription status. If you contact us, we receive the contact information and messages you provide. We use this information to authenticate you, operate your account, respond to requests and keep records of relevant choices.

Recordings and transcripts. When you choose to record, the app captures audio through your device or a connected microphone. This may include background sounds and other people's speech. We upload recordings for automated transcription and use the resulting text to generate your fishing journal. TaleWater personnel do not listen to your audio recordings, except when you ask us to check a specific recording or when the law requires it.

You are responsible for having the rights and permissions required by law to record and submit content, including any required consent from other speakers. Microphone permission does not obtain another person's consent. Some states, including Washington, require everyone in a private conversation to agree before it is recorded.

Journal information. We store transcripts, fishing dates, waters, catches, techniques, conditions, notes and edits you provide, together with generated observations, summaries, Field Notes and fishing-map information. We use them to provide and sync your journal and requested features. Generated conclusions about your fishing activity can be inaccurate. Your correction rights under applicable law are described in Section 6. Free-form content may include personal details about you or others, including sensitive details that a speaker includes. Please avoid submitting information unnecessary for your fishing journal.

Precise location. With your permission, the app collects precise location during a GPS session you start. Background permission allows collection to continue during that session when the app is off screen. The app indicates when collection is active. We use position and time to place observations and support fishing-map geometry. The app stores a sequence of timestamped device positions locally while the GPS session runs, including positions where no observation is made. We call these raw location samples. The portion needed to place your observations and support fishing-map geometry is uploaded for processing. Saved observations, pins and their coordinates form part of your journal and do not expire through automatic retention cleanup. Raw audio and raw location samples, including temporary uploaded portions, follow the same 30-day retention limit below.

We send an observation's coordinates and time to obtain weather conditions. Requests to map providers identify the area you view, which may correspond to your location. Place-search, region-label and water-geometry services receive search text, water coordinates or coordinate-based search areas. With location permission, place search may use a recent location cached by your device to rank nearby results, including outside an active GPS session. Direct requests also disclose connection information such as your IP address. Location names and other identifying details can appear in text sent for AI processing.

Purchases. Apple handles App Store payments. We and RevenueCat receive account-linked purchase and subscription information, such as product, transaction references, purchase dates, entitlement and renewal/cancellation status, to manage paid features. We do not receive your full payment-card number from an App Store purchase.

Technical and diagnostic information. We and our providers collect device/app details, IP addresses, account or recording identifiers, and error/performance information to operate, secure and improve the Service. This includes connection information generated when you view sharing pages. The app checks for updates at launch and, if you allow notifications, registers a push token; both send a device identifier to Expo. If you turn on the in-app bug reporter, each report you send includes a screenshot, a short voice note and recent app activity; the app shows you this before you turn it on.

Website waitlist. If you give us your email address on talewater.app, we store it with our email provider to send you the updates you asked for. You can unsubscribe from any message.

Quality and product improvement. Authorized TaleWater personnel may review transcripts and related extraction results to evaluate accuracy, tune extraction prompts and processing, test changes, and improve TaleWater’s features and overall quality. We also use relevant written information to troubleshoot and provide support. This work can include routine quality evaluation and selected test examples; it is not limited to a reported problem. We restrict access to personnel working on these purposes and apply the retention and deletion rules below. TaleWater personnel do not listen to audio recordings for this work.

Private locations and shared fishing knowledge. We do not reveal your private fishing spots, GPS tracks or saved locations to other users or the public unless you choose to share them. We may use information from fishing journals to develop generalized fishing knowledge and recommendations for TaleWater users, such as patterns applicable across waters, broad regions or water types. We remove or generalize details so these insights cannot reasonably identify you or reveal your private fishing locations, including through combinations of details. Merely removing your name or coordinates is not sufficient. We maintain this knowledge in deidentified form and do not attempt to reidentify contributors. If we provide deidentified information to a recipient, we require that recipient by contract to maintain those protections and not attempt reidentification. Necessary processing by our service providers and limited legal disclosures are described in Section 3. Generalized knowledge meeting these conditions may remain after you delete your journal or account, as explained below.

We also use information as needed to prevent abuse, handle privacy requests, meet legal obligations and establish, exercise or defend legal claims. We do not use your information for automated decisions about credit, employment, insurance, housing or other decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.

3 Providers and other disclosures

We use these providers to operate the Service:

Where a provider processes personal information on our behalf, we require contractual instructions and safeguards appropriate to that service and consistent with this policy and applicable requirements. Other recipients, including public mapping, geocoding, geometry, weather and government water-data services, also handle request information under their own applicable terms and privacy policies. Several of these are free or public services that do not offer a data processing agreement at all, and at least one publishes no privacy notice or retention statement of any kind. We name them here so you can see who receives a request rather than implying that each one acts only on our instructions. Depending on the service, this can include operating, securing and improving their services and meeting their legal obligations. We do not represent that every recipient acts solely on TaleWater's instructions. Authorized provider personnel may access information for purposes permitted by the applicable arrangements, including necessary security, abuse-prevention or legal work. Our statement about TaleWater personnel not listening to recordings does not represent that every provider prohibits every form of human access.

Audio and AI processing is automated. We do not submit customer content to opt-in general-purpose model-training or provider feedback programs. We may compare AI outputs and adjust TaleWater’s extraction prompts and processing as part of our own quality work. That use does not itself enroll your content in a provider’s model-training or feedback program. A new use of your content that requires permission will be explained and agreed to before it starts. Provider retention is separate from TaleWater's storage; deleting our copy does not mean every provider record disappears at the same moment. Some providers keep request logs that can include coordinates, and AI providers keep inputs and outputs for a limited period with safety and legal exceptions. Each provider's own privacy policy describes its periods. Those practices do not extend TaleWater's own storage periods.

Sharing you enable. Creating a journal entry does not publish it. If you enable a public sharing link, anyone who obtains it can view the selected content without an account and can forward or copy it. Shared content can include dates, observations, notes, Field Notes and locations. A link does not expire and there is no separate way to switch a link off: sharing ends when you delete the shared content. We disable access through our sharing service as part of deleting the shared content. We cannot recall copies independently saved by recipients or other services, including link previews cached by messaging apps.

Legal matters and business transactions. We may disclose information reasonably needed to comply with law or valid legal process, address fraud/security incidents, protect rights and safety, or establish, exercise or defend legal claims. Relevant information may also be disclosed to advisers or transferred in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy or transfer of business assets, subject to appropriate confidentiality protections and applicable law. A transaction does not itself authorize materially different uses without any required notice and permission.

4 Advertising and tracking

We do not sell personal information for money or other valuable consideration, share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, or use it for targeted advertising. We do not disclose customer information to data brokers or advertisers. These practices apply to all ages and include precise locations.

We do not use third-party advertising trackers to follow you across unrelated apps or websites. Browser Do Not Track signals therefore do not change those practices. We honor recognized opt-out signals, such as Global Privacy Control, where required by law; there is currently no sale, advertising sharing or targeted advertising to turn off.

5 Retention and deletion

We retain information only for the purposes described and apply the following limits to copies in the storage we control, including our hosted databases and storage. Providers' separately retained processing or security records are described in Section 3. A valid deletion request or a shorter applicable legal requirement can require earlier removal.

For raw audio, the 30-day period runs from the end of the recording; for each raw GPS sample, it runs from when the location was captured. The app also removes raw audio and raw location samples from your device on the same 30-day schedule. That cleanup runs when the app next opens, so an unused device may hold files until then, and expired files are removed before they can be uploaded or reprocessed. Your device's own backups, such as an iCloud or computer backup of your phone, and any copies you export are under your control, not ours.

We start deletion promptly and remove deleted account and journal information from active systems within 30 days after receiving a deletion request, subject to limited lawful exceptions. Restricted disaster-recovery backups expire within 90 further days, giving a maximum of 120 days from the request unless a shorter law applies. They are not used for ordinary operations, and deletions are reapplied before restored data returns to service. We may retain limited identifiers as needed to complete deletion and prevent restored copies from returning. We restrict these identifiers to those purposes and remove them when no longer needed for them. Raw-audio and raw-GPS copies, including replicas and backups in storage we control, follow the 30-day-from-capture limit; the longer disaster-recovery window does not extend it.

We retain particular information longer only when necessary for an identified legal obligation, dispute or security incident, restrict its use to that purpose and delete it when the justification ends. We instruct relevant providers to handle deletion requests under their obligations; separately required provider legal, transaction or security records may have different limits.

6 Your controls and requests

You can stop recording or a GPS session and change microphone/location permission in device settings. You can withdraw permission for future outside-AI processing through the app. The corresponding feature may then be unavailable; other permissions and previously saved content are not automatically changed. Without precise or background location, automatic placement may be unavailable or less reliable.

You can delete your account within the app. Signing out or uninstalling does not delete server data. You can also delete journal content. Removing one extracted observation does not necessarily erase a transcript retained as part of a larger day; you can delete that source content or ask us to do so.

An offline request reaches our servers when the app reconnects. Other disconnected devices may retain copies until they reconnect, when deletion is applied. Manage App Store subscription cancellation through Apple; account deletion does not itself cancel an Apple subscription, and cancellation is not a condition for exercising a privacy right.

Depending on applicable law, you may request confirmation of processing, access, correction, deletion, a portable copy, information about disclosures or recipients, withdrawal of consent, restrictions on sensitive-data uses, or an opt-out of sale, targeted advertising or certain profiling. We do not engage in the sale, advertising or significant-decision activities described above. We do not discriminate for exercising a privacy right.

Email privacy@talewater.app to make a request or appeal a denial. You do not need a new account. For access, correction or deletion, we may verify identity proportionately and may ask an authorized agent for proof of authority. We do not require identity verification for a legally recognized sale/advertising opt-out signal. Requests are ordinarily free; any legally permitted fee or refusal will be explained.

We respond within the period required by applicable law and explain any permitted extension within the original period. Where the California Consumer Privacy Act applies, we acknowledge covered access, correction and deletion requests within 10 business days and respond within 45 calendar days, subject to a permitted extension. Any shorter deadline for a different right or applicable law still applies. If we deny a request, we explain the reason. Where applicable law provides a right to appeal, we explain how to appeal, respond within the applicable deadline and identify any required regulator complaint route. You can send an appeal to privacy@talewater.app. Nothing here limits your legal rights.

7 Children

TaleWater is intended for U.S. users age 13 and older and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly permit under-13 accounts. If we learn that an under-13 child has supplied personal information through an account without legally required authorization, we disable the account and promptly delete that information as required by law. Contact privacy@talewater.app if you believe this has happened.

Our location permissions, collection indicators and no-sale/no-targeted-advertising practices apply to all users. Information about other people can still appear in another user's submitted content, as described above.

8 Security and processing countries

We use administrative, technical and organizational safeguards designed to protect information and limit access to authorized people and systems. No security measure eliminates every risk.

TaleWater operates from the United States and is offered to U.S. users. Providers may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate. We assess their safeguards and applicable transfer requirements; this policy does not promise that every copy remains in the United States.

9 Updates

We post updates here and revise the effective/update information. We provide additional notice of material changes where required by applicable law and obtain any legally required permission before a new use begins. Updating the policy does not itself override your choices or supply consent for processing that requires it.