Backporch Almanac
Backporch Almanac follows nature through the year, county by county. It's operated by Carat International LLC ("Backporch," "we," "us"). This policy covers both Backporch Almanac apps, iPhone and iPad: what they send us, why, how long we keep it and how to remove it.
The short version
- No account, no sign-in, and nothing on our server tied to your name or email.
- Your notes, voice notes and sighting log stay on your iPhone or iPad.
- If you use your location, our server uses it once to find your county and doesn't keep it, not even in its logs.
- Shared photos are redrawn at no more than 800 pixels, without GPS or other hidden data. They appear after an automatic check that they're a nature photo with nothing objectionable in them. Anyone can see them, in the app or at their web address, labelled with the county and date, until they're deleted after 30 days.
- If you subscribe, Apple takes the payment and keeps the record. So your plan also works in the other Backporch app, the app saves Apple's signed record of it in your own iCloud. We can't read it and never receive it.
- No advertising, analytics or crash-reporting code, no tracking across apps or websites, and nothing sold or shared for advertising.
1. What we collect and why
| Data | Why we collect it |
|---|---|
| Your coordinates once, if you tap Use my location, or a ZIP code you type instead | To find your county. Our ZIP-to-county list isn't linked to you |
| The county or species you're looking at | To send the right forecasts, weather, sightings and photos. Where these come from outside science and weather sources, our server sends them nothing about you |
| Alert settings, if you allow notifications: Apple's push token for your device, which app you use (iPhone or iPad), and for each saved place a random ID, the county code, its time zone, which alerts are on, how many days' notice you want and any migrating species you've set a bell on. Also a record of alerts sent | To work out which alerts are due, send them through Apple and never send one twice |
| Sighting reports | To show how many reports each county has |
| Shared photos, photo reports, blocks and strikes | To check your photo against the sharing rules, show it, and handle reports, blocks and repeated breaking of the rules |
| Your subscription | Handled by Apple. Apple's signed record of it is saved in your own iCloud so your iPhone and iPad apps can both see it. It never comes to our server |
| Photos to identify | To put a name to what you photographed |
| A random code made by the app for Identify | To stop anyone overusing the photo naming service. Our server keeps only a one-way daily version of it, never the code itself |
| Your email address and message, if you write to us | Only to reply |
| Technical logs | Security and debugging. Our hosting provider records each request's address and connection details such as your IP address. If you've shared, reported or blocked a photo, requests about shared photos include your photo ID |
Your location
If you tap Use my location and give permission, the app reads your location once, while it's open, and sends the coordinates to our server inside the request, where our hosting provider's logs don't record them. Our server asks a public government mapping service which county they fall in, and your device saves the answer. The service gets them from our server, not your device, so it never sees your IP address or who you are. Our server doesn't keep them. Your device also asks Apple's map service for the name of your town.
There's one exception. The first time a county is seen, our server saves one point to forecast it from, normally the county's own centre. If the mapping service ever failed to give one, the server would use the location it was sent, rounded to about 7 miles, so no precise point can be stored.
Sightings
"I'm seeing these" sends the species, the county, the day, a random ID for the report and a one-way code (a SHA-256 hash). Your device makes the code from a random installation ID that never leaves it, mixed with the species and the day, so the reports we store can't be linked to each other or to your device. No push token, coordinates or photo goes with a report, and it's stored without your IP address. Others see counts by county, on a map of the last 3 weeks and on the species page, and people watching that county may get an alert.
Shared photos
You pick one picture, from the camera or Apple's photo picker, which gives the app only that picture. Before it leaves your device, the app redraws it as fresh pixels, no more than 800 pixels on the long side. That removes every hidden tag: GPS location, the time it was taken, camera and device details. It can't change what the picture shows, so check it for things like a house number.
It comes with the species, county and day, and a separate random ID for your installation of the app. The app only makes that ID the first time you share, report or block a photo. It's the same on every photo you share and isn't tied to your name, an account or your device's serial number. It lets you delete your photos and lets others block you, and the app sends it when it loads photos so people you've blocked stay hidden. For 30 days after you share a photo, the app also sends it to ask whether one of your photos was taken down, so it can tell you. Reporting a photo stores your installation ID and a reason, and blocking someone stores yours and theirs. Before anyone else sees a shared photo, it's checked automatically by an AI model run by our hosting provider and by an AI service, and the AI service decides any photo those checks aren't sure about. A photo that breaks the sharing rules is taken down, and the app tells you why. If it was taken down for nudity, sexual content, violence, gore, hate, self harm or anything illegal, that's a strike against your photo ID: the first is a warning, and after the second, that installation of the app can no longer share photos. A photo taken down because it shows a face or writing, or isn't nature, is never a strike. When a photo is reported, the AI service looks at it again, at most once a day, and a photo with 4 reports is hidden until it has. If you write to us about a photo, we'll look at it and take it down if it shouldn't be there. Each installation can share up to 10 photos a day.
Anyone using Backporch who opens that species' page can see the photo, wherever they live. It shows the county and the date, nothing more precise.
Identify
To name a photo, the app sends our server the picture, redrawn the same way as a shared photo, and whether it's a plant or an animal. Our server asks an AI service to name it. We don't keep the photo, and our logs never record it. The service doesn't use it to train its models. It may keep it for up to 30 days to check for abuse, and then deletes it. If that service can't answer, our server asks a backup AI model run by our hosting provider, which doesn't keep it.
2. What we deliberately do not collect
- Your name, email address or an account. The app never asks for them.
- A precise location on our server, a location history or background location.
- Advertising identifiers, tracking across apps and websites, or anything from data brokers.
- Analytics or crash reporting. The app has no code for either and no third-party software kits.
- What you make in Backporch. Note cards and their photos, voice notes, your identifications (the specimen cabinet), the app's archive of your activity, your sighting log, bell reminders and your saved places with their coordinates all stay on your iPhone or iPad, apart from the alert details above. Voice notes use Apple's speech recognition set to work only on your device, so the audio never leaves it.
Deleting the app deletes everything it kept on your device. Apple's record of your subscription stays in your iCloud. Your device backups may include copies, depending on your Apple settings. Those backups are yours and Apple's, not ours. Backporch doesn't sync your notes, places, photos or sightings to iCloud. The only thing it keeps there is Apple's record of your subscription.
3. How we use it
Only to run Backporch: the features in section 1, replies to your email, and keeping the service secure and working. None of it is used for advertising.
4. Who processes data for us
| Type of provider | What they do for Backporch |
|---|---|
| Cloud hosting and infrastructure | Our server, database and photo storage, the backup AI model that names photos, the AI model that first checks shared photos, the technical logs, and routing email sent to us |
| An AI service | Names a photo you send to Identify, and checks shared photos against the sharing rules |
| App store and platform (Apple) | App Store distribution, push notifications, the on-device frameworks for location, the camera and speech, and the name of your town when you use your location |
| A public government mapping service | Receives coordinates from our server, only to say which county they're in |
| A ZIP code directory service | Receives a ZIP code from our server, the first time anyone looks that ZIP up, to find its county |
| Email hosting | Receives the messages you send us |
Beyond these providers and what you share in the app, we give your information to no one unless the law requires it, it's needed to stop abuse, or the business changes hands, in which case this policy still applies. We will name any specific provider on request.
5. How long we keep it
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Coordinates from Use my location | Not stored by our server or in its logs |
| Alert settings, queued alerts and the record of alerts sent | While the app is installed. Deleted once Apple reports your device's token no longer works, which happens after the app is deleted, or after 90 days with no use of the app and no alert delivered |
| Sighting reports | No end date, as county records that don't identify you, unless you withdraw one |
| Shared photos, their records and any reports against them | 30 days, or sooner if you delete it |
| Blocks | Kept so the block keeps working |
| Strikes and sharing bans | Kept so a ban keeps working: your photo ID, how many of your photos were taken down for objectionable content, the last reason and when |
| Photos sent to Identify | Not kept by us. The AI service may keep them for up to 30 days to check for abuse |
| Shared photos the AI service checks | Kept by us as above. The AI service may keep them for up to 30 days to check for abuse |
| The daily version of the Identify code | Up to 2 days |
| Email you send us | Up to 180 days |
| Technical logs | Up to 7 days |
6. Deleting your data
Backporch has no accounts, so there's no delete-account button. Nothing on our server carries your name or email, which means we can't look you up. To remove things yourself:
- On your device: delete the app.
- Alerts: turn notifications off in iOS Settings to stop them. Once you delete the app, our server deletes your alert settings when Apple reports your device's token no longer works.
- A sighting report: tap the same button again.
- A shared photo: delete it in the app at any time.
Deleting the app doesn't take back photos you've shared or sightings you've reported.
You can also email support@caratinternational.net. Tell us what to look for, such as a photo's species, county and day. A sighting report can't be traced to anyone, so the button is the way to withdraw one. If you'd like your emails to us deleted, just ask.
7. Your rights and choices
Location, notifications, sightings and photo sharing are all optional, and location and notifications can be switched off in iOS Settings. Changing your alert settings in the app replaces our copy.
Depending on where you live (for example, the EU or UK under GDPR, or California under the CCPA/CPRA), you may have rights to access, correct, delete or port your personal information, and to complain to a supervisory authority. We honor these requests for all users regardless of location and will respond within 30 days. Since we don't know who you are, we may need details to find the data a request is about. We do not "sell" or "share" personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA.
8. Security
Everything the app sends to our server is encrypted in transit with TLS. Our main safeguard is holding very little: our database stores places as counties, and apart from Apple's push token, its IDs are random and tied to one installation of the app, never to a name or account. No system is perfectly secure.
9. Children
Backporch is for adults and isn't directed to children under 13. We don't knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has shared a photo or written to us, tell us and we'll delete it.
10. Changes to this policy
We'll post changes here and update the date at the top. If the app is going to send us something new, we'll update this page before that version ships.
11. Contact
Questions or requests about this policy or your data:
support@caratinternational.net
Carat International LLC