A resized photo copy
A JPEG up to 1,280 pixels on its longest side. The app re-encodes it before upload so embedded photo metadata is removed.
Privacy policy
Your discoveries.
Your choices.
Critterdex is a wildlife field-journal app created by codasite LLC. The catalog works without an account, advertising, or cross-app tracking.
Optional contribution data
Exactly what leaves your device.
For eligible signed-in captures, “Help train Critterdex” starts off. You must turn it on before a training photo is uploaded. Exact-location sharing requires a second, separate opt-in.
Your confirmed identification
The catalog species you select and, for a dog or cat, the pet breed you confirm or correct.
Recognition details
Up to five suggested species and confidence scores, plus the recognition-model version.
Contribution records
The consent-policy version, submission time, review status, file size, and a content hash used to prevent duplicate uploads.
Your field-profile ID
Contributions are linked to your account so you can see and delete them.
Exact location—separate choice
Only when you separately turn on exact-location sharing: latitude, longitude, reported horizontal accuracy, and capture time.
This policy explains what Critterdex processes, what it stores, why it is used, and how you can remove it.
Information that stays on your device
Your original photos, saved captures, personal Dex, custom critters, capture locations, and cached nearby lists remain on your device by default. Creating a field profile does not upload this collection. On-device photo recognition does not upload the image being analyzed. Deleting the app removes this locally stored information.
Optional field profiles
If you create a profile with email, we store your field name, email address, an assigned account ID, a one-way password hash and salt, and session records needed to authenticate you. We do not store your password in readable form. If you use Sign in with Apple, we store the name and verified email Apple provides—which may be a private relay address—a stable Apple account identifier, and an encrypted Apple refresh token used to revoke authorization when you delete your profile.
Optional model-training contributions
A signed-in user may contribute a confirmed catalog-species photo for private review and future recognition-model training. The contribution card lists this choice before a capture is saved, and its photo-sharing control starts off. When you turn it on and submit, we store the resized metadata-free photo and the contribution data listed above. We use it to moderate the dataset, evaluate recognition results, prevent duplicate samples, study geographic coverage when location was separately shared, and train or evaluate future Critterdex models. Contributions are not public.
Exact capture location
Exact coordinates are stored with a contribution only when the capture has a saved location and the separate “Share exact capture location” control is turned on before saving. That control starts off. The stored fields are latitude, longitude, reported horizontal accuracy, and capture time. You can contribute the photo without sharing exact location.
Nearby discovery
To return nearby wildlife, the app sends the current coordinate or searched location to our service for the duration of that request. If the service is unavailable, the app may request the same public ranking directly from iNaturalist. We do not attach nearby-search locations to your field profile or store them as capture history. You can search a city or ZIP code instead of granting device location access.
Service providers and public data sources
Cloudflare hosts our API, account database, and private training files. Apple provides Sign in with Apple. Wildlife observations come from iNaturalist; licensed images come primarily from Wikimedia Commons, with eligible iNaturalist images as fallbacks; map tiles come from OpenStreetMap. Requests to these services can expose ordinary network information such as an IP address. When a provider processes user data on our behalf, we require protections consistent with this policy and applicable law. Public data sources also handle direct requests under their own privacy terms. We do not sell information to them.
Tracking and advertising
Critterdex has no advertising SDK, does not combine your data with third-party data for targeted advertising, does not share data with data brokers, and does not track you across other companies' apps or websites.
Retention, withdrawal, and deletion
Account records remain while your field profile exists. Sessions expire or are removed when you sign out or delete the profile. Training contributions remain while awaiting review or use unless you delete them; rejected contributions are removed. You can delete an individual contribution from Field Profile, discard pending uploads, or permanently delete the profile in the app. Profile deletion removes its stored account records, contributed photos, and attached location records and asks Apple to revoke authorization for Apple-backed profiles. Removing a contribution cannot reverse learning already incorporated into a model trained before the deletion request.
Security
Network requests use HTTPS. Passwords use versioned one-way hashing, session tokens are stored in the iOS Keychain, Apple refresh tokens are encrypted at rest, and contributed photos are held in private storage with account-authorized deletion controls. No system can guarantee absolute security.
Children
Critterdex is a general-audience educational app. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. A parent or guardian who believes a child submitted information may contact us for deletion.
Policy changes
We may update this policy as Critterdex changes. We will revise the effective date on this page and update consent language when a material change affects contributed data.
Contact
Privacy questions and deletion requests may be sent to info@codasite.ai.