Naturebook

Naturebook legal

Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Naturebook collects, how it is used, and the controls available to you.

Last updated: August 5, 2026

Overview

Naturebook helps people identify and document plants, animals, fungi, insects, and other ecological observations. To provide the app, Naturebook may process observation media, account information, location context, device diagnostics, payments status, and community activity.

Information We Collect

  • Account information: anonymous device identity, Supabase user id, and, if you sign in, account details such as email, name, and avatar from Apple or Google.

  • Adult confirmation: the exact 18-or-older statement you confirm, its policy version, confirmation time and method, platform, and app version. We do not collect your birth date or exact age for this confirmation.

  • Observation content: photos you capture, select, or explicitly share to Naturebook, audio clips, descriptions, AI-generated species results, taxonomy, field notes, and scan metadata. Sharing one photo from iOS Photos gives Naturebook access to that delivered file, not broad access to your Photo Library.

  • Location and environmental context: exact and privacy-projected GPS coordinates, coordinate uncertainty, approximate place names, elevation, weather, time of day, month, and device capture context when permissions allow.

  • Explore activity: posts you share publicly, comments, likes, reactions, follows, reports, blocks, Field trip enrollment and checklist status, Field trip publications and Event activity, public author name, and public avatar.

  • Payments and entitlement status: subscription status and purchase events from RevenueCat and Apple, but not full payment card details.

  • Analytics and diagnostics: if you turn on the optional Analytics & diagnostics control, PostHog receives app events, a pseudonymous account identifier, app and device state, coarse locale or region, performance and reliability signals, feature usage, and event properties about how a feature performed. Session replay, automatic screen views, element capture, surveys, SDK swizzling, and push-notification capture are disabled. Support communications are handled separately when you contact us.

  • Web and beta signup information: an email address you submit to the beta waitlist, bounded browser metadata, and security-challenge signals used to prevent automated abuse. Naturebook converts the trusted network address into a daily rotating one-way code for rate limiting and does not retain the raw address or challenge token in its database.

How We Use Information

  • Identify observations and generate structured ecological results.
  • Maintain the Naturebook scientific observation database, including exact location and time needed to study range, migration, phenology, biodiversity, and conservation patterns.
  • Save and sync your personal scan library, collections, and field notes.
  • Provide offline upload/retry, exports, notifications, and support.
  • Operate Explore posts, comments, likes, follows, reports, blocks, Field trip Outings, and Events.
  • Enforce geoprivacy, moderation, anti-abuse, and account-safety rules. Audio selected for public Explore sharing may be sent to Google Gemini for transient speech and non-speech classification; Naturebook does not persist the transcript or model description.
  • When you separately allow optional analytics, understand app reliability, usage, subscription status, and feature health.

Public Explore and Field Trip Status

Your personal scans are private unless you choose to share them to Explore. When you share a scan, Naturebook may display the public image, species labels, public author identity, privacy-filtered location label, coarse environmental context, engagement counts, comments, and any field notes you choose to publish. Private notes are not shown on public Explore pages. An open geoprivacy choice can show a precise or near-precise location; obscured and private choices reduce or suppress the public location.

Separately, Naturebook automatically enrolls every account in Backyard Safari Level 1. While that outing is active, your public author profile may show your author identity, outing title, current level, checklist counts, and status, including before you complete a goal. Enrollment does not display the underlying scan IDs, media, field notes, coordinates, or location labels. Stopping or resetting an unfinished outing hides its active profile status; completed status and any Field trip publication follow their separate product lifecycle.

Location and Geoprivacy

Location improves identification and helps build your personal ecological journal. You can control location permission in iOS and configure Naturebook geoprivacy as open, obscured, or private. Public Explore surfaces use Naturebook's filtered location projection, and sensitive species handling may further reduce location precision. A photo selected or shared from Photos may include its embedded capture date and GPS coordinates. You can exclude Location in Photos' share Options; Naturebook does not invent missing coordinates or dates. Geoprivacy controls public presentation and distribution. It does not remove exact coordinates from the required backend scientific observation record created when you submit a scan.

Service Providers

Naturebook uses trusted infrastructure and product providers to operate the app, including Supabase, Cloudflare R2 and Turnstile, Google Gemini, Apple platform services, Google sign-in, RevenueCat, PostHog, and Resend. These providers process information only as needed to provide, secure, analyze, or support Naturebook.

Naturebook sends scan data to Google Gemini, a third-party AI service, for identification and related AI features. Depending on the feature, this may include photos, sampled video frames and video audio, audio clips, written descriptions and questions, prior result context, exact coordinates, elevation, approximate place information, weather and temperature, capture time and month, locale, time zone, region, and camera or observation context. The app requires your affirmative permission before this sharing.

PostHog receives the optional analytics and diagnostics categories described above only after an account-wide grant. Absence of a grant means PostHog analytics are off.

Tracking and Advertising

Under Naturebook's current design, we do not use data to track you across apps or websites owned by other companies, and we do not use optional PostHog analytics for third-party targeted advertising. The Analytics & diagnostics choice controls product analytics for Naturebook. Because current analytics behavior is not used for tracking, Naturebook does not request Apple's App Tracking Transparency permission for that choice.

Your Choices

  • Disable camera, microphone, photo library, speech, or location permissions in iOS.
  • Exclude Location in the iOS Photos share Options before sending a photo to Naturebook.
  • Change geoprivacy settings in Naturebook.
  • Choose whether to accept required Google Gemini processing before using identification. Naturebook has no non-AI identification mode or separate Gemini switch in Settings; if you no longer want this processing, do not submit scans or use AI features.
  • Turn optional PostHog analytics on or off using Analytics & diagnostics in Naturebook Settings. Withdrawal applies immediately on the current device, synchronizes across devices for your account, and does not affect core functionality.
  • Unshare Explore posts or delete scans in the app.
  • Stop or reset an unfinished Field trip to hide its active status from your author profile. This does not delete its underlying scans or retained Scientific Data.
  • Request a Darwin Core Archive export when that feature is available.
  • Delete your account from the app or contact support for help.

Submitting a scan necessarily contributes its Scientific Data, including exact coordinates when present, to Naturebook's scientific observation database. This contribution and retention are conditions of the Service and do not have a separate opt-in or opt-out control. You can prevent future scans from including device location by disabling location permission or removing location metadata before submission, but account deletion does not delete Scientific Data already contributed. Applicable statutory rights remain available.

Retention

Naturebook keeps account, waitlist, subscription, media, and Explore data for as long as needed to provide and secure the Service, meet the periods disclosed for a feature, comply with legal obligations, and complete valid deletion requests. Scientific Data from every submitted scan is retained for the life of the Naturebook scientific observation database. After account deletion, the retained observation is made ownerless and keeps exact coordinates, elevation, observation time, taxonomy, identification, environmental, quality, and provenance facts; account linkage, private media, private free-form notes, and device or semantic-location context are removed. Some free-tier cloud media may be subject to lifecycle limits, while local copies may remain on your device until you delete them or remove the app.

Children

Naturebook is not directed to people under 18. If you believe a child has provided personal information without appropriate consent, contact us so we can review and delete it where required. Before scanning, the app requires users to self-attest that they are 18 or older; it does not collect a birth date or exact age for that confirmation.

Changes and Contact

We may update this policy as Naturebook changes. For privacy questions, account requests, or support, contact support@naturebook.earth.