Naturebook

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Terms of Service

These Terms govern the Naturebook app, Explore community, subscriptions, and Naturebook public web pages.

Last updated: August 3, 2026

1. Agreement to These Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and the operator of Naturebook ("Naturebook," "we," "us," or "our"). They apply to the Naturebook mobile app, Explore, public web pages, and related features and services (together, the "Service").

By tapping the control that accepts these Terms, creating or using a Naturebook account, submitting a scan, purchasing access, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. The Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information, and the Community Guidelines are incorporated into these Terms when you use Explore.

Some rights cannot legally be waived or limited. Nothing in these Terms removes any mandatory consumer, privacy, or other statutory right that applies to you.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into these Terms to use Naturebook. The Service is not directed to, and may not be used by, anyone under 18. If you use the Service for an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" includes that organization.

The app asks you to self-attest that you are 18 or older before you can submit a scan. Naturebook stores the statement you confirmed, its policy version, the time, platform, and app version as evidence of that confirmation. Naturebook does not ask for or store your birth date or exact age for this purpose.

3. The Naturebook Service and App License

Naturebook supports ecological discovery, education, journaling, scientific documentation, and community sharing. Subject to these Terms, Naturebook grants you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and non-sublicensable license to install and use the app on devices you own or control, solely for its intended purpose and as permitted by applicable store usage rules. The app is licensed, not sold. Naturebook and its licensors retain all rights in the Service not expressly granted to you.

Features, models, limits, eligibility, availability, and supported devices may differ by plan, region, app version, or technical capacity. Access described as "unlimited" is still subject to reasonable fair-use, safety, anti-abuse, rate, file-size, and provider limits. Naturebook is not a data-backup or emergency service.

4. Accounts and Account Security

Naturebook may automatically create an anonymous account so you can begin using the app. You may later link that account to an available sign-in provider. You are responsible for activity through your account and for protecting your device and credentials. Tell us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access. You may not transfer, sell, rent, or share an account in a way that undermines security, plan limits, or another person's rights.

5. Required AI Processing — Important

AI processing is a core and necessary part of Naturebook's identification service. Naturebook sends your scan data to Google Gemini, a third-party AI service operated by Google, for identification and certain related AI features. Depending on the feature and permissions you choose, scan data sent to Google may include photos, sampled video frames and video audio, audio clips, written descriptions, follow-up questions, prior identification context, exact coordinates, elevation, approximate place information, weather and temperature, capture time and month, locale, time zone, region, and relevant camera or observation context.

Before Naturebook sends personal information from your scan to Google Gemini, the app will clearly disclose this processing and ask you to affirmatively accept it. The AI disclosure and permission may be part of the same acceptance flow as these Terms; it does not need to be a separate contract. By tapping that acceptance control and then submitting a scan or using an AI feature, you specifically authorize Naturebook to transmit and process the applicable information through Google Gemini and the infrastructure providers needed to deliver, secure, troubleshoot, and maintain that feature.

If you do not permit or no longer want this processing, do not submit scans or use Naturebook's AI features. Because identification is the Service's central function, declining required AI processing means the core identification Service will not be available. Naturebook does not provide an in-app control that disables Google Gemini processing while retaining access to core identification. Stopping use does not delete applicable content or your account and does not invalidate processing already performed lawfully.

We will not materially expand the information sent to third-party AI providers, or use it for a materially different purpose such as training a third party's general-purpose model, without updating our disclosures and obtaining additional permission when required. Provider processing is also subject to the applicable provider terms and privacy commitments described in our Privacy Policy.

6. AI and Ecological Information Are Not Guaranteed

Naturebook uses probabilistic AI and ecological information from public and third-party sources. Identifications, confidence scores, descriptions, conservation information, hazard labels, location context, and other results may be incorrect, incomplete, duplicated, outdated, biased, or unsuitable for your circumstances. Similar outputs may be generated for other users. Naturebook does not promise that an organism can be identified or that any output is unique, accurate, safe, or fit for a particular purpose.

Do not rely on Naturebook for medical, veterinary, poison-control, edibility, toxicity, allergy, emergency, legal, regulatory, invasive-species enforcement, harvesting, navigation, or other safety-critical decisions. Do not touch, eat, collect, handle, approach, relocate, or treat an organism based only on Naturebook. Consult qualified local experts and authoritative sources.

7. Product Analytics

Naturebook uses PostHog and may use comparable providers identified in the Privacy Policy to understand app reliability, lifecycle events, feature and product interactions, funnels, subscription and entitlement events, performance, and Service health. Analytics may include a pseudonymous or account identifier, app and device state, coarse locale or region, and event properties connected to how a feature performed. Naturebook currently disables PostHog session replay, element autocapture, automatic screen-view capture, surveys, and SDK swizzling.

PostHog analytics are optional and off unless you separately turn on the analytics and diagnostics switch. Accepting these Terms alone does not enable PostHog. Your choice applies to your Naturebook account across devices and does not affect the core identification Service. You may withdraw future PostHog processing at any time using the Analytics & diagnostics control in Settings; withdrawal applies immediately on the current device and synchronizes to your account. You may also contact support@naturebook.earth for help. Withdrawal does not affect processing already performed lawfully.

8. Purchases, Passes, Subscriptions, and Included Pro Scans

Naturebook may offer free access with usage limits, three included Pro scans per account, a non-renewing seven-day Pro pass, an auto-renewing annual Pro subscription, or other promotional access. The product, duration, current storefront price, taxes, and renewal terms shown in the App Store purchase flow control over descriptive copy elsewhere for purchased access.

  • Included Pro scans are not a subscription or calendar-based trial. They do not expire merely because time passes. A usable Pro scan result uses one included scan; the separate daily free scan, when available, uses the Flash model.
  • A non-renewing pass expires at the end of its stated period and does not renew automatically.
  • An auto-renewing subscription renews for the period shown at purchase unless you cancel through Apple before renewal.
  • Apple processes payment and controls billing, cancellation, renewal, storefront pricing, and refund procedures. Naturebook does not receive your full payment-card details.
  • Deleting the Naturebook app or your Naturebook account does not cancel an Apple subscription. You must cancel it separately in your Apple subscription settings.
  • Paid access remains subject to technical, fair-use, safety, anti-abuse, and provider limits.

9. Your Content and the Operational License

You retain whatever ownership rights you have in photos, videos, audio, descriptions, field notes, comments, profile material, corrections, and other content you submit ("Your Content"). You grant Naturebook a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, copy, cache, encode, compress, transmit, process, analyze, format, technically modify, and create technical derivatives of Your Content as reasonably needed to operate, secure, improve, troubleshoot, and support the Service; provide AI identification and related features; sync your library; enforce permissions and geoprivacy; generate requested exports; prevent abuse; and fulfill your sharing choices. This operational license lasts while the content is stored or as reasonably needed for backups, security, legal compliance, and processing already initiated before deletion.

You represent that you have all rights and permissions needed to submit Your Content and grant these licenses. Your Content must not infringe intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, confidentiality, contractual, or other rights. Do not submit another person's face, voice, private information, confidential material, or precise location without all legally required permission. You remain responsible for Your Content and the consequences of sharing it.

10. Public Contributions and Reference Photos

Personal scans are private unless you deliberately publish them to Explore or another public surface. When you publish content ("Public Contributions"), it may be visible in the app and on public web pages, search previews, social previews, feeds, maps, and species pages. Public Contributions may include your public author identity, privacy-filtered location, species labels, observation context you elect to publish, engagement, and comments.

For each Public Contribution, you grant Naturebook a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable license to host, reproduce, format, adapt for technical or editorial display, translate, communicate, publicly perform or display, distribute, make available, index, moderate, and promote that contribution in connection with Naturebook and its scientific and educational purposes. This includes permission to select eligible shared photos as species reference imagery and to show them to other users as a reference for, comparison with, or support for other identifications. Naturebook may display the public attribution connected to the contribution while it remains available.

Naturebook's current reference-image system considers only eligible, visible Explore photos that satisfy quality, confidence, moderation, media, and geoprivacy rules. Unsharing a post, deleting the underlying scan, deleting your account, or moderation may remove the photo from active Naturebook public and reference surfaces after processing and cache delays. Removal does not reverse identifications already delivered or require Naturebook to recall copies that others lawfully made while the contribution was public, except where applicable law requires otherwise. Naturebook will not license your original media as a standalone stock-media asset unless you separately agree.

11. Scientific Observation Data and Commercial Use

Every scan submitted to Naturebook contributes a scientific observation to the Naturebook database. This is a required, non-optional condition of submitting a scan and using the identification Service. The scientific observation includes the observation's exact and privacy-projected coordinates when present, elevation and coordinate uncertainty, observation time, taxonomy and taxonomy version, identification and confidence, confirmation or review state, environmental measurements, biological traits, quality signals, and scientific provenance ("Scientific Data").

Scientific Data does not include your authentication credentials, account profile, original private photos, video or audio, community content, private free-form notes, or other account-owned content. Public geoprivacy settings govern public presentation of an observation; they do not remove the exact coordinates from the retained backend scientific record. Naturebook may apply additional access and location protections for sensitive species and habitat.

To the extent you have any intellectual-property or database right in Scientific Data, you grant Naturebook a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable license to collect, validate, correct, structure, combine, aggregate, de-identify, analyze, reproduce, publish, distribute, share, license, sell, and otherwise use that Scientific Data for scientific, conservation, educational, operational, or commercial purposes, subject to applicable law and our geoprivacy and privacy commitments.

Naturebook may provide or license Scientific Data for free or for a fee to scientific organizations, researchers, conservation groups, educational institutions, public bodies, data platforms, and commercial partners. Naturebook may retain any resulting revenue, and you are not entitled to royalties, payment, accounting, approval, or ownership in resulting datasets, analyses, or products. Naturebook may reduce or withhold exact coordinates from published, shared, or licensed datasets under its geoprivacy, sensitive-species, access, and legal controls even though the exact coordinates remain in the backend scientific record. If retained data is personal information under applicable law, applicable privacy rights and statutory requirements continue to apply notwithstanding this section.

12. Location, Geoprivacy, and Embedded Metadata

Location and environmental context can improve an identification and your ecological journal. With applicable permission, exact location may be stored privately and sent as AI context. Public surfaces use the geoprivacy choice available for the observation or post—such as open, obscured, or private—and Naturebook may further obscure sensitive-species locations. An "open" choice can expose a precise or near-precise location. No geoprivacy method eliminates all inference or re-identification risk. Geoprivacy controls public presentation and distribution; it does not remove exact coordinates from Naturebook's mandatory backend scientific record.

A file selected from your photo library may contain embedded capture time, device, or GPS metadata. Review the file and iOS sharing options before submission. Do not publish a location that could endanger people, private property, nests, dens, vulnerable habitat, or a sensitive species. Naturebook may reduce location precision, limit distribution, or remove content to protect people, wildlife, and the Service.

13. Explore, Community Conduct, and Moderation

Explore includes public profiles, posts, comments, replies, reactions, likes, follows, hashtags, notifications, maps, nearby discovery, reports, blocks, Field trip Outings and Events, and community identification. You must comply with the Community Guidelines and all applicable law. Naturebook does not endorse and is not responsible for user content, and we do not promise to monitor every contribution.

Naturebook automatically enrolls each account in Backyard Safari Level 1. While active, the outing title, current level, checklist counts, status, and your public author identity may appear on your Explore author profile, including at zero progress. Enrollment does not publish the underlying scans, media, notes, coordinates, or location labels. You may stop or reset an unfinished outing to hide its active status; completed status and Field trip publications have separate lifecycle rules.

  • Do not harass, threaten, shame, stalk, dox, impersonate, exploit, or discriminate against another person.
  • Do not upload unlawful, deceptive, hateful, sexually explicit, graphically harmful, confidential, infringing, or unrelated promotional content.
  • Do not spam, manipulate engagement or reports, create deceptive accounts, or interfere with community-identification integrity.
  • Do not use Naturebook to locate, disturb, collect, poach, harm, or exploit wildlife or sensitive habitat, or to trespass.
  • Do not bypass blocks, moderation, security, geoprivacy, purchase controls, quotas, or rate limits.

Naturebook may review, preserve, restrict, label, deprioritize, hide, remove, or disclose content; disable interactions; or warn, suspend, or terminate accounts when reasonably needed for enforcement, safety, legal process, or Service integrity. We may use automated tools and human review. You may report content or seek review of a moderation decision through available in-app controls or support@naturebook.earth.

14. Other Prohibited Uses

You may not:

  • copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, reverse engineer, extract source code from, or create derivative works of the app or Service, except to the extent a restriction is prohibited by law or an open-source license permits it;
  • scrape, harvest, crawl, bulk export, train a model from, or commercially exploit the Service or its content without written permission;
  • probe, disrupt, overload, or gain unauthorized access to the Service, another account, or connected infrastructure;
  • introduce malware or use automation in a way that exceeds ordinary personal use or published interfaces;
  • misrepresent AI output as verified expert advice or use the Service in clinical practice or to provide medical advice; or
  • use the Service in violation of applicable law, sanctions, export controls, provider policies, or third-party rights.

15. Third-Party Services, Data, and Links

Naturebook relies on third-party services and content, which may include Apple, Supabase, Cloudflare, Google, RevenueCat, PostHog, Resend, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, GBIF, and other ecological data sources. Their content, availability, and processing may be subject to separate terms, licenses, notices, and policies. You must comply with applicable third-party terms when using the Service.

Naturebook does not control or guarantee third-party services, sites, species data, maps, media, or links. Attribution and license information accompanying third-party material must be preserved. Access to a third-party source through Naturebook does not imply that Naturebook or that source endorses the other.

16. Storage, Retention, and Deletion

Do not use Naturebook as the only copy of important content. Biological scan media is generally retained while the scan remains active, unless you delete it, moderation removes it, storage becomes unavailable, or Naturebook takes an authorized operational or legal action. Completed non-biological scans and their media may be purged after 30 days. Temporary upload, staging, quarantine, and generated export areas may have shorter lifecycle periods. Local copies may remain on your device until the app deletes them or you remove them.

Deleting an individual scan removes its server scan record and owned media through Naturebook's deletion workflow. If the scan has an Explore post, that post and associated engagement are also removed. A private, content-free scan identifier may be retained to prevent a delayed upload or another device from recreating the deleted scan.

Account deletion. When you delete your account, Naturebook deletes your account, profile, authentication record, public attribution, community content, avatars, exports, and stored scan photos, videos, and audio through a verified deletion process. It also removes direct account linkage, device and semantic-location context, custom tags, and private free-form notes from contributed observations. Deletion may take time to finish across active systems, security records, caches, and backups.

Account deletion does not delete Scientific Data contributed through submitted scans. Naturebook retains each observation as an ownerless scientific record, including exact coordinates, elevation, observation time, taxonomy, identification, confidence, review and quality state, environmental measurements, biological facts, and scientific provenance. The retained record is not publicly attributed to your deleted account and remains excluded from personal libraries and public scan surfaces. Section 11 continues to apply. If retained data is personal information under applicable law, applicable legal rights and requirements continue to apply.

Naturebook may retain records that applicable law requires, records reasonably needed to prevent fraud or abuse or establish legal claims, and aggregate or de-identified information that is no longer personal information. Account deletion does not cancel an Apple subscription; cancel it separately before deletion if you do not want it to renew.

17. Intellectual Property, Feedback, and Complaints

The Service, excluding Your Content and separately licensed third-party material, is owned by Naturebook or its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. Naturebook names, branding, interface elements, software, and original content may not be used without permission except as these Terms allow.

If you provide ideas or feedback, you grant Naturebook a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable license to use them without restriction or compensation. Do not send feedback you consider confidential.

To report claimed copyright or other rights infringement, contact support@naturebook.earth with your contact information, identification of the protected work, identification and location of the material, a good-faith statement explaining the claim, and any other information required by applicable law. We may forward a complete complaint to the person who submitted the material.

18. Suspension and Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time. Naturebook may suspend, restrict, or terminate access, remove content, or refuse future service if you materially or repeatedly violate these Terms, create risk or possible legal exposure, harm people or wildlife, abuse the Service, fail to pay applicable charges, or if suspension is reasonably needed to protect the Service or comply with law.

On termination, your app license ends and you must stop using the Service. Provisions that by their nature should survive—including content and Scientific Data licenses for retained material, payment obligations, intellectual-property provisions, disclaimers, limitations, indemnity, dispute provisions, and general terms—will survive.

19. Service Changes and Changes to These Terms

Naturebook may add, change, limit, suspend, or discontinue features, plans, models, public routes, pricing, integrations, or the Service. Where required, we will provide notice before a material adverse change. We may update these Terms as the Service or law changes. The updated date will appear above, and we will request renewed acceptance for material changes when required. Continued use after an effective update constitutes acceptance only to the extent permitted by law.

20. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service and all outputs, user content, ecological data, and third-party services are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including warranties of accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, availability, security, or freedom from harmful code.

Naturebook does not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation, successful upload or sync, preservation of content, accurate AI output, compatibility with every device, or that defects will be corrected. You assume the risks of outdoor activity, wildlife encounters, terrain, weather, travel, property access, data loss, and decisions based on the Service. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions, so some exclusions may not apply to you.

21. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Naturebook and its owners, affiliates, licensors, service providers, officers, employees, contractors, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, content, profits, goodwill, use, opportunity, or life-list progress, arising from or related to the Service, even if advised that such damages were possible.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, their total aggregate liability arising from or related to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of US $100 or the amount you paid Naturebook for the Service during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. These exclusions and cap do not apply to liability that cannot legally be excluded or limited, and they do not reduce mandatory consumer remedies.

22. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Naturebook and its owners, affiliates, licensors, service providers, officers, employees, contractors, and agents from third-party claims, damages, losses, liabilities, judgments, costs, and reasonable legal fees arising from Your Content, your unlawful or unauthorized conduct, your material breach of these Terms, or your infringement of another person's rights. Naturebook may control the defense of a covered claim, and you will reasonably cooperate. This section does not apply where prohibited by mandatory consumer law.

23. Apple-Specific Terms

If you obtained the app through Apple, you and Naturebook acknowledge that these Terms are between you and Naturebook, not Apple, and Naturebook—not Apple—is responsible for the app and its content. The license is limited to a non-transferable license to use the app on Apple-branded products you own or control as permitted by the Apple Media Services Usage Rules, including access by associated accounts where those rules allow Family Sharing, volume purchasing, or Legacy Contacts.

  • Naturebook is responsible for maintenance and support; Apple has no obligation to provide either.
  • If the app fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple may refund the app purchase price, if any. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation, and Naturebook is responsible for other warranty claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses.
  • Naturebook, not Apple, is responsible for product-liability, regulatory, consumer-protection, privacy, and other claims relating to the app or your possession or use of it.
  • Naturebook, not Apple, is responsible for investigating, defending, settling, and discharging claims that the app or your use of it infringes third-party intellectual-property rights.
  • You represent that you are not located in a region subject to a United States government embargo or designated by that government as supporting terrorism, and that you are not on a United States government prohibited- or restricted-party list.
  • Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce the Apple-specific provisions against you after your acceptance.

24. Governing Law and Disputes

Applicable law governs these Terms. A dispute may be brought before a court with lawful jurisdiction. Nothing in these Terms deprives you of a mandatory right to bring a claim in your home jurisdiction or receive the protection of law that cannot be contractually excluded. Before filing a claim, you and Naturebook agree to make a reasonable good-faith effort to resolve it by contacting the other party, unless urgent relief or law makes informal resolution inappropriate.

25. General Terms

These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Community Guidelines when applicable, and terms presented in a purchase or feature flow are the entire agreement between you and Naturebook regarding the Service. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum lawful extent and the rest will remain effective. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without Naturebook's written consent. Naturebook may assign them in connection with a merger, financing, reorganization, sale of assets, or transfer of the Service, subject to applicable law.

Section titles are for convenience only. The word "including" means "including without limitation." If these Terms conflict with mandatory law, mandatory law controls.

26. Contact

Questions, complaints, claims, analytics objections, or legal notices concerning these Terms may be sent to support@naturebook.earth.