Privacy Policy

Effective October 23, 2026

BeastWatch is a community map of dangerous wildlife sightings. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what we never do with it.

What we collect

Account information. An email address, a mobile number, a password (stored hashed by our authentication provider), and the public handle you choose. Browsing the map requires no account at all.
Sign in with Google or Apple. If you choose to sign in with Google or Apple, that company shares your name and email address with BeastWatch, and Google also shares a link to your Google profile picture (Apple lets you share a private relay address in place of your real email). Our authentication provider stores them with your account. We use them only for your account: signing you in and the account emails you choose. None of it is used for your public profile: your handle is never made from them, your Google picture is not shown, and your email is never shown to other users.
Sighting reports. The location you pin, an optional photo, optional notes, and the time of the report.
Location. Used on-device to center the map and place your pin, and stored only when you submit a report or create a watch area. When you tap Trails near me, your position, rounded to two decimal places (about 1 kilometer), is sent to our server to find the trails around it (and, only where our own copy of OpenStreetMap has none, our server asks OpenStreetMap’s Overpass service about that rounded point); we keep the list of trails found for that point, so the next person who asks about the same area gets it at once, with nothing that says who asked. When you start a walk (Start Hike / Walk), BeastWatch follows your position until you end the walk. On an iPhone it keeps following it while the screen is locked or BeastWatch is in the background, and, if you allow location access “Always”, after BeastWatch is closed; iOS shows its location indicator while it does. During the walk your position is sent to our server, rounded to three decimal places (about 100 meters), when the walk starts, about every two minutes, and whenever you have moved a quarter of your alert distance, together with the line of the trail you are walking if you chose one, so that we can tell you which animals have been reported near you; we use it to answer and do not store it. When the walk ends, it is kept in My Hikes & Walks on your phone and, if you are signed in, also stored on our server as a backup in your account, with its recorded route (not rounded), unless you turn backup off there. If you have joined the walk leaderboards, the walk is also sent to them: they measure its route but do not keep it, and keep its times, its distance, the area it started in (to about 10 kilometers) and the sightings you reported on it until you leave the leaderboards.
Watch areas and device tokens. If you enable alerts, we store the areas you watch and a push notification token for your device.
Community activity. Your comments, votes, and animal tags, shown with your handle.

How photos and reports are processed

Submitted photos are analyzed by an AI service (Anthropic's Claude) to verify the animal is real, estimate its size, and screen out fake or reused images. Photos of published sightings are publicly visible in the app and on this site.

Location privacy

Exact sighting coordinates are never shown publicly. The public map displays locations snapped to an approximately 300-meter grid, both to protect reporters and to prevent the harassment or poaching of wildlife.

What we never do

We never sell your data.
We never show your email to other users, ever.
We never track your location in the background, except during a walk you start, until you end it.
We never sell or share your mobile number, or your consent to receive texts, for anyone's marketing.

Emails

We send account emails (such as sign-in codes and password resets), alert emails about the areas you watch, emails about unread activity in Signals, and an occasional newsletter. New accounts get the newsletter unless you switch it off, which you can do while setting up your account or at any time under Settings in the app. Every email except the account emails ends with a one-tap Unsubscribe link, and each kind has its own switch under Settings in the app.

Text messages (SMS)

If you tick the box on the sign-up form, we text one-time sign-in and verification codes to the mobile number you gave us. That is the only thing we text: no marketing and no promotions. You get one message for each code you request. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, or HELP for help. Leaving the box unticked does not stop you creating an account; your codes come by email instead. Text messages are sent by Salvus AI (salvus-ai.com) on behalf of BeastWatch. The full program terms are in our SMS Terms.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties. We give your number only to our SMS provider (Twilio), and only so that it can deliver the codes you asked for.

News content

News markers come from publicly published news coverage, are grouped by incident, and are geolocated approximately. They link to the original publishers.

Videos from YouTube

BeastWatch uses YouTube API Services. Videos from YouTube, such as news coverage on story pages and clips on the Trail Cam, play in YouTube's own embedded player, which YouTube sends to your device directly. By using BeastWatch, you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service.

That player is content served by a third party, YouTube, and not by BeastWatch: BeastWatch lets YouTube serve it inside the app and on the website, and it can include advertisements that YouTube or Google choose and show. BeastWatch does not choose, control or see those advertisements. When a YouTube video loads or plays, YouTube and Google receive information from your device, such as your IP address, your browser or device details and what you watch, and may store, read or recognize cookies or similar technology on it. Google handles that information under the Google Privacy Policy.

Signing in with Google (see above) gives BeastWatch your name, email address and a link to your Google profile picture, and nothing from YouTube. BeastWatch never asks Google or YouTube for access to your YouTube account, channel, subscriptions, playlists or watch history, and keeps no YouTube data about you. What we keep about each YouTube video is public information about the video itself, read from YouTube API Services: its ID, title, description, channel name and channel ID, the address of its thumbnail and its shape, with our own notes about it, such as the language it speaks and the animal it shows. Likes and comments on these videos in BeastWatch are BeastWatch's own: they are not sent to YouTube, and BeastWatch does not show its own counts in place of YouTube's.

Data retention and deletion

You can delete your account yourself, at any time, in the app: Settings > Delete account. It takes effect at once and cannot be undone. If you cannot reach the app, email watchers@beastwatch.app from your account email and we will do it for you.

What is erased: your sign-in (email address, mobile number, password, and any Apple or Google sign-in linked to it), your name, handle, bio, profile photo and banner, your birth year, language and alert settings, email and text consents, the areas you watch, your device tokens, who you follow and who follows you, follow requests, saved items, notifications, your chats with the Guide, your community memberships (if you run a community with other members, its longest-standing member becomes its admin), photos you uploaded but never posted, and the camera and GPS details read from your photos. The exact location of your reports is reduced to the same approximate grid everyone else already sees. Usage and error records are kept only without any link to your account or your device.

What is kept: the posts, clips, comments, sightings and messages you shared with others stay where they are, because other people replied to them and rely on the safety record, but they no longer show your name or photo: they read "Deleted account". Your likes and confirmations stay in the counts others see. Nothing kept shows or stores your email address, mobile number, or Apple or Google account in readable form.

Signing up again: after deleting, you can make a new account with the same email address, Apple ID or Google account. It starts empty; the deleted account cannot be restored.

Sign in with Apple: deleting from the iPhone app also removes BeastWatch from your Apple ID. If you delete from the web or Android, or that step does not go through, remove it yourself at appleid.apple.com > Sign in with Apple.

Children

BeastWatch is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Contact

watchers@beastwatch.app