Steadex Privacy Policy

Accounts and Sign in with Apple

Steadex accounts use Sign in with Apple and Supabase Auth. Account sign-in is currently available in the iPhone app; the Android version does not offer sign-in yet. Apple gives the app a stable app-specific account identifier and may provide your name and email address, including an Apple private-relay address if you choose Hide My Email.

Supabase stores your Steadex user ID, your Apple app-specific identifier, the email address Apple provides, authentication records, and security and network metadata to create and protect your account. Your display name and session tokens are kept in encrypted storage on your device. See Supabase's privacy policy.

AI identification

Identification runs in the cloud. When you scan, the app sends the photo, your Steadex session token, and your in-app level to our server, which is hosted on Vercel. The server checks your session with Supabase and your subscription status with RevenueCat, then sends the photo, without your session token, user ID, name, email, or location, to an AI identification provider.

Our default provider is Anthropic's Claude API. Google's Gemini API is kept as a backup provider and may process a scan instead. The photo is used to answer that request and is not stored by our server. Under these providers' commercial API terms, API inputs and outputs are not used to train their models unless the customer opts in; providers may keep data for a limited time for abuse prevention, security, or legal reasons. See Anthropic's privacy information and Google's Gemini API terms.

If you take a camera scan without a connection, the photo waits in a queue on your device and is sent when you are back online.

Scan allowances and abuse prevention

• Free scan: we record your user ID and whether your one free identification has been used. This record is kept until your account is deleted.
• Steadex Pro: we record your user ID, the UTC day, and the number of scans used that day. These records are deleted after about 35 days.
• Abuse prevention: we record a keyed, pseudonymous hash of the request IP address with your user ID and the time of the request. These records are deleted after about 25 hours. The raw IP address is not stored in this table.
• Service capacity: we count total identification requests per day without any user identifier.

An encrypted copy of your remaining allowance on your device is used only to update the screen; the server's count is authoritative. Hosting, authentication, and network providers may process IP addresses and request metadata to operate and secure their services.

Steadex Pro and RevenueCat

Steadex Pro is an optional monthly subscription bought through Apple's App Store or Google Play and managed through RevenueCat, a purchase-management service that processes this information for us. Your Apple app-specific identifier is used as your RevenueCat customer ID so Pro can be restored on your devices. RevenueCat processes that identifier, purchase and receipt history, subscription status, and platform and network information to validate and administer access. The app turns off RevenueCat's optional automatic collection of device identifiers.

Your app store processes your payment details; we do not receive them. Your name, email, photos, and journal are not sent to RevenueCat. See RevenueCat's privacy policy.

Your journal, photos, and backups

Your journal (catalogued species, saved photos, field notes, favorites, progress, and settings) is stored in the app's private storage on your device and is separated by account.

If you tap Back up now, your journal and saved photos are uploaded to private, account-scoped Supabase storage so you can restore them on another device with Restore journal from cloud backup. Backups are not made automatically. Cloud copies are deleted with your Steadex account.

Camera, photo library, and location

Steadex asks for access to your camera and photo library so you can identify and save plants, animals, and homestead items.

The private discovery map is off by default. If you turn it on, Steadex asks for foreground location only when you save a camera discovery, rounds the coordinates to an approximate area, and stores that area in your journal. Steadex does not use background location and does not attach location to identification requests. Map areas are included in a backup if you make one.

Advertising, analytics, and sale of data

Steadex contains no advertising and no third-party behavioral-analytics or crash-reporting SDKs, and it does not track you across other companies' apps or websites. We do not sell your personal information.

Account deletion

In the app, open PROFILE → Account → Delete account. Steadex asks Apple to confirm your identity again, then deletes your RevenueCat customer record, your Supabase account with its allowance and abuse-prevention records, and your cloud backup, revokes the app's Sign in with Apple authorization, and erases the journal, photos, notes, settings, and account data stored by the app on that device. The fresh Apple credential used to approve deletion is not kept.

Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription. Cancel Steadex Pro in your app store's subscription settings; the app links there before you continue. If you no longer have the app, see Delete your account.

If you revoke Steadex's Sign in with Apple authorization in your Apple Account settings, the app returns to the sign-in screen and erases that account's local data once it detects the revocation.

Children

Steadex is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Changes

We may update this policy. The date above changes when we do.

Contact

Thomistico LLC, Minnesota, United States · [email protected]