SnowRaven Privacy Policy

Overview

SnowRaven is a self-hosted birding tools app. It runs as a standalone desktop app (macOS and Windows), as an app on iPhone and iPad, or on your own machine such as a Raspberry Pi. This policy describes what happens to your data. The short version: it stays with you.

Your Data Stays on Your Device

SnowRaven keeps your data on your own device by choice and design. You keep it, and you control it.

• Your API keys, app settings, and the files you upload (your eBird backup and Macaulay Library export) are stored only on your device (in the desktop app's local data directory, or in the iOS app's on-device sandbox on iPhone and iPad), or on your own machine when you self-host the web/Pi version, unless you turn on the optional iCloud Sync on a Mac, iPhone or iPad, which copies the two data files, and your API keys only if you also turn on its separate Sync API keys switch, into your own iCloud account and nowhere else (see the iCloud Sync section below). They are never uploaded to the developer or to any service the developer runs.
• All processing of your eBird and media files happens locally, on your own device, while you use the app.
• There is no SnowRaven account, no login, and no SnowRaven-operated server sitting between you and your data.
• You can delete your stored files and keys at any time from the Settings tab, or by removing the app's data directory. Clearing your eBird backup also removes what was worked out from it and saved on your device: the escapee and Projects answers for your checklists, the county species lists behind the map's Completeness shading, and the saved weather and tide readings for your checklists. Replacing a file with a newer export keeps those saved answers, which is what lets a newer export ask only about the checklists that have not been answered yet.

No Data Collection

SnowRaven collects nothing about you.

• No analytics, usage tracking, or telemetry of any kind.
• No crash-reporting services.
• No advertising networks.
• No accounts, profiles, or identifiers.

Connections to Bird and Weather Services

SnowRaven's job is to fetch birding and weather information for you, so the app does make requests to a few outside services, using your own API keys, and only to get the data you ask for. These requests go directly from your device (or your own self-hosted server) to the provider. There is no SnowRaven server in the middle, and nothing is logged or retained by the developer.

• eBird: to look up checklist details, hotspots, recent nearby sightings (including, when you turn on the map's Recent activity hotspot coloring, the recent community sightings at each public hotspot in your current search, one request per hotspot, bounded and cached on your device for six hours), region info (including the species list ever reported for a county region, used by the map's county Completeness shading), and species taxonomy. Uses your own eBird API key. See eBird's terms.
  • The Statistics tab also asks eBird about a set of your own checklists, in order to find out which of your birds eBird tags as exotic escapees. It sends only your own checklist IDs, and only a small covering subset of them (73 on a 21,000-observation export, worked out on your device before anything is sent), not your whole history. The answer is stored on your device for 30 days, so returning to the tab does not repeat the requests. If you have no eBird key or no connection, nothing is sent and the tab says so. What is new here is that a figure summarizing your own history now depends on a lookup: the Statistics tab's displayed numbers were previously worked out on your device. The tab itself has always made requests, which is a different thing, and worth stating plainly on this page: it matches your species names against the bird taxonomy, and it asks eBird which locations in the regions you have birded are public hotspots. The name matching happens against a copy of the taxonomy the app already holds, so your species list is not sent to eBird. Other parts of the app already show numbers that come from eBird, such as a county's completeness percentage on the map and a hotspot's species count. The Statistics tab's Projects section makes one further request per checklist, to find out which eBird projects your checklists were submitted to. It sends only your own checklist IDs, and only after you press one of that section's own controls: it is never started automatically, on tab open, or on relaunch. The answers are stored on your device, so stopping, quitting, or loading a newer export asks only about checklists that have not been answered yet, and an answer already given is not re-checked for a year unless you press Check again, which re-asks about all of them. With no eBird key or no connection, nothing is sent and the section says so.
• OpenWeather: to fetch weather, either the historical weather for a checklist, or the current and forecast weather for a location and time you choose. Uses your own OpenWeather API key. See OpenWeather's privacy policy.
• Nominatim (OpenStreetMap): to turn a place name you type into map coordinates, and to look up the county for a set of coordinates. See the OSM privacy policy.
• NOAA Tides & Currents (CO-OPS): to fetch the tide for a checklist's location and time, or the current or predicted tide for a location and time you choose. No key or account; a U.S. government service. See NOAA's privacy policy.

What you send to these services (a checklist ID, a location, a search term) is governed by each provider's own privacy policy. SnowRaven only relays the request you initiated; it does not add tracking and does not keep a copy.

Your Location

When you use a location control (the location button on the map, "Use my location" in the map's filters or when setting a default location in Settings, or the "Current" weather and tide lookup), SnowRaven asks your device or browser for your current coordinates, with your permission. Those coordinates stay on your device: they set the map's center and can be saved as your default location locally. They are only sent outward if you then run a search (for hotspots or nearby sightings) or use the "Current" lookup, which sends your coordinates to OpenWeather and NOAA to fetch the weather and tide where you are, the same as coordinates you type in by hand. You can deny or revoke the permission at any time through your operating system or browser settings.

One thing worth saying plainly, because the paragraph above is easy to read as more than it claims: centering the map on you moves the map to where you are, and the map then draws that area, which means it requests map tiles for it. Your coordinates are not sent to the tile provider, but the tiles you request are for the area around you, and the provider sees your IP address and which part of the map you are looking at, exactly as described in "Map Tiles" below. That is true of panning the map there by hand as well. It is the normal behavior of any map, and it is the one outward consequence of centering on yourself.

On iPhone and iPad, the first time you tap "Use my location" iOS shows the system location permission prompt ("SnowRaven uses your location to center the map on your current position"). SnowRaven requests location only while you're using the app, never in the background. You can allow or deny it, and change your choice at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services. Denying it leaves everything else working: you can always type coordinates or search for a place by name.

Map Tiles

The maps in SnowRaven are drawn using map tiles served by third-party providers. As you pan and zoom, your device requests the tiles for the area you are viewing directly from these providers, so, like any website that displays a map, they receive your IP address and which part of the map you are looking at. No SnowRaven server is involved, no API key or account is used, and the developer adds no tracking and keeps no copy. You choose which base map is active with the layer switcher, and only the active layers' tiles are requested. Tiles come from:

• OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org): the default "Map" base map, served as vector tiles. The map's style definition is fetched from OpenFreeMap as well. The label fonts (glyphs) and icon sheet (sprite) are not: they ship inside the app and load from it directly, so no request for them leaves your device. A free, keyless, community-run service; see openfreemap.org.
• Esri (server.arcgisonline.com): the "Satellite" base map. See Esri's privacy statement.
• USGS: The National Map (basemap.nationalmap.gov): the "Topo (US)" base map (United States only); a U.S. government service.
• Waymarked Trails (tile.waymarkedtrails.org): the optional "Trails" overlay. See waymarkedtrails.org.

iOS App

The iOS/iPadOS app is the same local-first application: your files, keys, and settings live in the app's sandbox on your device, are included in your device/iCloud backups under the iOS defaults, and are removed when you delete the app. The app collects nothing and adds no service connections beyond those listed above.

iCloud Sync

On the Mac, iPhone and iPad apps, SnowRaven can keep your two data files the same across your own devices through iCloud. This is off until you turn it on in Settings, and it is a different thing from the iOS device backup described above: it is sync between your own devices, under your own account.

• What is stored in iCloud. With iCloud Sync on, SnowRaven writes your eBird backup and your Macaulay Library export into an iCloud container that belongs to your Apple ID, together with a small record for each file: its name, when it was uploaded, its size and a checksum of its contents, and which device it came from (the device's name, its kind, and a random identifier the app makes up on that device, which is not a hardware or account identifier). Your API keys are written only while the separate Sync API keys switch, described next, is also on. Your app settings, map preferences and cached lookups stay on each device and are never synced.
• Sync API keys. A second switch in the same section, off by default and available only while iCloud Sync is on, keeps your eBird and OpenWeather API keys the same across your own devices. With it on, SnowRaven writes one small record into the same private container holding, for each of the two keys, the key exactly as you entered it, when it was last changed, and which device changed it (the device's name, its kind, and the same random identifier). It goes only to your own iCloud account, and only your devices that also turn the switch on receive it. Apple encrypts the record in transit and at rest; it is end-to-end encrypted only if Advanced Data Protection is turned on for your iCloud account, and without it Apple's standard iCloud protection applies, the same as for your synced files. The developer has no way to see it. Turning the switch off leaves the keys on each device in place and removes the copy from iCloud, and Remove synced keys from iCloud deletes the copy at any time without touching any device.
• Whose account. The copies live only in your own iCloud account, on Apple's servers, and move only between devices signed in to that account. There is no SnowRaven server in the path, and the developer has no way to see, receive, or access what you sync. The container is private to the app and does not appear in iCloud Drive's file listing. Apple's handling of iCloud data is described in Apple's privacy policy.
• Turning it off and removing the copies. Switch iCloud Sync off at any time in Settings; the files on each device stay in place and keep working, and Sync API keys goes off with it. Remove synced files from iCloud in the same section deletes the file copies in your iCloud account without touching any device, and Remove synced keys from iCloud does the same for the key copy. Deleting the app or its data on one device does not by itself remove the copies in iCloud, so use those controls first if you want iCloud empty.

Embedded Bird Media and Link Icons

A few things in the app load directly from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's websites, the same way any web page loads an embedded image, so, like the map tiles above, those sites receive your IP address and the specific item requested:

• Macaulay Library embeds: while embedded media is enabled, the Species Detail tab and the Named Birds tab can show your photos, audio, and video embedded from macaulaylibrary.org; loading one tells the Macaulay Library which asset was viewed. Because the Cornell Lab now runs a bot check that an embedded player cannot pass, SnowRaven also makes one small status request to macaulaylibrary.org per session, to find out whether players will work at all and show its own placeholder instead of a broken one. That request carries no information about you beyond what any request carries (your IP address) and the catalog number of an item already about to be shown. In the web/Pi version it is made by your own self-hosted SnowRaven server rather than by your browser; in the desktop and mobile apps the app makes it directly. The Disable embedded media option in Settings is off by default. Turning it on prevents all of those players, their asset requests, and that status check from happening at all; direct Macaulay Library links remain available and contact the site only when you choose to open one.
• Site icons next to bird names: the small link icons shown beside bird names throughout the app load from ebird.org and birdsoftheworld.org.

No key or account is used for these loads, no developer-operated server is involved, and the developer adds no tracking and keeps no copy. These are Cornell Lab of Ornithology services; see Cornell's privacy statement.

Software Updates

In the desktop and web/Pi versions, SnowRaven checks whether a newer version is available by requesting the latest release information from GitHub (api.github.com). In the desktop apps, choosing Check For Updates then downloads the new version directly from GitHub's release assets and installs it in place. As with any request to a website, GitHub receives your IP address when these checks and downloads happen. No API key or account is used, no SnowRaven server is involved, and the developer adds no tracking and keeps no copy. Downloaded updates are cryptographically verified before they are installed. See GitHub's privacy statement.

On iPhone and iPad, updates are delivered through the App Store (or TestFlight for pre-release builds). The iOS app contains no self-update mechanism of its own and does not make the GitHub update check described above.

Children

SnowRaven does not collect data from anyone, including children under 13.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy ever changes, the updated version will be posted here with a revised effective date.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Reach out at developer@dtgibson.com.