Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2 September 2026

Piscaro is an iOS app published from the United Kingdom ("we", "us", "our"). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding that information.

Information we collect

Account Information

When you sign in with Apple, we receive and store:

  • Your Apple User ID (a unique identifier)
  • Your name (if you choose to share it)
  • Your email address (if you choose to share it)

Your Apple User ID is stored securely in the iOS Keychain. Your name and email are stored locally on your device and in your personal iCloud account. We do not transmit this information to any external server.

Fishing Data

All fishing data you enter into the app is created and controlled by you, including:

  • Venues and swim locations
  • Fishing sessions and timeline entries
  • Catch records (species, weight, photos, notes)
  • Goals and equipment presets
  • Tags and fish species library entries

This data is stored on your device and synced to your personal iCloud account via Apple's CloudKit service, in a private database visible only to you. If you choose to use Mates, some of this activity is additionally shared with your accepted mates — see Social Features below.

Photos and Videos

Photos and videos you add to sessions are stored on your device and synced to your personal iCloud account via Apple's CloudKit service, alongside your other fishing data. Media files count against your personal iCloud storage quota.

Photos are compressed and resized (maximum 2048 pixels, JPEG format) before storage. Videos are stored in their original format.

Voice Dictation

On Apple Watch, you can dictate observations and notes using Apple's built-in speech recognition. Audio is processed by Apple (either on-device or via Apple's speech recognition servers) and only the resulting transcribed text is stored with your session. We do not retain or transmit any audio.

Location Data

The app collects location data in the following ways:

  • Session Start Location: When you begin a session, your current location is captured once to record where you were fishing. This is stored with the session data on your device.
  • Venue Locations: You may manually set a location for your venues using a map. This is stored with the venue data.
  • Geofence Monitoring: If you enable geofencing for a venue, the app monitors your proximity to that venue in the background to send you arrival and departure reminders. This uses Apple's built-in region monitoring and does not transmit your location to any external server.

Location data is never shared with third parties.

Weather Data

When you start or end a session, or log a timeline event, the app fetches current weather conditions using Apple's WeatherKit service. This requires sending the venue location to Apple's weather servers. Weather data retrieved includes temperature, wind, rainfall, air pressure, and moon phase. This data is stored with your session records.

WeatherKit is an Apple first-party service governed by Apple's own privacy policy.

Social Features (Mates & Activity Feed)

Mates is an optional feature. Nothing in this section applies unless you choose to add a mate. Using it shares some information beyond your private iCloud account:

  • Profile: A handle, a short friend code, and (optionally) an avatar are stored in a shared CloudKit database so mates can find and recognise you. This is separate from, and much smaller than, your private fishing data.
  • Profile statistics: Summary figures derived from your own logged activity — your total sessions, total hours fished, number of venues fished, and biggest catch (species and weight) — together with whether you hold a Piscaro PRO subscription, are calculated on your device and stored on your shared profile so mates see them on your profile. Your individual sessions, catches, and venues are not shared beyond what you already choose to share through the Activity Feed.
  • Mates: Connections are mutual — a friend code must be entered and accepted by both anglers before anything is shared between you.
  • Activity Feed: If you turn on feed sharing in Settings, your session starts/ends and catches are shared with your accepted mates and appear on their activity feed. You can turn this off at any time; it only ever applies going forward.
  • Kudos: Mates can react to shared activity with a "like," which is visible to you and stored against that feed item.
  • Comments: Mates can comment on your shared activity, and you can comment on theirs. A comment is stored against that feed item alongside your handle, and is visible to everyone who can see that item — which means the accepted mates of whoever posted it. So a comment you leave on a mate's activity can be read by their other mates, who may not be mates of yours, and their comments on your activity are visible to yours. You can delete your own comments at any time, and remove anyone's comment from your own activity.
  • Mentions: A comment can name another angler already taking part in that conversation. The mention is stored as part of the comment.
  • Comment notifications: Commenting on a piece of activity is what subscribes you to its thread. A comment notifies the angler whose activity it is, everyone who has already commented on it, and anyone it names. Because a thread can hold anglers who are not mates of yours, this means your handle can reach their device in a notification, and theirs can reach yours. The three kinds — comments on your own activity, replies in a thread you are in, and mentions of you — can each be turned off separately in the app's Settings. Individual threads cannot be muted; deleting your own comment is what takes you out of one.
  • Blocking: Blocking a mate immediately and permanently stops all sharing between you in both directions.
  • Reporting: You can report a mate or a piece of shared content. The report — your identity, the reported angler, the reason, and any details you add — is sent to us via the same relay used by Contact Support (see Third-Party Services), so we can review it.

With the single exception of comments — which, as described above, are visible to everyone who can see the activity they are left on — none of this is visible to anyone outside your accepted mates. None of it is used for advertising, analytics, or sold to any third party.

Content Moderation

Comments and usernames are checked for offensive language on your device as you post or set them. Anything that fails the check is not published, and nothing about the attempt is sent to us.

Where shared content is reported to us, or otherwise comes to our attention, we may review it and remove it. As the operator of the shared database we are able to access shared content — profiles, shared activity, and comments — in order to do this, and to remove anything that breaches our community guidelines or the law. We may also withdraw access from anglers who repeatedly breach those guidelines.

We access shared content for this purpose alone. It is never read for advertising, analytics, profiling, or any other reason, and your private fishing data — which stays in your own iCloud account — is not accessible to us at all.

Information We Do Not Collect

  • We do not use any analytics or tracking tools
  • We do not use crash reporting services
  • We do not collect device identifiers or advertising IDs
  • We do not use your data to build advertising profiles or track your behaviour across other apps or websites
  • We do not sell, rent, or share your personal data with any third party

Third-Party Services

The app interacts with the following third-party services:

  • Apple Sign in with Apple: Authentication only. Governed by Apple's privacy policy.
  • Apple WeatherKit: Weather data retrieval. Only your session location is sent to Apple.
  • Apple CloudKit / iCloud: Data and media sync. Your fishing data is stored in your private iCloud account. If you use Mates, your handle, friend code, avatar, profile statistics, and any activity you choose to share are additionally stored in a shared (public) CloudKit database, visible only to your accepted mates.
  • Apple StoreKit: In-app purchase processing. Handled entirely by Apple.
  • Contact Support & Report delivery: Used when you submit a support request, or a Mates report, via the in-app forms. For Contact Support, the email address you provide, the subject, your message, any screenshots you attach, and — only if you leave the optional “Include diagnostic info” toggle on — basic diagnostic information (app version, device model, and recent app logs; never your catch data or photo library) are transmitted to deliver the message to us. For a Mates report, your identity, the reported angler's identity, the reason selected, and any details you add are transmitted the same way. Both are sent to our own endpoint on Cloudflare, which relays the request (see Cloudflare's privacy policy), and delivered as email by Resend, which sends via Amazon SES (see Resend's privacy policy). These providers act as processors that transmit the message on our behalf; they do not use its contents for their own purposes.

Lawful Basis for Processing

Where UK / EU GDPR applies, we process the personal data described above on the following bases:

  • Account Information (Apple User ID, name, email): the necessity of performing our agreement with you to provide the app's account features.
  • Location Data, Notifications, and Weather Lookups: your consent, granted via iOS permission prompts, which you can withdraw at any time in iOS Settings.
  • In-app Purchase Records: the necessity of performing our agreement with you to provide PRO features. Payment is processed by Apple.
  • Shared Activity, Comments, and Mentions: your consent, given by choosing to use Mates and to share activity, which you can withdraw at any time by turning sharing off, deleting the content, or removing the mate.
  • Content Moderation: our legitimate interests in keeping Piscaro safe and free of abusive or unlawful content, and in meeting the obligations that apply to apps carrying user-generated content.

Data Storage and Security

  • Account credentials (Apple User ID) are stored in the iOS Keychain, which is encrypted by the device hardware.
  • All other data is stored locally on your device using Apple's SwiftData framework.
  • Your fishing data is synced via Apple's CloudKit private database, which is encrypted in transit and at rest. If you use Mates, your profile and any shared activity is additionally synced via a CloudKit public database, also encrypted in transit and at rest. Your shared activity is readable by your accepted mates; comments left on a piece of activity are readable by everyone who can see that activity.
  • We do not operate any external servers or databases of our own; where data leaves Apple's infrastructure (Contact Support and Mates reports), it passes through the processors named above.

Your Choices

  • Sign in with Apple: You can choose to hide your email address when signing in. Apple will provide a private relay address instead.
  • Location: You can deny or revoke location permissions at any time in iOS Settings. The app will function without location access, but geofencing and session location capture will be unavailable.
  • Notifications: You can disable notifications entirely at any time in iOS Settings. The app's own Settings > Notifications is finer-grained: venue arrival and departure, session anniversaries, mate requests, likes, each kind of mate activity, and each of the three kinds of comment notification can be turned off on their own.
  • iCloud Sync: Your fishing data, including photos and videos, syncs to your personal iCloud account by default. You can manage or disable iCloud sync via Settings > Apple Account > iCloud.
  • Mates and Feed Sharing: Adding a mate is opt-in and requires mutual acceptance. You can turn feed sharing off at any time in Settings, remove a mate, or block a mate to stop all sharing between you immediately. Removing or blocking a mate also removes their access to activity you previously shared with them.
  • Account and Data Deletion: You can delete individual sessions, venues, goals, and other records within the app at any time. From the app's Settings, in Account → Reset & Delete, you can choose Reset All Data to wipe your fishing data while keeping your account, or Delete Account to permanently remove your account, profile, and all associated data from your device and iCloud. You can also manage your iCloud data via Settings > Apple Account > iCloud.

Your Rights

If you are in the United Kingdom or European Economic Area, you have rights under the UK / EU General Data Protection Regulation, including:

  • The right to access the personal data we hold about you.
  • The right to have inaccurate data corrected.
  • The right to have your data erased.
  • The right to restrict or object to our processing of your data.
  • The right to data portability.
  • The right to withdraw any consent you have given.
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk, or your local supervisory authority.

Because all of your data is stored on your own device and in your personal iCloud account — not on any server we control — the most direct way to exercise these rights is to use the in-app controls described above.

Data Retention

We retain your data only on your device and in your personal iCloud account. We do not maintain any copies of your data on external servers. When you delete data within the app, it is removed from your device and from iCloud. If you use Mates, deleting a session or catch also removes it from your mates' feeds. A report you submit is retained in our support inbox for as long as needed to review and action it. Content we remove as part of moderation is deleted outright; we do not keep a separate copy of it.

Children's Privacy

Piscaro is not directed at children under 13. Under UK GDPR, 13 is the age at which a child can consent to digital services on their own behalf. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Changes to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected in the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.