Fossick: Privacy Policy

For the app on iPhone. Last updated 7 November 2026

Your fossicks, finds and photos

Everything you enter is stored in the app's own folder on your device and nowhere else. It is included in your normal iPhone backup to iCloud or a Mac, which Apple handles under Apple's privacy policy, not ours. Deleting the app deletes it.

Location

With your permission, the app reads your location when you ask it to pin where you stand, and when the list sorts fossicks by distance. Otherwise it is read only while the app is in use.

The one exception is a walk. While you have a walk going, the app keeps reading your location, also in the background, so it can draw your trail and point the way back. The trail is kept on the phone with your walks, and tracking stops when you finish the walk.

The maps

The map is drawn by the app from OpenStreetMap data served by OpenFreeMap, with terrain from AWS Terrain Tiles. To show the map, the phone asks those services for the map squares around where you are looking, as any map does. The satellite view comes from Apple Maps under Apple's privacy policy. When you keep an area offline, it downloads that area's squares once and works out the contour lines on the phone.

Public land boundaries and their rules are built into the app, so looking them up sends nothing anywhere. On every map, your pins and trails are drawn by the app on top and are never sent to anyone.

Public land rules

What you can do in NSW and Queensland parks, forests and fossicking areas is built into the app. If you have a fossick or a walk in those states, or are there, Fossick also looks about once a day for a newer copy of those rules on its support site (parduckids.github.io), which is hosted by GitHub. That is a plain request for a public file, like opening a web page: it sends nothing about you, your fossicks or where you are. Nobody else's app makes these requests. For fishing size and bag limits, the app links to the state's own pages.

Photos

Photos you attach are copied into the app at a reduced size. The originals in your photo library are not changed.

If you ask Fossick to find your spots in your photos, and allow it access to all of your photos or to an album you choose, it reads where and when each photo was taken and looks at small copies with Apple's image recognition, on the phone, to spot fish, mushrooms, berries and the like. Places you are at most days, screenshots and indoor photos are skipped. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is kept except the places and photos you choose to keep. You can change or remove the app's access in iPhone Settings at any time.

Voice notes

The microphone is used only while you hold a recording, and the recording is kept as a small file beside the log. The words are written down by the phone's own speech recognition, on the device, with no internet. If the phone cannot do that for your language, the recording is kept and nothing is sent anywhere.

Weather and the sea

The weather and tide recorded with your finds, the rain since your last visit, and the sea conditions and tide shown on the map come from Open-Meteo, a free weather service that needs no account. The app sends Open-Meteo a location rounded to about 10 km and, for past finds, the dates. The tide on the map is asked for the stretch of coast you are looking at, and tapping the sea asks for that spot, both rounded the same way. It never sends a fossick, a find, a name or a photo. Open-Meteo keeps its server logs, which can include that rough location, for up to 90 days and does not share them; its own terms cover those requests. Turn Weather off in the app's Settings and no weather or sea requests are made.

Sharing

A fossick you choose to send travels as a file through AirDrop, Messages or whatever you pick, with its finds and reduced copies of their photos, but without voice recordings. The photo copies carry no camera or location data. It goes only where you send it, and through no server of ours.

Holding two phones together sends a fossick directly between them over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with no internet. The app looks for the other phone only while that screen is open.

Backups and exports

Backup, CSV and GPX files are made on the phone when you tap and handed to the iOS share sheet. Where they go after that is your choice.

Purchases

The one in-app purchase is handled entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details. Apple tells the app only whether the purchase exists.

Notifications

Season reminders are scheduled on the device by the app itself. No notification service is involved.

What is not collected

No personal information. No email address, name or contact details. No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, usage statistics, advertising identifiers or cookies. No tracking of any kind, and no third-party code that could do any of it.

Children

Fossick is suitable for all ages and collects nothing from anyone, including children under 13.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

Questions about privacy: parduckids@gmail.com