Privacy policy
Swoop is a shared map, so some of what you do in it is shared. This page says exactly what leaves your phone, where it goes, how long it stays and how to take it back. There is no account to sign up for, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking.
The short version
- When you report a hazard, the report's position (as precisely as your phone knows it), the kind of hazard, the species or what a dog was doing if you chose one, whether a bird made contact, whether you were walking, running or riding, the name of a nearby named place such as a park, and the time are sent to our server, with a photo if you added one. Other people see animal sightings rounded to about 100 metres and path hazards to about 10 metres, and never see anything that identifies you.
- When you ask for a route, plan a Wander, or a detour is worked out around something ahead of you, the points the route runs between are sent to our routing server, with how you are travelling and what you asked it to avoid, so it can plan around what has been reported.
- Your walks, runs and rides stay on your phone and in Apple Health. We never receive them.
- The first time you send us anything (a report, an answer such as "Still there", a flag or a route request), the app creates an anonymous account on our server, with no name, email or phone number attached, and keeps its key in your phone's Keychain. It is how we rate-limit reports and how Delete My Data knows what is yours.
- Everything expires. Expired reports are kept only with the account key removed, so the season's history exists but can no longer be connected to anyone.
What is collected, and why
In the terms Apple uses on the App Store page, Swoop collects the following, all linked to your anonymous account and none of it used for tracking:
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Precise location | Each report you make; each route, Wander or detour planned for you, with how you are travelling and what you asked it to avoid | To put the report on the map, and to plan a route from where you are |
| Photos | Only when you add one to a report | To show other people what you saw |
| Your reports, answers and flags | Each report; each "Still swooping", "Seems quiet", "Still there", "Gone" or "Cleared"; each flag | They are the map, and they keep it honest |
| An anonymous user id | Created the first time you send us anything | Rate limits, moderation and deletion |
| Fitness | When you finish a walk, run or ride along one of the popular routes, and only if "Count my walks on popular routes" is on in Settings (it is off until you turn it on) | The route's "walked it today" count: only which route, never your pace, heart rate or track |
That is the whole list from the app. Nothing is collected while you only look at the map: reading needs no account and sends only the middle of the map you are looking at (where you are, while the map follows you) to our server, which does not keep it. Like any server, ours and the routing service see the internet address a request comes from; what each does with it is below, with what reaches us outside the app: feedback you send through TestFlight, reviews you post on the App Store, and email you send us.
Where it goes
Reports, photos, votes and accounts are stored with Supabase, in its Sydney region, under Supabase's privacy policy. Supabase is a database host; it does not use the data for anything of its own. To stop one network flooding the map, our server keeps a one-way scrambled form of your internet address with each thing you send for about a day, then deletes it. Supabase's sign-in service also keeps, with your anonymous account, the internet address your phone last connected from and the app and iOS version its requests name, until the account is deleted. Supabase keeps its own logs of the requests it serves and of each sign-in, with the internet address they came from, for a day on our current plan and a week from launch.
Route requests go to our routing service, which runs on Railway in its US West region under Railway's privacy policy. Australia has no Railway region. The service plans the route and answers. For each request it logs the time, what kind of request it was, how it went and how long it took, with a shortened scramble of your anonymous account's id and of your internet address, so we can see one phone or one network sending too much; the points of the route are not in that log. Railway also logs each request it carries, with the internet address it came from, and keeps these logs for up to 30 days. The service keeps no account data, and it never receives your reports or your photos. The map itself, the search for a destination, the place names on your reports and session summaries, and the fallback route when our service is down come from Apple Maps on your phone, under Apple's privacy policy.
Nothing else. There is no analytics or crash-reporting service in the app. Apple's own crash reports and TestFlight feedback reach us only if you have turned those on with Apple, and under Apple's terms. If you send feedback through TestFlight, we copy it into our private issue tracker on GitHub, in the United States, with your name and email address as TestFlight gives them to us, your device, its screenshots and any crash log, so we can fix what you found; write to us to have it removed. App Store reviews are public; we copy each into the same tracker, with the name it was posted under, so none goes unread. Email to swoop@edacity.com.au is kept in our mailbox, which Google Workspace hosts.
What other people see
Nobody else can see who made a report. Our server keeps each report with the anonymous account that sent it until the report expires, so that rate limits and Delete My Data work; nobody using the app ever sees that account. The account has no name, email or phone number on it; what the sign-in service keeps with it is under "Where it goes". Other people see the kind, the species (or what a dog was doing), the time to the minute, the place name sent with it, whether the bird made contact, whether the person was walking, running or riding, and a position rounded to about 100 metres for an animal sighting and about 10 metres for a path hazard such as a fallen tree or a closed path. A swooping territory shows its true centre only once two different phones have reported it; a single report is shown snapped to a 100-metre grid. Photos are shown with the same rounding and with nothing that says who took them. The app removes a photo's GPS and other hidden details on your phone before it is uploaded, and a person at Edacity looks at every photo before anyone else can see it.
Nobody's live position is ever shown or stored, yours included. Counts such as "23 walked it tonight" are totals, not people.
What stays on your phone
Your walks, runs and rides are recorded by the app and saved to Apple Health as workouts with their route. From Health the app reads only what it shows you: the distance, energy and heart rate of the session you are on, and your usual pace over the last four weeks, to size a Wander. My Log (the count of your reports, the species you have logged and your past sessions), the app's settings, the layers you have switched on, your Home and Work places, your recent searches and the "Listen for swoops" setting live on your phone. "Listen for swoops" is off until you turn it on. Whatever it hears and feels is used only on the phone; no sound is ever recorded or sent anywhere.
How long it is kept
Every report has a lifespan: a few hours for a blocked lane, a day or two for midges or a flooded path, a few days for a snake, about six weeks for a swooping territory, up to a season when people keep confirming it. When a report expires, or when two other people say it is gone, it comes off the map. It is then kept with the account key removed, so what remains is "a magpie swooped here in September" and never "this phone reported it". A photo is part of that record: after its report comes off the map it stays, with the same rounding; other people never see who took it, and we keep it linked to your anonymous account only so that Delete My Data can still find it. A photo we take down, on its own or with the report it belongs to, is deleted, file and all. Your answers on a report go when the report does; your answers on a swooping territory and your flags stay linked to your anonymous account until you use Delete My Data, because a territory is kept as the season's record. An anonymous account with nothing linked to it (no report, photo, answer or rating) is deleted in a monthly clean-up once it has not signed in for 60 days.
Deleting what is yours
Delete My Data, in the app's settings, removes your account and with it every photo you uploaded (the files as well as the records), every vote, flag and rating, and your reports: a report you sent in the last 15 minutes is deleted outright, and an older one stays on the map until it expires with your account detached from it, because by then other people may have seen it and gone around it. The app then forgets its key and clears its log of your reports and sessions on the phone, so a later report is a new account.
If you have deleted the app and cannot use that button, write to swoop@edacity.com.au with the approximate time and place of a report you made, and we will find and remove your account's data the same way. We cannot look you up by name, because we do not have one.
Permissions
The app never asks for anything when it first opens. It asks for your location, while you are using it and never "always", the first time something needs it: the button that shows where you are, a report from where you are standing, or the start of a walk, run, ride or Wander. It keeps location on in the background only while you have a walk, run, ride or Wander running, so the route keeps recording with the screen off, and stops when you end it. When you start one, it also asks, each only once, to send you notifications (the one alert when something reported is ahead) and to save to and read from Apple Health. It asks for the camera only when you take a photo for Swoop, and for the microphone and motion only if you turn on "Listen for swoops". Each is explained when it is asked, and the app works without any of them, with less to show.
Children
Swoop is for anyone who walks, runs or rides, and school-age riders are swooped as much as anyone. The app asks no one for a name, email or phone number, and there is no account to create, no messaging and no profile. Posting a photo is for people 16 and over, as the terms say. If you believe a child has posted a photo that identifies them, write to us and we will remove it.
This website
These pages are served by GitHub Pages and load nothing from anyone else: no analytics, no cookies and no fonts from a third party. GitHub sees the ordinary details of a request, such as your address on the internet, under its own privacy statement.
Your rights
Edacity Pty Ltd is an Australian company and handles personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. Because your account has no name or email on it, the way to see or remove what is yours is from the phone that made it: My Log there shows how many reports you have made this season and which species; a report can be taken back with Undo for the first 50 seconds, if nobody has answered it yet, and its species changed while the sent screen is open, for up to ten minutes; Delete My Data does the rest, as above. We do not sell or share personal information with anyone for their own purposes. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, write to us first; you can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or to your local privacy regulator if you are elsewhere.
Changes
If the app ever starts to do more with your data than this page says, this page changes first, and the date at the top with it. A list of what changed lives at the bottom of this page. The list of what is collected is also written into the app itself, in its privacy manifest, and every build is checked against the same list this page is written from.
Talk to us
Questions about any of this go to swoop@edacity.com.au. Edacity Pty Ltd is in Brisbane, Australia.
10 October 2026: says when the app really asks for location and the rest, that asking for a route also creates the anonymous account, what Delete My Data deletes and what it detaches, when an idle account is deleted, what My Log shows of your reports, what the routing service, the sign-in service and their hosts keep, what other people see of a report, that every photo is looked at before anyone else sees it, that TestFlight feedback and App Store reviews are copied to our issue tracker and email is kept in our mailbox, and that walks on popular routes are counted only when you turn that on; route ratings are gone from the list, because nothing in the app rates a route.
6 October 2026: first version, written before the first public build.