Your photos and data belong to you. That is the guiding principle behind everything else in this privacy policy. It's designed to be short and human-readable.
What we collect
What you tell us
When you sign up, you provide an email address, a name, a profile picture, and potentially other related information in the future.
Your uploaded photos and locations
When you upload a photo, we store it, and display it to your friends. That's the point of the app, of course.
Each photo has a location attached to it — either a specific coordinate or a general region. You control this data and can change it at any time, including whether your friends can see it at all.
What your device tells us
The ordinary technical information that comes with using an app over the internet: your IP address, your device type, app version, language and time zone, and a token for sending you notifications, if enabled.
Usage data
Information about which features are most used, how long steps take, and so on, to help make the app better in the future.
Who can see what
Flock does not contain a public feed. By default, we only show your photos and profile information to friends you've added — and, if you tag a friend on a photo, their friends. You can remove friends at any time.
You may choose to opt in to sharing your data in ways that can help other Flock users or the larger birding community; for example, contributing to the example photos attached to bird species, or sharing your observation data with bird-focused foundations — but only if you explicitly choose to.
We will never display your photos anywhere else without asking you first. Not in advertising, not on this website, not in App Store screenshots. If we ever want to feature a photo of yours, we'll ask, and only do so with your explicit permission.
What we do with your data
We do not sell your data.
We do store your data on our servers for as long as you have a Flock account. If you delete your account, we delete your data within a reasonable timeframe, unless a legal request requires us to keep it for longer.
We use photos and observations, without your name or account attached, in order to train better models to help improve Flock in the future.
We may temporarily share photos with third party services to help with bird identification or safety & legal requirements. When we do so, the photos are not tied to your other information, and they carry no precise location information. They are not stored by the third party services, unless required by law.
Your choices and your rights
This is the most legal-sounding section on the page — sorry. It's also the one that's entirely about what you can ask us to do, so it's still worth reading.
Wherever you live, you can:
- See and correct your information. Most of it is editable in the app, including the details on any photo you've posted.
- Delete anything you've made — one photo at a time, or all of it by deleting your account. Account deletion is handled within the app. You don't have to email anyone or explain yourself to do it.
- Turn off notifications, in the app or on your device.
- Ask us for a copy of your data, or ask us to delete something, by writing to support@flockbirds.com.
Who we are. Flock is a bird photo sharing app operated by bryce.co LLC, which is responsible for the information described here. For anything in this policy, including any request above, write to support@flockbirds.com. We'll respond within the time the law allows, and we may need to confirm it's really you first.
Where your information lives. Flock is operated from the United States, and your information is stored and processed there. If you use Flock from elsewhere, you're sending it to the US, where privacy laws differ from your own.
If you're in the UK or the EU. You can additionally object to or restrict how we use your information, withdraw consent where we relied on it, receive your data in a portable form, and complain to your local data protection authority. The legal bases we rely on are: performing our contract with you (running the app), your consent (location and notifications), and our legitimate interests (keeping Flock safe and working, and improving bird identification).
If you're in California or another US state with a privacy law. You can know what we collect, have it deleted or corrected, and you won't be treated any differently for asking. We don't sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there's no opt-out to offer you.
Children. Flock isn't intended for anyone under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us something, email us and we'll remove it.
Security. Your information is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access on our side is limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure and we won't pretend otherwise — but if something happens that affects you, we'll tell you.
Changes to this policy. We'll update this page as Flock changes. If a change materially affects what we do with your information, we will inform you in the app or by email.
Getting in touch
Questions, requests, or anything on this page that reads wrong to you: support@flockbirds.com.