Your catches belong to you.

1. Who is responsible?

CatchBuddies is responsible for processing personal data in Hooked and on catchbuddies.com. For questions or a privacy request, contact us at support@catchbuddies.com or through the support page.

2. Which data do we process?

• Account and profile: username, required account and recovery email address, profile photo, language, preferences and account settings.
• Catches: fish species, date and time, length or weight, photos, notes, bait and technique, water and weather information and — if you add it — a precise catch location.
• Community: only catches and profile information that you deliberately share publicly, plus likes, comments, notifications and moderation reports.
• Fishing buddies and chat: connection requests, buddy relationships and private messages needed to provide the chat feature.
• Support and improvement: support messages and product-improvement suggestions. Fish-recognition training feedback is described separately below and is sent only with your explicit consent.
• Device, use and security: session data, push-notification tokens, product interactions and limited technical error, performance, network and security information needed to keep Hooked reliable and prevent misuse. Usage statistics via Google Analytics for Firebase are on by default and are described separately in section 9; you can turn them off under Account.

3. Photo import and location

You can select photos manually with the iOS photo picker. You can also optionally allow your photo library to be scanned locally and automatically for possible catch photos. Hooked groups selected or detected photos and tries to recognise the fish species on your device; the photos are not sent to an external recognition service for this purpose.

Separately, you can share feedback to improve future fish recognition. At your first smart photo import we ask this once: "Share and continue" is the preselected choice and "Don't share" sits below it; nothing changes without a tap on one of the two. You can change your choice at any time with the switch Help improve future fish recognition in the smart photo import or with Share photo feedback for fish recognition under Account → Privacy. When, with feedback on, you dismiss an import suggestion and deliberately choose a feedback reason, or confirm the import of a new catch, Hooked may securely send one to five newly created JPEG copies, each up to 720 pixels, to CatchBuddies. Photos added to an existing catch are not shared as training feedback. These copies contain no GPS data, original photo date, Apple Photos identifier, notes or original JPEG/EXIF metadata.

A dismissed-suggestion example contains the image; predicted species and confidence; recognition source and model version; your removal reason and any corrected species; app version and build; technical event, photo and group codes; a file hash; and server receipt and expiry times. A confirmed-import example instead records the species you confirmed and the length or weight class you entered. Technical group codes help prevent almost identical catches from appearing in both training and testing. Feedback remains linked to your account so we can reliably apply your consent, retention period and deletion request; it is private, but not anonymous.

Feedback is not sent to an external AI recognition service. A new example remains quarantined for at least seven days. Only an explicit wrong-species correction with the species you choose, an explicit no-fish response, or a confirmed import with a species supported by the bundled model is eligible for automated processing. The current species model uses the confirmed species as its label; the entered length or weight class is retained as feedback metadata and is not a label for that model. Not-relevant, other, conflicting and invalid examples are excluded. Periodic batches recheck consent and retention, remove exact duplicates and apply technical, data-quality and locked test and challenge gates. A passing candidate may be included in an internal TestFlight build for a future app version. No example can bypass the batch and quality checks, and a production release remains a separate explicit decision.

A photo is saved as a catch only after you confirm the import. You can limit or revoke access to Photos at any time through Settings → Apps → Hooked → Photos.

The exact location and spot name of a catch are synchronised with your private account so that your logbook and map work across your devices. They are never shown publicly, even when you share a catch. Open-Meteo receives the catch coordinates and date to retrieve historical weather. Apple services may be used for location search, maps and geocoding. CatchBuddies does not sell location data or other personal data.

4. Why do we process data and on which legal basis?

We process account, catch, synchronisation, community and chat data to perform our agreement with you and provide the features you choose. We rely on your consent for optional access to Photos and location and for sharing fish-recognition training feedback; you can withdraw that consent for the future at any time. We rely on our legitimate interests for security, fraud prevention, moderation, support and reliable product improvement — including the usage statistics in section 9, which you can turn off under Account — balanced against your rights and privacy. We process data to meet a legal obligation where the law requires it. You can revoke iOS permissions for Photos, location and notifications in iOS.

5. Automated suggestions

Fish recognition and import filters only provide a suggestion. You review and confirm which catch is created. These features do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. A person reviews catches that may qualify for a leaderboard podium.

6. Who do we share data with?

We use Cloudflare for hosting, database, photo storage and short-lived technical logs; Amazon Web Services for protected model-pipeline storage and a security audit archive; GitHub for private release automation and temporary processing on isolated build runners; Apple for app distribution, push notifications, maps and location services; Open-Meteo for weather data; and Resend for password-reset email. Open-Meteo receives the catch coordinates and date. Resend receives the email address and the one-time reset code; CatchBuddies stores only a hash of that code on the server. Providers may process data only to deliver their agreed service and must apply appropriate safeguards.

Voluntarily shared fish-recognition feedback is kept in protected Cloudflare storage. It may be accessed by the isolated automated training process and, only where necessary for security, privacy or incident handling, by authorised administrators and model custodians. Raw feedback is not committed to Git, included in a pull request, made public or used for advertising.

The separate AWS audit archive contains only pseudonymous event IDs, authorised access or automated pipeline actions, outcomes and timestamps. It contains no feedback images, GPS data, email addresses, request bodies or authentication tokens.

Public catches are visible to other Hooked users. Exact catch locations and private notes are not shared. Private messages are visible only to participants in the conversation, except where processing is necessary for security, a report or a legal obligation.

We do not sell personal data and do not use it for advertising tracking. Where a provider processes data outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we use an applicable adequacy decision or appropriate contractual safeguards.

7. Retention and security

We retain account, profile, catch log, community, chat and improvement-suggestion data while your account is active or until you delete it. Sessions expire after no more than 30 days. A password-reset code expires after 15 minutes and only its hash is stored on our server.

Unsent fish-recognition feedback expires after 30 days and is deleted when Hooked next runs. After receipt, feedback stops being available for processing after no more than 365 days, or sooner if you withdraw consent or delete your account; physical deletion follows in the next daily cleanup. Temporary automated exports and training copies may not extend this period and are deleted after the applicable training and verification run.

Technical Cloudflare logs contain limited request, response, error, outcome and server-duration information, but not message contents, photos, passwords, tokens or catch locations. They are kept for no more than seven days under the applicable Cloudflare plan.

The limited pseudonymous security audit records may be retained for up to 365 days, including after the related feedback has been deleted, so that deletion, review and access actions can be demonstrated. These records cannot be altered or deleted during that security period.

When you delete a catch, we remove its photo files and public copy. A limited deletion and synchronisation record may remain to prevent the catch from reappearing; it is removed no later than account deletion. Account deletion removes account-linked server data and media from the active service. Catches still stored locally on a device must be removed there separately or by clearing the app data. Security records and backups may be retained longer where necessary for security, disputes or a legal obligation. Traffic is encrypted and passwords are not stored in readable form.

8. Your choices and rights

You can edit or delete catches, photos, comments and profile details in the app. You can delete your full account through Account → Delete account. You can also contact support@catchbuddies.com or support to request access, correction, portability, restriction or deletion of your data, or to object to processing.

You can withdraw consent for central fish-recognition feedback at any time with the switch in smart photo import or under Account → Privacy. Hooked then deletes the local sending queue and the centrally stored feedback covered by your consent. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal. An individual example cannot later be removed from an already released, aggregated model; the automated pipeline therefore rechecks which consents and examples remain valid before every batch and stops if that check cannot be completed.

You can lodge a complaint with the data-protection authority in your country. In the Netherlands this is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens; in the United Kingdom it is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

9. App usage statistics

In app versions that offer usage statistics, collection is on by default. We use Google Analytics for Firebase to understand which screens and actions are used and to improve Hooked, relying on our legitimate interest in reliable product improvement: there are no advertising features, retention is short and the switch is clearly visible. You can turn collection off at any time under Account → Privacy → Share usage statistics; if you already did so in an earlier version, that choice still stands. This choice is separate from photo-recognition feedback.

Google processes screen and action events, session and app-lifecycle information, an automatically generated app-installation identifier, and technical details such as app version, device model, operating system and language. Google can derive an approximate region from the connection’s IP address; this is not your precise GPS location. The installation identifier allows activity from the same installation to be recognised, so these data are pseudonymous, not fully anonymous.

We do not send your Hooked account ID, username, email, photos, fish species, spot names, precise catch locations, notes, chats or other freely entered text to Analytics. Advertising identifiers and Apple’s identifier for vendor are not collected by this integration. Google signals, advertising personalisation and sharing with Google advertising products are disabled. These statistics are not used to build advertising profiles.

Google provides Analytics as a service provider under the applicable data-processing terms. Processing may take place outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, subject to the safeguards described above. We configure user- and event-level retention to two months, without extending it on new activity. This limit does not apply to aggregated standard reports, which may remain available for longer.

Turning the switch off stops future collection and clears local Analytics data, including the installation identifier. It does not automatically erase data already received by Google. Because Analytics does not receive your Hooked account ID, deleting your account does not automatically identify earlier Analytics records. Contact support@catchbuddies.com for a privacy request; we will explain what can be located and removed. Turning it off does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing.

10. Changes

If this policy changes materially, we will make that clear in the app or on this page. The date above shows when the policy was last updated.