Privacy Policy
Effective Date: June 23, 2026
SaltWake, LLC ("we", "our", "us") values and respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy details how we collect, store, use, and protect your information when using the SaltWake.ai mobile applications and web platform. Our core principle is that your data belongs to you unless you explicitly choose to share it.
User Data Control Principle: All voyage trackings, vessel parameters, GPS coordinates, and log photos/videos are private by default. You retain complete control over who sees your data via the granular privacy controls integrated directly into the app.
1. Information We Collect
To provide tactical marine intelligence, weather interpolation, and voyage tracking, we collect the following types of information:
- Precise Location Data: Precise GPS coordinates (latitude, longitude, speed, and heading) collected in the background during active voyage tracking to generate your track logs, breadcrumbs, and telemetry charts.
- Account Profile Information: Information gathered during Google Sign-In, including your email address, display name, and profile picture.
- Vessel Data: Making, model, dimensions (length, beam, weight, deadrise), and custom identifiers (MMSI) of your vessel(s) to compute hull safety limits and vertical acceleration ride comfort index.
- Media Uploads: Photos, images, and videos uploaded to your logbook entries (used to match media timestamps to voyage tracks).
2. Privacy Controls & Sharing Settings
We provide robust, easily accessible settings in the app to configure who can see your information:
Public vs. Private Profiles
Under your Account Settings, you can toggle your profile visibility:
- Private Profile: Your profile, vessels, and logs are hidden from searches and other users.
- Public Profile: Your display name, profile picture, and shared voyages are visible to other verified captains in the community.
Voyage & Log Privacy Levels
Every trip (voyage) and standalone log entry you record can be assigned one of three privacy levels:
- Private (Default): Visible only to you. Absolutely no track lines, coordinates, or media are shared.
- Friends & Followers: Visible only to captains you have mutually accepted as friends or followers.
- Public: Visible to the general community on the global discovery feed and public maps.
Vessel Position & Feed Controls
Even when participating in social feeds, you can configure granular telemetry parameters in your profile:
- Vessel Position Sharing: Toggle to control whether your live vessel position (transmitting from hardware or mobile GPS) appears on the community map.
- AIS Feed Sharing: Toggle to allow or restrict the broadcasting of your vessel's AIS targets to followers.
Anonymized Fishing Activity Contribution (Opt-In)
Captains may optionally contribute anonymized fishing-activity data to SaltWake's community reef-activity layer. This feature is off by default and requires an explicit opt-in in Account Settings. When enabled:
- What is contributed: Automatically classified fishing events (drifting or anchoring patterns) derived from your vessel's track — not your raw track lines, not your coordinates as recorded.
- How it is anonymized: Contributions carry a rotating pseudonym instead of your identity; published data is aggregated to public structure features or coarse grid cells, shown only when a minimum number of distinct contributing vessels is met, and published on a minimum 30-day delay.
- What is never shared: Your name, vessel identity, or account; activity at locations that do not coincide with publicly documented structure (such locations are treated as private fishing spots and suppressed entirely); and any activity within a protective radius of your home dock or marina.
- Withdrawal & deletion: You may disable contribution at any time in Account Settings. Disabling removes your contributions from future published aggregates, and you may request full deletion of previously contributed data, which is also included in whole-account deletion.
3. How Your Data is Used
Your data is used strictly to power the core app experience:
- To compute vertical acceleration comfort indices (e.g., peak pounding estimations based on wave forecast and vessel displacement).
- To overlay weather forecast parameters (wind speed, wave height, SST, water clarity) onto your trip path.
- To allow mutual crew invitations and logbook co-authoring.
4. Data Retention & Deletion
We retain your data only for as long as your account is active. You have the right to request deletion of your data at any time:
- You can delete individual voyages, vessel profiles, or logs directly inside the app, which instantly removes them from our databases and connected Cloud Run/Firestore storage.
- You can request complete account deletion by contacting us at support@saltwake.ai. Upon request, all profile details, GPS track records, and media logs will be permanently purged.
5. Security
We use Google Cloud Platform and Firebase security mechanisms to secure your data, utilizing HTTPS encryption in transit, strict access control rules, and token-based Captain authorization for all REST APIs.