Privacy Policy
BuckOracle: Deer & Trail Cam AI ("BuckOracle", "the App") is operated by Yun Wei ("we", "us", "our"). This Privacy Policy describes what information the App collects, how it is used, and the choices you have. The short version: your photos stay yours, your locations never leave your phone, we keep no account on you, and our servers store none of your photos. The current policy is always published at https://buckoracle.com/privacy.
1. Information We Collect
We collect the minimum needed to run the App.
- Photos you choose. You select photos through the iOS photo picker; the App never has access to your full photo library.
- An anonymous device identifier — a random ID created on first launch and stored on your device. It enforces the free daily analysis limit and reflects subscription status. It is not linked to your name, email, or any account, because BuckOracle has no accounts.
- Basic usage events — named in-app events (such as app opened, analysis completed, subscription purchased) together with app version, device language, and subscription tier (free or premium).
We do not collect your name, email address, phone number, contacts, precise location, or GPS coordinates. We never see your payment details — purchases are processed by Apple.
For purposes of California law, the categories of personal information we collect are: identifiers (the anonymous device ID); internet or electronic network activity (the usage events above); and the visual information in the photos you choose to submit, which is processed transiently and never stored on our servers.
2. How We Use Information
- To analyze the photos you submit and return AI-generated estimates — species, sex, age-class probabilities, and an antler score range with a confidence level.
- To recognize and match individual bucks — when you use re-ID, a new photo is compared against a photo of a buck already in your herd so you can confirm whether it is the same animal. You always make the final call.
- To enforce the free tier limit of 5 analyses per device per day.
- To provide and restore your subscription.
- To understand aggregate usage and improve the App.
- To measure the effectiveness of our own advertising through a small set of conversion events.
We do not sell your personal information, and the App shows no third-party ads.
3. Photo & Location Privacy
This is the part we built the pipeline around. Before any photo leaves your device, it is re-rendered into a brand-new image file that is encoded without any metadata. GPS coordinates, camera make and model, and capture timestamps are physically absent from the file that gets uploaded. An automatic check then inspects every outgoing file — if any sensitive metadata is somehow still present, the upload is blocked.
Your trail camera locations therefore never leave your phone. We cannot see where your cameras are, and neither can the AI providers.
Uploaded photos are processed transiently: forwarded to an AI provider, analyzed, and the result returned to your device. Photos are never stored on our servers, and we keep no server-side history of your photos or analysis results.
Some features compare two photos at once — for example, re-ID checks a new photo against a photo of a buck already in your herd to suggest whether they are the same animal. Both images pass through the same metadata-stripping pipeline before they leave your device, are processed transiently by the AI provider, and are not stored on our servers.
4. Third-Party Services
- AI providers — Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), and OpenAI. One of these receives the metadata-stripped photo for the sole purpose of generating an analysis. Under their respective API terms, these providers do not use API data to train their models.
- Cloudflare — hosts our relay infrastructure; requests are processed transiently.
- Apple — processes all payments through your App Store account.
- RevenueCat — manages subscription status; receives an anonymous identifier and purchase receipt data, never your payment details.
- Mixpanel — receives the usage events described above.
- Meta (Facebook SDK) and AppsFlyer — receive a small set of conversion events (onboarding completed, paywall viewed, purchase) so we can measure our own ad campaigns. Your device's advertising identifier (IDFA) is shared only if you explicitly allow tracking through the iOS App Tracking Transparency prompt. If you decline, attribution runs without it.
5. Data Retention & Deletion
Your photos, buck profiles, and analysis history are stored locally on your device only. Deleting the App permanently deletes this data.
On our servers, the only record we keep is a rate-limit counter — your anonymous device ID plus the current date — which expires automatically within 24 hours. There is nothing else to delete.
Analytics and attribution partners retain event data under their own policies. If you would like help with a deletion request to any of these providers, email [email protected] and we will assist.
6. Data Security
We protect information in transit. All communication between the App and our servers, and between our servers and the AI providers, uses encrypted HTTPS (TLS) connections. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but because we keep no accounts and store no photos on our servers, there is very little for anyone to obtain.
7. Your Rights
You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information at any time by emailing [email protected]. Because we keep no accounts and no server-side photo data, almost everything is already under your direct control on your device.
California residents: under the CCPA/CPRA you have the rights to know, delete, correct, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and to be free from discrimination for exercising those rights. The categories of personal information described in Section 1 are the only categories we collect, and we do not sell any of them. Sharing the limited conversion events with our attribution partners (Meta, AppsFlyer) may be treated as "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising under California law; you can stop it by declining the App Tracking Transparency prompt or by turning off tracking in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
8. Children's Privacy
BuckOracle is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact [email protected] and we will delete it.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The current version is always published at https://buckoracle.com/privacy with its effective date. If a change is material, we will let you know in the App.
10. Contact
BuckOracle is operated by Yun Wei. Questions about this policy or your data: [email protected].