Erie Live — Privacy Policy

The short version

The core of Erie Live — the live ship map, conditions, forecasts, fishing spots, and the Captain's Brief — works with no account and no sign-in, and collects nothing that identifies you. If you choose to sign in with Apple to use the optional social features (crews, sharing your position with friends, logging catches, recording trips), the data you deliberately create is stored with your member account so those features can work. We show no ads, use no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs, and we never sell data.

Using the app without an account

You never have to sign in. Signed out, the app collects only:

• Anonymous app telemetry: usage events (like “app launched” or an error report) with basic device info (model, OS version, app build) sent to a private collector we run ourselves. These are not linked to you, contain no location, and are used only to find and fix problems.
• Push token (opt-in only): if you turn on the 7am Captain's Brief, Apple gives us an anonymous push token for your device, stored solely to deliver that notification. Turn it off any time in the app or iOS Settings.

Location

• Compass (“What's that ship?”), nearby conditions, and depth-under-you use your location on your device to compute what to show you. These lookups are not stored as a location history and are never shared with anyone.
• Sharing your position with friends (opt-in, signed in): only when you explicitly start a share, your live position is sent to our server and shown only to the people you chose, for the time window you chose (1 hour up to a hard cap of 12 hours). You can stop a share at any time, and expired shares are deleted.
• Trip recording and Anchor Watch (opt-in): recording a trip keeps your track on your phone. Uploading a trip to share with your crew is a separate, explicit choice per trip. Anchor Watch monitors your position locally to alert you if your boat drifts.
• Location is never collected continuously or without an action you took, and declining location access leaves the rest of the app working.

If you sign in with Apple (optional)

The social features use Sign in with Apple. When you sign in we store:

• Your Apple sign-in identifier and an internal member ID — used only to operate your account. If you use Apple's “Hide My Email,” we never see your real address.
• Profile you choose: a display name, boat name, and boat type/size for the class leaderboards.
• Content you create: crews you join, catches you log, trips you choose to upload, rendezvous you post — visible only to the crew members you share them with, never public.

Finding friends (contacts, opt-in)

If you use “find friends,” your contacts are scrambled on your device with one-way codes; only those codes are sent to check for matches against members who also opted in. Your actual contacts never leave your phone, and the codes used for a lookup are not stored.

Community content and moderation

Names and content you post are visible to your crew members. We have zero tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users: offensive names and text are filtered, you can report any member-visible content and block any member in the app (blocking is mutual and immediate), and reports are reviewed promptly — content and users that violate the rules are removed.

Deleting your account

Settings → Skipper Profile → Delete Account removes your member record and everything attached to it — profile, crews, shares, catches, uploaded trips, blocks, and reports you filed — and revokes the app's sign-in with Apple. Anonymous telemetry, which was never linked to you, is unaffected. You can also email us to request deletion.

Where the app's data comes from

Everything the app shows comes from public sources: NOAA buoys and water levels, National Weather Service forecasts and alerts, USGS river gauges, public AIS ship broadcasts, and openly licensed points of interest (© OpenStreetMap contributors). When the app fetches data, our server sees ordinary request metadata (such as an IP address) in standard short-lived logs — as with any web service — and we do not use it to identify or track you.

What we never do

• No ads, no advertising identifiers, no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs.
• No selling or sharing of your data with data brokers — ever.
• No public feeds: your content is visible only to crews you joined.

Children

Erie Live is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. The social features require Sign in with Apple.

Changes

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the effective date above.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email justin@beachclifftech.com.