Privacy Policy — HiveTracks Bio

Last updated 10 October 2026

This policy covers HiveTracks Bio, the field data collection app for land and biodiversity surveys, and the HiveTracks Bio web platform. It is separate from the policy covering the HiveTracks beekeeping app.

HiveTracks Bio is operated by HiveTracks, Inc.

What we collect

Account information. Your email address, and a name if you provide one. We create a user identifier for your account, and we record a device identifier to help diagnose problems you report.

Photographs. The app captures photographs of plants, pollinators and habitat features, and uploads them as part of a survey record. A photograph is the evidence behind each observation.

Precise location. Every observation is geotagged with precise location. This is required rather than optional: an observation is attributed to a specific point within a survey site so that the same point can be measured again in later seasons. Approximate location would make repeat measurement meaningless.

Survey records. The quadrats, transects, counts, notes and observations you record.

Diagnostic information. Crash reports and basic performance data, so we can find and fix faults.

Usage and analytics. How the web platform and the app are used: which pages and screens you open, which features you use, and errors you run into. This is linked to your account, meaning your user identifier and email address. We use it to understand how HiveTracks Bio is used, to find and fix problems, and to improve it. It is not used for advertising, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

Permissions the app asks for

Camera — to photograph specimens and habitat features as part of a survey record.

Location — to geotag observations. The app uses location only while you are using it. It does not request background location and does not track your movements when the app is closed.

Photo library — only when you attach an image captured earlier, typically where signal or battery prevented capturing it in the app. On Android, the app may also ask to read the location saved in the photos you choose, so a photo is placed on the map where it was taken. It reads only the photos you pick, and if you decline, the photo uses your current location instead.

Photographs are sent to a third party for species identification

Photographs you submit are transmitted to a third-party species identification provider located in the European Union, which processes them and returns species suggestions. This is the only circumstance in which your photographs leave HiveTracks infrastructure.

Service providers

We use service providers to host and run the platform, send email, and provide product analytics and error tracking. For analytics and error tracking this is PostHog, in the United States. Service providers process data only on our behalf and only to run HiveTracks Bio.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

Who can see your observations

Observations recorded on an organization's site are visible to you and to other members of that organization. There is no public feed, no global map of other users' observations, and no way for one organization to see another organization's data. Membership of a site is by invitation from the organization that owns it, or by a join code that organization issues.

Where data contributed across sites is aggregated for research or reporting, it is anonymised and location is reduced in precision before aggregation.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from within the app, on the account screen, or by following the instructions at /data-deletion.

What deletion does, stated plainly. Your account, your sign-in credentials and your personal information are removed. Observations you have already submitted are retained as anonymous records, no longer linked to you. This is deliberate: ecological survey data loses its scientific value if records disappear from a time series, and those records may form part of an organization's multi-year monitoring baseline. If you need submitted records removed rather than anonymised, contact us at support@hivetracks.com.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Access to production systems is restricted to personnel who need it.

Children

HiveTracks Bio is a professional and volunteer monitoring tool intended for people aged 18 and over. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or erase your personal data, and to object to or restrict its processing. To exercise any of these, contact support@hivetracks.com.

Changes

We will update this page when our practices change, and will revise the date at the top.

Contact

HiveTracks, Inc.
support@hivetracks.com