Privacy

Privacy policy

Last updated 26 October 2026.

1. Who we are

Wild Unlocked is run by Sam Compton, a sole trader based in the UK. Wild Unlocked is not yet a registered company. Sam is the "controller" of your personal data under UK data protection law (UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018).

Contact for anything about your data: privacy@wildunlocked.com.

ICO registration (data protection fee): ICO registration in progress; number to be added.

2. What we collect and why

Homepage sign-up form

Data	Why	Lawful basis
Email address; first name (optional)	To invite you to the private beta and/or send occasional updates, depending on what you ticked	Your consent
Your choices (beta, updates), a record that you consented, the time you signed up, and which form you used	To show what you agreed to and when	Legitimate interests (keeping a record of consent)

The form also has a hidden field that catches spam bots. It is not used to identify you.

To stop spam sign-ups, when you start filling in the form your browser runs an invisible check from Cloudflare Turnstile; you won't see or solve anything. Cloudflare looks at technical signals from your browser and connection (such as your IP address and browser details) to tell people from bots, and tells our server only whether the check passed. We also limit how many sign-ups can come from one connection: for this we keep a scrambled (one-way hashed) form of your IP address for up to a day, then delete it. We never store your IP address itself. Lawful basis: legitimate interests (keeping the list free of spam and abuse).

The Wild Unlocked app (private beta)

Data	Why	Lawful basis
Account: email address used to sign in (we email you a sign-in link), and account sign-in records kept by our database provider	To create your account and let you sign in	Contract (providing the app you asked for)
Profile: display name, username, interests, experience level, an approximate home area (rounded to about 1 km, with a place name), birth month and year if you give them, confirmation that you are 18 or over, and your chosen licence for sharing records	To personalise the app and check you are old enough for an account	Contract; legitimate interests (age check)
Walks and recordings: routes and GPS tracks, times, distance, and sightings (species, date, location, count, notes, photos)	So you can keep and back up your records across devices	Contract
Walk notes (typed or spoken, with an optional location) and walk photos with captions	As above	Contract
Community feed posts: title, text, photos, route, a general area name and location, author name, and "helpful" marks	To publish walks you choose to share with other testers	Contract
Reports and moderation: who reported a post, the reason and details, and who reviewed it and when	To keep the community safe and deal with misuse	Legitimate interests (safety and moderation)
Admin role: a record of which accounts are administrators	So only Sam can moderate and manage the app	Legitimate interests
Plant ID usage: a daily count of plant identifications for your account. Sign-in is required to use the app, and plant ID is limited per account	To keep within a fair-use limit on the plant identification service	Legitimate interests (preventing overuse)

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights and kept the data to what is needed. You can object (see section 6).

How access works

The Wild Unlocked app is a private beta for adults. Sam approves each person individually, and you must sign in to use the app. Accounts are only for adults aged 18 and over. Children and young people under 18 don't have accounts. Young explorer is a simpler mode for a grown-up to use together with a child, on the grown-up's own phone or tablet. It needs no account, and a PIN chosen by the grown-up is needed to leave it. What's recorded in Young explorer mode stays on that device and is never backed up (see section 8).

3. Who processes data for us, and where

• Supabase: our database, sign-in and photo storage. Our project is hosted in the London (eu-west-2) region. Supabase's support staff and some of its sub-processors may process data outside the UK.
• GitHub (part of Microsoft, USA): makes and stores our nightly backups of the database and photos. Each night a temporary GitHub server copies the data, encrypts it straight away and keeps only the encrypted copy, which is deleted automatically after 30 days. Only we hold the key to unlock it.
• Cloudflare: hosts the website and app, runs our small server relays (plant identification, Ask AI, GBIF nature look-ups, "Look out for…" tips and weather), and runs the invisible Turnstile spam check on the homepage sign-up form. Cloudflare handles your IP address and requests as part of delivering pages, and may process this outside the UK.
• Pl@ntNet: if you use plant ID, your photo is sent via our Cloudflare relay to the Pl@ntNet service (France) to suggest a species.
• Map and place lookups: to show maps and place names, the app sends map positions or search text to MapTiler (maps and place search) and to two OpenStreetMap services. Nominatim (place names) is used only for the "Welcome" card on Home, when you're outside our area list. If location is allowed, the card looks up the name of the village, town or suburb you're in by itself when you open Home, and again as you move while Home is open, sending your position rounded to about 100 metres. If location isn't allowed, it uses the home area saved in your profile (about 1 km) instead. To choose between a suburb and its town, it may also search for the town's name within an area of about 22 by 14 km around that rounded position. Names are remembered on your device, so places you've recently been aren't looked up again. Overpass (map data for park and area lookups, used only when our own and Natural England's site lists have no match) is sent the point you are exploring (with "near me", your position to within about 10 metres). It goes to overpass-api.de, run by FOSSGIS in Germany, or, if that is busy or down, the community-run overpass.private.coffee server, run by Private.coffee, a non-profit association in Austria. Other place names, such as the "near" name on the Walks page and the county used by Ask AI, are worked out on your device from Ordnance Survey's OS Open Names and aren't sent anywhere. These requests go straight from your device, so these services see your device's internet address and the position, area or search text being looked up. Weather (our paid weather feature, only for people who have it switched on): your location is blurred to an area about 3.5 by 5.5 km (a 0.05° grid) and sent via our Cloudflare server to MET Norway (the Norwegian Meteorological Institute) for the forecast, never your exact position and with no account details. For the same blurred area our server also asks the Environment Agency for flood warnings within about 5 km. Forecasts are cached by area, not by person. If you don't have the weather feature, no weather lookups are made for you.
• Nature and site data: the app looks up species and site information from NBN Atlas, GBIF, iNaturalist, and the public map services of Natural England and the Forestry Commission. Every GBIF lookup (Explore, area and site pages, routes, maps and species pages, in Young explorer mode too) goes through our Cloudflare server. Your phone sends our server only which square of a fixed grid you are in (about 500 metres across), or the published outline of the site you are looking at, never your exact position, and GBIF never sees your device or its internet address. NBN Atlas and iNaturalist are asked straight from your device for species names and pages only, so they see your device's internet address and the name you search, but no location.
• Natural England and Forestry Commission maps: to tell you which wood, park or nature site a place is in (ancient woodland, nature reserves, country parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and priority habitats) and what kind of woodland is there, the app asks the official map services of Natural England and the Forestry Commission (the government department that Forestry England is part of), using its National Forest Inventory. This happens when you open a place in Explore, for example by tapping "near me" or a place on the map. Your phone sends that point (with "near me", your position to within about 10 metres), asks what is within about 150 metres of it, and asks for site outlines in a wider area around it. If you switch on the woodland or nature-site map layers, the map instead asks for the squares of a fixed grid (about 3.5 by 5.5 km) that are on screen, not your position. These requests go straight from your device, so these services see your device's internet address and the point or area being looked up. They are not made in the background. Natural England and the Forestry Commission are independent public bodies, not our processors. Their map services are hosted for them on Esri's ArcGIS Online (Esri, Inc., USA), so Esri also handles these requests (see the note on transfers below). No account details are sent.
• "Look out for…" tips while you record: to suggest wildlife seen near you at this time of year, the app asks our Cloudflare server, which asks GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an international open-data network based in Denmark) for past records in an area of about 1.5 km around you. It asks when you start a walk and again each time you move on about 500 m. Your phone sends our server only which square of a fixed grid you are in (about 500 m across) and the month; GBIF only sees that rough area, never your device or its internet address. Answers are cached by area, not by person, and kept on your phone for up to 30 days so it doesn't ask again. No name or account details are sent. This also works in Young explorer mode. You can turn the tips off in Settings › While you walk, or hide them for one walk with ✕. GBIF is an independent organisation with its own privacy policy, not our processor.
• Videos: some articles embed YouTube videos in privacy-enhanced (youtube-nocookie.com) mode. They load only when shown.
• Brevo: sends our app sign-in emails and a one-off welcome email when you create an account (from accounts@wildunlocked.com), so it receives your email address (and, for the welcome email, your display name) and basic delivery data such as whether an email was delivered or a link was clicked. We don't send emails to anyone using Young explorer mode. You can change your email choices or unsubscribe from non-essential emails at any time using the link at the bottom of any of our emails. Brevo is also used to send beta invitations and updates emails to people who ask for them. Brevo may process data outside the UK.
• xAI (Grok), for our Ask AI features (when switched on): if you use "Tell me more", "Ask AI about this photo" or "Ask Grok for a second opinion", our Cloudflare relay sends xAI (X.AI LLC, USA) the photo with its hidden metadata removed (no EXIF or GPS), your question (up to 300 characters), the county (never your exact location, and none at all for sensitive species) and the month. The county is worked out on your phone from Ordnance Survey's open place-name data (OS Open Names); your position is not sent anywhere for this. This works in Great Britain only, so no county is sent in Northern Ireland. No name, email or account details are sent. xAI acts as our processor: under its API terms it does not use API data to train its models, and keeps it for up to 30 days for abuse and safety checks, then deletes it. Answers are labelled as AI suggestions and nothing is saved to your sightings unless you confirm. Ask AI is off in Young explorer mode.

Some of our providers, such as Supabase (whose database for us is hosted in London) and Brevo, may process data outside the UK. Where they do, this only happens under the UK's adequacy regulations (to countries the UK recognises as protecting personal data adequately), or under the ICO-approved International Data Transfer Agreement or International Data Transfer Addendum. GitHub, which makes and stores our backups, is in the United States. Transfers to GitHub rely on the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, under which GitHub is certified.

Some public services that your device contacts directly are based in the United States: Esri (ArcGIS Online), which hosts the Natural England and Forestry Commission maps described above, and iNaturalist (species name searches only). For these requests, your device's internet address and, for "near me" site checks, your position may be handled in the United States. Esri is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. These services are not our processors, and their own privacy policies apply.

xAI is based in the United States. If we switch Ask AI on, transfers to xAI will rely on the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where xAI is certified, or otherwise on the ICO-approved International Data Transfer Addendum. Questions: privacy@wildunlocked.com.

We do not sell your data, and we do not use advertising or analytics trackers.

4. How long we keep it

• Sign-up form details: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them, or 24 months after our last contact with you.
• Account and app data, including your walk routes: while your account is open. If we decide to introduce a time limit for keeping walk routes, we'll tell you first.
• Deleting your account: you can delete your account in the app (Settings › Account › Delete my account), or without the app by emailing privacy@wildunlocked.com from the address you sign in with. In the app, your account and everything linked to it on our servers (your profile, walks and routes, sightings, notes, photos, favourites, private areas, community posts, reports and Ask AI questions) is deleted straight away, and we also remove your email from our homepage beta and updates list. By email, we aim to do this within 7 days of confirming it's you, and always within one month. A few copies last a little longer: anything still on your phone stays until you clear the app's data or uninstall it, our encrypted backups keep it for up to 30 days, xAI keeps Ask AI requests for up to 30 days, and Brevo keeps a record of the emails we sent you for up to 3 months. You can also delete only some of your data. See Delete your account for the full steps.
• Backups: since 26 October 2026 we make an encrypted backup of our database and photos every night, and each backup is deleted automatically after 30 days. Backups are stored with GitHub (see section 3) and only we hold the key to unlock them. This means anything that's deleted, including a deleted account, may stay in a backup for up to 30 days after it's removed from our database. We only use backups to restore the service if something goes wrong.
• Walks, sightings, notes and walk photos you delete: removed from your account at the next sync, then permanently deleted from our database and photo storage by a nightly job about 30 days later. If you delete something while signed out, it is removed from your account the next time that device syncs after you sign in to the same account.
• Community feed posts you delete: removed from our database straight away, and their photos are removed from photo storage shortly afterwards, usually within minutes. A nightly check also removes any post photo left behind. Posts hidden after reports are kept, with their photos, until a moderator reviews them. If a moderator removes a post, it is hidden from everyone else and kept, with its photos, for 12 months after the review in case of questions or disputes, then permanently deleted. Its author can delete it sooner.
• Reports about community posts, and moderation records: 12 months after the report is closed. Reports you send us about an AI answer (with that question and answer): 12 months after we review them. Reports still waiting for review are kept until they are reviewed.
• Plant ID usage counts: 7 days.
• Ask AI (if switched on): questions and answers kept by us for 30 days for reports and safety, daily usage counts for 7 days; photos are not stored by us. xAI keeps request data for up to 30 days.

5. Photos and location

Photos you add are resized and re-saved on your device before upload, and the app removes the hidden metadata (EXIF, including any GPS location) from photos it uploads for walk photos and feed posts. A sighting or note can still have a location, because that is the point of a record. You choose this when you save it.

When you share a walk to the feed, its start and end are hidden by default so your home isn't shown: the first and last 200 metres of the route are left out. You can turn this off in the share screen if you want to.

Any part of a walk inside your private areas is always left out of your cloud backup, whatever your other settings. The Settings option "Hide the first and last 200 m of my walks" is on by default for new users. When it is on, your cloud backup also leaves out the first and last 200 metres of each walk, so we never hold where your walks start and finish. Your own maps on your phone still show the whole walk. If you turn it off, the rest of the route is backed up.

We may use walk data to put together end-of-year nature results, such as a summary of what testers found. These results are still being designed. Whatever your sharing settings, any walk data we keep for them always has homes hidden: the start and end of every walk are trimmed off.

6. Your rights

You have the right to:

• access a copy of your data;
• have incorrect data corrected;
• have your data deleted;
• withdraw consent at any time (for example, stop beta or updates emails). This doesn't affect anything done before you withdrew;
• object to processing based on legitimate interests;
• restrict processing in some cases;
• data portability: get data you gave us in a common machine-readable format.

To use any of these rights, email privacy@wildunlocked.com. We will reply within one month. You can unsubscribe from emails at any time by emailing us or using the unsubscribe link in any email.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO): ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113.

7. Cookies and local storage

Wild Unlocked does not use cookies for tracking, advertising or analytics. When we checked on 22 October 2026, the website and app at www.wildunlocked.com set no cookies at all.

• Old web address: if you type the address without "www" (wildunlocked.com), our domain provider, Squarespace, redirects you to www.wildunlocked.com. On that redirect it sets one technical cookie called crumb, which it uses for security. It is not used to track you, and it is only sent back to wildunlocked.com without the "www".
• Cloudflare security cookies: our site is delivered by Cloudflare. Cloudflare only sets security cookies such as __cf_bm or cf_clearance if bot protection or a security check is turned on, or if a visit is challenged. We did not find any of these cookies. If one is set, it is strictly necessary for security, short-lived, and does not identify you to us. See Cloudflare's cookie list.

The app stores information on your own device instead of using cookies:

• Local storage: your settings, such as theme, map style, adult or Young explorer mode and the month shown, plus small notes such as whether you have seen the welcome tour. If you sign in, your sign-in session is also kept here.
• On-device database (IndexedDB): the walks, sightings, notes and photos you record, so they work offline.
• Offline cache: copies of the app's own pages and nature data, so it loads quickly and works without signal.

These are strictly necessary for features you ask for, so we don't ask for consent for them. Nothing in them is sent to us unless you sign in and back up or share your records. Clearing your browser's site data for Wild Unlocked removes all of it. This also deletes records you haven't backed up.

8. Children

In short, for young explorers: Wild Unlocked helps you notice nature. Young explorer is for exploring together with a grown-up, on their phone or tablet, and a grown-up should always be with you outdoors. You don't need an account. What you record stays on that phone or tablet. It isn't backed up, sent to us or shown to anyone else. The app only uses where you are when you or your grown-up choose to, and you'll see a sign while a walk is being recorded. Your grown-up has a PIN to switch the app back to their mode. If you're worried about anything, tell your grown-up, and they can email privacy@wildunlocked.com.

Wild Unlocked is designed for adults, and accounts are only for adults aged 18 and over. Children and young people under 18 don't have accounts. Young explorer is a supervised mode: a parent, guardian or other grown-up sets it up on their own phone or tablet and uses it together with the child. Children should always be with a grown-up outdoors. Switching into Young explorer needs a grown-up to answer a question, and the first time, the grown-up chooses a 4-digit PIN. The PIN is needed to switch back to adult mode. It is kept only on that device, as a scrambled code, and is never sent to us. Young explorer works without an account. Anything recorded in Young explorer mode stays on that device and is never backed up to any account, even if a grown-up is signed in on the same device. If Sam learns that a child's personal data has been collected without a parent's or guardian's consent, he will delete it.

We have designed Young explorer mode with the ICO's Age appropriate design code (the Children's code) in mind:

• High privacy by default: walks, sightings, notes and photos recorded in Young explorer mode are never backed up. They stay on the device, even if the device is later switched back to adult mode, and favourites are not synced.
• No sharing: the community feed, posting walks and the profile page are not available in Young explorer mode. Nothing a child records is shown to other people or sent to us.
• Grown-up controls: leaving Young explorer needs the grown-up's PIN. After several wrong tries the PIN locks for a while. If the PIN is forgotten, a signed-in grown-up can sign in again to reset it. Otherwise, clearing the app's data resets it, which also deletes anything recorded in Young explorer on that device.
• Fewer outside services: plant identification with Pl@ntNet and Ask AI are turned off in Young explorer mode, so no photos or questions are sent to them.
• Location: the app only asks for your location when you tap a button that needs it, such as "near me" or starting a walk, and your browser asks permission first. While a walk is being recorded, the app shows a clear sign that the walk is being recorded (a red dot with "Exploring!" or "REC"). Location is never shown to other people in Young explorer mode. Maps, weather and nature look-ups still receive a map area or location, as described in section 3. GBIF nature look-ups and the "Look out for…" tips go through our server and only send a rough grid square. Other "near me" checks (for example, which wood, park or nature site you are in) send where you are to the map and site services, which can see the device's internet address.
• No profiling, ads or nudges: we don't use advertising, analytics or tracking, and we don't build profiles of children or use their data to choose what they see. Badges and streaks are worked out on the device, are just for fun, and never ask for more personal data or for privacy settings to be turned off.
• Only what's needed: we collect only what a feature needs to work. In Young explorer mode we don't store anything a child records on our servers. Some look-ups pass through our Cloudflare relay, such as GBIF nature look-ups and the "Look out for…" tips, which send only a rough grid square (and, for tips, the month). No account details are sent with them.
• Help and your rights: a parent or guardian can ask us about a child's data, or report a concern, at privacy@wildunlocked.com. The section 6 rights apply. Because Young explorer records stay on the device, clearing the app's site data removes them.

9. Changes to this policy

We will update this page if anything changes and show the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will tell signed-up users by email or in the app.