Winterwood Privacy Policy

Last updated: 13 August 2026

Winterwood identifies trees from a photograph and from a step-by-step key, and tells you how to grow them. This policy describes what the app actually does — it was written from the source code, not from a template.

The short version

There is no account. No sign-up, no email, no password.
Your photographs are not stored on our servers. A photo is passed through to an AI provider, the answer comes back, and nothing is kept.
Your saved finds — species, confidence, your notes and the photographs — stay on your device only. We never receive them.
We use no advertising, analytics or tracking SDKs. We do not use the Advertising Identifier (IDFA) and we do not track you across apps or websites.
We do not sell or share your data with data brokers.
The key, all species pages and the growing advice work fully offline. If you never use photo identification, the app never contacts us at all.

What we process

Data	Why	Retention
The photograph you take or choose	To identify the tree. Resized on your device, then sent over an encrypted connection to our server and on to the AI provider that reads it.	Held in memory for the duration of the request. Never written to our storage.
The note you add to a shot (optional) and the shot type you picked	Sent with the photograph so the model has context.	Same as above — request only.
An install identifier (a random value created on your device)	To count your free identifications and to apply per-install rate limits. It is not an account and is not linked to you, your name or your Apple ID.	Stored with your credit balance for up to 400 days.
An App Attest key identifier (Apple's device check)	To confirm the request came from a genuine, unmodified copy of Winterwood. This is what stops someone extracting our key and spending our AI budget.	Up to 180 days.
A subscriber identifier (a random value, if you subscribe)	So your subscription can be recognised and restored. Handled by RevenueCat.	For the life of the subscription record.
Your IP address	Seen by our server, as with any internet request. Used only to apply hourly rate limits and to keep the service available.	Short-lived rate-limit counters and standard server logs.

What stays on your device

Saved finds, the photographs attached to them, your notes, and everything the offline key and the species guide use. These are written to the app's own storage on your iPhone. We have no copy, and deleting the app deletes them.

Location

Winterwood does not request or collect your location. If a future version adds it, it will ask first, the answer will be attached to your own saved find on your device, and this policy will be updated before that version ships.

Who processes data on our behalf

Provider	Role
Vercel	Hosts the server that passes your photograph to the AI provider.
fal.ai	Runs the vision model that reads the photograph.
Google	Supplies that vision model (Gemini), operated through fal.ai.
RevenueCat	Manages subscription status and restores.
Apple	Processes payment and provides App Attest. We never see your payment details.

These providers process data to deliver the feature you asked for. They are not permitted to use your photographs to train models on our behalf.

Children

Winterwood is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from them. There is no account, no profile and no social feature.

Your rights

Because there is no account, we hold almost nothing that can be traced to you. If you want the credit record tied to your install deleted, email us with the install identifier shown in Settings inside the app and we will remove it. Deleting the app removes everything held on your device.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the date at the top changes and the new version is published here before the app version it describes is released.

Contact

Questions about this policy: 1anfibi@gmail.com