PlanFishCatch

Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 11, 2026

PlanFishCatch asks anglers to hand us some of the most sensitive information they have: their waypoints, where they actually caught fish, their vessel and float-plan details, and who is aboard. We treat privacy as the foundation of the product, not a feature bolted on. This policy explains what PlanFishCatch LLC (“we,” “us”) collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. It reflects the commitments in our internal data-trust standard.

Our core promises

  • Your spots are yours. We never share your precise locations with anyone.
  • We learn from the community only in aggregate — never your individual spots. Your exact pins never appear in anyone else’s experience.
  • We never sell your data.
  • You can export and delete your data, including your catch history and waypoints. Basic GPX export of your waypoints is always free.
  • We protect it with encryption and strict, least-privilege access controls.

Information we collect

  • Account & profile: email address and authentication identifiers (we support sign-in via third-party OAuth providers), and your preferences such as home port.
  • Fishing data you create: waypoints, routes, catch logs (including coarse location and, if you add them, photos that may carry embedded time/location), and trip records.
  • Float-plan data: trip times, vessel details, number and names of people aboard, and the emergency contacts you choose to notify.
  • Billing: subscription status. Card payments are processed by Stripe; we do not store full payment-card numbers.
  • Technical: standard log and device data needed to operate and secure the Service, and a small number of essential cookies (including a private-preview access cookie and your authenticated session). See “Cookies” below.

How we use it

  • To provide the Service — forecasts, condition scores, species layers, waypoints, logbook, and the float-plan helper.
  • To send float-plan notifications to the contacts you select, and overdue alerts if you do not mark a safe return.
  • To improve regional species intelligence — but only through privacy-preserving aggregation, described next.
  • To process subscriptions, secure the Service, and meet legal obligations.

We do not use your individual fishing locations for advertising, and we do not sell your data.

Privacy through aggregation (your spots stay yours)

Our regional intelligence — species behavior learned from catch history — is computed from many anglers’ catches aggregated at a coarse spatial resolution. A learned pattern is only surfaced for an area when at least a minimum number of distinct users have contributed there (k-anonymity). Below that threshold, your predictions fall back to a broader regional or global baseline plus your own history only. Only anonymous counts and average conditions are ever used — never an individual catch, user, or precise pin. Your waypoints and catches are private by default; there is no implicit path that publishes them.

How we protect it

Data is encrypted in transit (TLS everywhere) and at rest. Access is owner-scoped by construction — every query for your data is restricted to you — and operational access follows least privilege, limited to a minimal, auditable set of people and systems. Precise location data may be coarsened or aged over time while anonymous aggregates persist.

Sharing & third parties

We share personal data only with service providers that help us run the Service (for example, cloud hosting, our payment processor, and the messaging providers that deliver float-plan notifications), each bound to protect it and use it only on our instructions. Float-plan details are shared solely with the emergency contacts you choose, only for safety. We may disclose data if required by law or to protect safety. We do not sell personal data or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Crew invites. If you add a crew member’s email to your roster and choose “Send invite,” we send that person a single, one-time email inviting them to join PlanFishCatch on your behalf. Every invite includes a one-click opt-out; we honor it permanently and never email that address again.

Separately, the Service displays public weather, ocean, and chart data from third parties; that is general reference data, not your personal information. See our Data & Attributions page.

Cookies

We use only a small number of strictly necessary cookies, which keep the Service working and secure:

  • Session cookie — keeps you signed in to your account after you log in.
  • Private-preview access cookie — during the invite-only preview, confirms you have the access key. (This will be retired when the preview ends.)

These are essential to provide a service you have requested, so under applicable cookie/ePrivacy rules they do not require consent, and we do not show a cookie banner. We do not currently use analytics, advertising, or cross-site/third-party tracking cookies, and we do not sell or “share” data via cookies for behavioral advertising. If we ever add non-essential cookies (for example, analytics), we will update this section and introduce a consent mechanism before doing so.

Retention

We keep your account and fishing data while your account is active and as needed to provide the Service. Buoy and other reference observations may be retained as long-run ground truth. When you delete your account, we immediately lock it and stop any billing, then permanently delete your personal data after a short grace period (currently 30 days), so an accidental deletion can be recovered within that window. The anonymous, aggregated regional signals used for community species intelligence carry no personal identifier or precise location and may persist. Deletion is also subject to limited retention required for legal, security, or backup purposes. In general, we retain personal data for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the Service, then for any additional period required to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

Your rights & choices

You can access, export, correct, and delete your data. Basic GPX export of your waypoints is available in-app and always free. Depending on where you live (for example, under the California Consumer Privacy Act/CPRA or, for applicable users, the GDPR), you may have additional rights — to access, delete, correct, port, or restrict processing of your personal data, and to be free from discrimination for exercising them. We do not sell or “share” personal data as those laws define it. You can export a complete copy of your data and delete your account at any time from your Account settings; you may also contact support@planfishcatch.com for any privacy request, and we will verify and respond within the time required by law.

Children

The Service is intended for adults (18+) and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13; if you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes & contact

We will update this policy as the product evolves and note the effective date above; material changes will be communicated. Questions or privacy requests: support@planfishcatch.com.