Last updated: 21 October 2026 · Applies to the Forager Android app (com.zynergylabs.forager.app) on Google Play.
This is the document Google Play's Data safety declaration points at. It is written to match what the app's code actually does.
Forager has no account, no sign-in, no sync and no analytics. Nothing you record, meaning tracks, journal entries, photos, offline map regions and settings, is uploaded to us or to anyone else.
What is transmitted, while your phone is online, is where you are looking: the coordinates a search runs on, and the map tiles for the area on screen. Those go to iNaturalist, Open-Meteo, the map tile providers, and a Cloudflare Worker we operate. They carry a location and your IP address, and they are logged by the services that receive them.
Because location leaves the device and reaches third parties, the Play Data safety declaration for this app states that location is collected and shared. That is the accurate description, not a conservative one.
Stored in the app's own private storage, readable by no other app:
None of this is transmitted by the app. It is deleted when you uninstall Forager or clear its data.
The app sets android:allowBackup="false", which turns off both Android Auto Backup and the device-to-device transfer that runs during a new phone's setup. Your phone therefore does not copy Forager's data to your Google account, and does not hand it to another device on your behalf.
Moving your data belongs to the app rather than to the operating system, so Forager has its own Backup, in Tools, then Settings. “Back up now” writes a single file, containing your tracks, journal entries, waypoints and photos, to a place you choose with Android’s own file picker. “Automatic backup” can repeat this daily, weekly or monthly into a folder you choose. The file is not encrypted and goes only where you put it: if you choose a cloud folder, that service’s own terms apply to it. “Restore from backup” reads a file you pick and either replaces what is on the phone or merges it in. Forager never sends a backup anywhere on its own.
Every request below is made only when the app is online and doing the thing that needs it. None of them carries a user identifier, an advertising ID, a device ID, or an account, because the app has none to send.
| Recipient | What is sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
iNaturalistapi.inaturalist.org |
Latitude and longitude of the searched area, a radius, a month, taxon filters | Which species have been observed near that place at that time of year |
Open-Meteoapi.open-meteo.com |
Latitude and longitude, forecast and past day counts | Rain, soil moisture and soil temperature for the trip window |
Open-Meteo archivearchive-api.open-meteo.com |
Latitude and longitude, a date range | Historical rainfall, for the fruiting-lag calculation |
OpenStreetMap, OpenTopoMaptile.openstreetmap.org, a.tile.opentopomap.org |
Map tile coordinates, meaning the map area being viewed | Drawing the map |
Our map tile serviceforager-pmtiles.brandonlee1-894.workers.dev |
The offline map style, and vector map tiles by coordinate | The offline basemap, and downloading an offline region |
As with any HTTP request, each of these also reveals your IP address and ordinary request metadata to the recipient. Each recipient's own privacy policy governs what it then does with that.
One thing the app does not request itself: tapping an observation to open it on iNaturalist hands a link to your browser or to the iNaturalist app. From that point it is an ordinary web visit made by that other app, under its own terms, not a request Forager makes.
Downloading an offline region issues a large number of tile requests in a short time, covering the whole region. That is the download. Once a region is downloaded, viewing the map inside it makes no tile requests at all. Searching still does.
The forager-pmtiles.brandonlee1-894.workers.dev endpoint is operated by us on Cloudflare's platform, serving tiles out of a Cloudflare R2 bucket. Because we run it ourselves, no third-party tile vendor sees the requests your device makes to it.
We keep no logs of these requests. The Worker's own code writes no log lines, and request logging is explicitly disabled in its configuration rather than left to a platform default. We also hold no plan that would let us export or retrieve per-request logs from Cloudflare.
Cloudflare operates the infrastructure and, as the host, processes these requests on our behalf under its own privacy policy. We state no retention period here because there is no setting of ours that produces one, and we will not publish a figure we cannot verify.
Nothing about these requests is linked to an account, because the app has none. Nothing is sold, shared for advertising, or used for profiling.
Photos stay on your phone. The app never transmits one. What the app does with the location metadata embedded in a photo file is narrower than it may sound, and is stated here as it actually is:
This matters if you export or share a photo yourself. Depending on your Android version and how the photo got into the app, it may carry the coordinates of where it was taken. Treat a shared photo the way you would treat a shared track.
A find's coordinate, when the app records one, is stored in the app's own database rather than read out of a camera capture's EXIF.
ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_LOCATION): showing your position, recording a track, navigating back, and the coordinates a species or weather lookup searches on. While the app is in the foreground it receives location updates continuously, not only while you are recording. When you leave the app, it releases its location subscription rather than relying on Android to withhold it.CAMERA): Forager's own camera, for taking photos to attach to a journal entry. The app asks for it when you first open the camera, not at launch; if you decline, the camera does not open, and you can still attach photos from your gallery. Photos it takes are stored on your device, as described under "Photos and location metadata" above. Choosing a photo from your gallery needs no permission: it uses Android's photo picker.ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION: reading the capture date and coordinate of a photo you import, so a find can be dated and placed. Read separately from the stored copy's bytes.Forager does not ask for background location. The permission Android calls ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION is not requested and not declared. A recording keeps running with your screen off because it runs as a foreground service, with the ongoing notification you can see, not because the app can read your location in the background.
Outside those two states, app open or a recording running, Forager receives no location at all.
You can revoke location permission at any time in Android Settings. Recording will not work without it, but the rest of the app will.
The app bundles no analytics, crash-reporting or advertising SDK. There is no telemetry of any kind: no usage events, no session data, no device fingerprint, no third-party identifier. Nothing about your use of the app is reported to us unless you write it in a message and send it yourself.
If you are using Forager as a closed beta tester, everything above applies to you unchanged. We may ask you questions about how the app behaved on your device.
Anything you send us is voluntary and specific. Our beta templates deliberately do not ask where you were. Foragers mark spots they do not want found. They ask about terrain and sky instead. Declining any question costs you nothing.
Separate from the app, and the one place Zynergy Labs holds personal data about you: if you filled in the beta signup form that was at zynergy-labs.com/beta-signup, what you typed is stored. This is website data, not app data. The app never sees it, and it is outside the scope of the Play Data safety declaration, which covers the app.
The signup is closed. Now that Forager is on Google Play, the form no longer takes entries and that address leads to the Play listing. Nothing new is added to the list. The signups already made are still held, as described below, and can still be removed on request.
What is stored:
Your IP address is not stored. To stop the form being flooded, a separate table keeps a salted SHA-256 hash of the connecting address with a counter and a timestamp. That is enough to recognise a repeat submission within the hour and not enough to recover the address it came from.
The list lives in a Cloudflare D1 database we operate, on Cloudflare's infrastructure and under its privacy policy as our processor. When you signed up, a notification carrying what you entered was emailed to Zynergy Labs support through Resend, our mail provider, which processed it in order to deliver it. Nobody else received it. It is not sold, not shared and not used for any mailing beyond the beta.
How long it is kept: until the beta ends or you ask for it to be removed, whichever comes first. We publish no figure beyond that because there is no automatic expiry that would produce one, and we will not state a retention period we cannot verify.
To have your signup removed, email privacy@zynergy-labs.com. Removing it deletes the record; it does not delete anything on your phone, which was never ours to begin with.
Forager is not directed at children and collects nothing about anyone, including children, beyond what is described above.
Your journal is stored locally, so you control it directly:
We hold no copy of your journal, and no logs of your map tile requests, so for the app's own data there is nothing for us to produce or delete on your behalf.
The exception, and the only one, is the beta signup list. If you joined it, we hold the record described in The beta signup list and can delete it on request: privacy@zynergy-labs.com. Before the signup form existed this paragraph said we held nothing at all about you; that stopped being true the day the form went up, and this is the correction.
Step-by-step detail on deleting everything is at zynergy-labs.com/delete-data, the page named in the Play Data safety declaration.
Material changes will change the date at the top of this page.
Questions about this policy or about Forager's handling of data: