Privacy Policy

Who we are

ANTS is operated by Dallas Taylor under the ArcosAnts personal brand from Florida, United States. ArcosAnts is not a registered business. “We” and “us” mean the operator. Contact is by email only: [email protected].

What you enter and why

ANTS stores your sign-in email and account identifiers; colony profiles; dated worker, egg, larva and pupa measurements; care logs; tasks, schedules and their activity records; and optional photos, captions and capture dates. Most fields can be left blank. Please do not put a home address or unnecessary personal information in your notes.

We use these records to show colony history, care status, growth graphs and your schedules across your signed-in devices. We also keep record revisions and operation receipts so uncertain saves can be recovered and duplicate actions prevented.

If you register a passkey, credential information is stored with our authentication provider. We never receive your fingerprint or face data; your device or password manager handles that check.

Photos

A photo you choose is decoded and re-encoded on your device before a processed copy is uploaded to private storage. HEIC/HEIF photos become a JPEG still image. Embedded metadata (such as camera location) is not carried into the stored copy. Removing metadata cannot hide what is visible in the picture, so check the image itself before uploading.

Example genus photographs in the public care library are licensed third-party photos with visible credits. They are not photographs of your colony.

Community flight reports and location

Flight reporting is optional. A report contains a broad map area (an H3 resolution-5 cell, average area about 252.9 km² and edge about 9.85 km; real cells vary), species or genus text (or Unidentified), confidence, observation type, calendar date and timezone. Your town or city is converted to that broad area on your device; precise coordinates and typed place searches are not sent. A personal note is stored separately and is not shown to others. A broad area can still reveal something about where you were.

Approved reports can be seen by signed-in keepers on the community map, without your identity, private colony records or notes. A correction returns a report to Pending for review; withdrawing removes it from the map. Publication means a report passed review; it does not mean the species identification or flight was scientifically verified.

If you delete your account, a report that was Published at that time stays on the community map in anonymized form, with no link to your account. Its area and observation fields are kept and its personal note is cleared. Published reports are kept without your account link or note. Pending, Rejected and Withdrawn reports, and concerns you raised, are deleted with the account. While deletion is pending, your reports are hidden from the community map. To keep a report off the map, withdraw it before deleting your account.

H3 cell statistics

Report review, including AI assistance

Flight reports are reviewed by Arcos, a reviewer that operates through Grok Bot, an AI agent service. The reviewer sees the report’s ID, revision, status, broad area, species, confidence, observation type, date, timezone and any concern categories, but not your identity, email, personal note or private colony records. A separate notification telling the reviewer that a report is Pending contains only an event name, report ID, revision and submission time.

The Grok Bot provider may keep content it processes in its own environment under its own terms. We cannot recall those copies or guarantee a specific provider retention period or no-training setting. You are asked to acknowledge this before submitting or correcting a report. Colony tracking works without reporting.

Grok Bot terms · Grok Bot provider privacy policy

Service providers

We use these providers to run ANTS. Each processes data under its own privacy policy and terms:

Supabase: sign-in, database and private photo storage (our database is hosted in Oregon, U.S.). Cloudflare: hosting, delivery, network security and cookieless Web Analytics page measurement. Resend: delivery of sign-in emails. Google: the Gmail support inbox (when you email us), encrypted backup copies stored in Google Drive, and Google Search Console, which reports how public pages appear in Google Search. OpenFreeMap: map tiles when you open the detailed map, which receives the viewed area and normal connection information. Grok Bot: flight-report review, as described above.

Stripe will process payments if paid Plus billing launches; it is not active today and receives no data now. Providers can receive connection information such as IP addresses, and some processing may happen outside your country or state.

Supabase privacy policy · Cloudflare privacy policy · Resend privacy policy · Google privacy policy · OpenFreeMap privacy policy · Stripe privacy policy

Browser storage, cookies and analytics

The app uses browser storage for your theme, sign-in session, a few display choices and unsaved editor drafts for your account. Drafts stay on that browser and are cleared when you sign out. We do not use advertising cookies or advertising trackers.

Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views and performance without cookies. Cloudflare also adds standard network-error-reporting headers and security features. We keep private aggregate counts (for example, number of accounts or reports) that contain no identities, emails, locations or report text.

Why we may use your data (legal bases)

If laws such as the GDPR or UK GDPR apply to you, we rely on: performing our agreement with you to provide the service you request (account, records, sign-in emails, sharing you choose); our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure, reliable and free of abuse, and in recovering failed saves; your choice to submit optional flight reports and to contact support; and legal obligations where they apply.

How long we keep data

We keep your account and records for as long as your account exists. There is no automatic deletion for inactivity. You can edit or delete records at any time.

When you delete your account, photo cleanup runs first; once it is confirmed, your live account records and sign-in account are removed. Published flight reports stay in anonymized form as described above. We keep a small erasure record (a one-way digest of your internal account ID and the erasure time, without your email or records) so deleted accounts are not restored from backups.

Encrypted backup copies can contain earlier records until those copies are rotated out; we do not promise a fixed maximum lifetime for them. Support emails, provider logs and provider backups follow their own schedules. Exports you download are copies under your control.

Your choices and privacy rights

In Account you can download your records (JSON/CSV or a ZIP with photos), and permanently delete your account. You can edit or remove most records directly.

You can ask us to access, correct or delete your personal information, or for a copy of it, by emailing [email protected]. We will need to confirm the request comes from the account owner; an email address alone may not be enough. Never email passwords, sign-in codes or sign-in links.

Depending on where you live (for example California or another U.S. state with a privacy law, or the EU/UK), you may have rights to know, access, correct, delete and port your data, to object or restrict processing, and to complain to a regulator. We will not discriminate against you for using these rights.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not run ads.

Age

ANTS is a U.S.-focused service for people age 13 and older. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you are under 18, you need permission from a parent or guardian. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we will delete it.

Security

Access controls separate each keeper’s records and limit what reviewers can see. Photos are private. The app is not end-to-end encrypted; the operator and providers can have operational access. No method of storage or transmission is risk-free.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it took effect. For material changes we will give notice in the app or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use ANTS after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Questions or requests: [email protected].