Privacy Policy
Last updated: 9 June 2026
SlabShot is an offline-first fishing log. The app reconstructs your catches on your own phone; by default, nothing about your trips, catches, photos, or location is sent anywhere. There are no accounts. This policy describes exactly what stays on your device, the few times the app talks to the internet (and what it sends), the named third parties involved, and your choices — written to match the app's actual behavior.
The short version
- Your trips, catches, photos, and exact locations live on your phone. No account, no automatic upload.
- When the app does use the internet, your coordinates are coarsened first (rounded to about 11 km) — your exact spot is not sent.
- Location is used only while you're using the app (a one-time fix when you Mark a Catch or view conditions). No background location.
- Sharing your catch data with us is opt-in and off by default, and is reduced to a county-level area — never precise coordinates.
- Crash/ANR diagnostics are sent to Sentry with no personal data attached.
- We don't sell your data, run ads, or use third-party analytics other than the crash reporter named below.
- Under 18: the app keeps everything on your device — for users under 18, the few internet features that would send location (weather, place names, satellite map) are turned off, and opt-in sharing is unavailable. Under-13 is not permitted. See Children & teens.
What stays on your device
All of this is stored locally and is not transmitted to any server unless you explicitly export or opt in (see below):
- Catch & trip logs — depth, water temp, position, species, weight, lure, times.
- The GPS track & raw sonar data — recorded from your fish-finder over Wi-Fi (or your phone's GPS on bank trips).
- Your photos & videos — read from your camera roll to match them to catches; they are not copied off your device by the app.
- Settings — your tackle box, boat-electronics choice, and preferences.
When the app uses the internet
These are the only times SlabShot makes a network request, the data sent, and the third party that receives it. Every request uses HTTPS (encrypted in transit).
| Feature | Sent | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| Weather & daylight (home conditions, catch cards) | A coarsened latitude/longitude (rounded to ~11 km). No exact coordinates, no identity. | Open-Meteo (weather API) |
| Place name on a catch card | A coarsened latitude/longitude (~11 km) to look up a county/area name. | Your device's geocoding service (on most phones, Google) |
| Satellite map (private, in-app trip map) | Standard map-tile requests for the area you're viewing. This is your precise spots view, so the tile server can infer the general area of your catches from which tiles are requested. Map data is never shared with other users or attached to anything you post. | Esri World Imagery tiles (arcgisonline.com) |
| Crash & ANR diagnostics | A crash/freeze stack trace, app version, device model and OS version, and breadcrumbs that are screen names only. No user identifier, IP, GPS, photo paths, or catch data (stripped before sending). | Sentry (error-reporting; US region) |
| Waitlist / in-app feedback (only if you submit it) | Your email (if you provide it), your message text, an optional "tester" choice, and — for feedback — your app version and device model. A country code is derived from your IP by our host. | Our serverless endpoint on Cloudflare |
Map tiles, weather, and geocoded place names are cached and degrade cleanly when offline.
Age-conditional: the first three rows (Weather, Place name, Satellite map) all involve location leaving the device. For users who indicate they are under 18 — or who skip the age question — the app does not make those requests at all: weather and the place-name lookup are skipped, and the trip map shows your track and catch markers without downloading any satellite tiles. Crash/ANR diagnostics still apply to teens (they carry no personal data); opt-in sharing is unavailable to anyone under 18. See Children & teens.
Data types we collect (Google Play "Data safety" terms)
| Type | Collected? | Purpose | Shared / sent off device? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location (approximate & precise) | On-device. Precise to tag catches/track; coarsened (~11 km) for weather + place names. Not background. | Catch positions, the private trip map, weather/area lookups. | Coarsened coordinates go to the weather/geocoding services above. Exact coordinates are not sent to any server, and are scrubbed from share cards. Sent to SlabShot only via opt-in sharing, at county level. For users under 18, no location leaves the device at all — the weather, place-name, and map-tile requests are disabled, and sharing is unavailable. |
| Photos & videos | On-device (read from your library). | Match media to catches; render share cards; optional export you initiate. | Not sent to any server by the app. Share cards are freshly drawn with no EXIF/GPS; exported video is re-encoded with no location metadata. |
| App activity / other: catch & trip data | On-device. | Your fishing log and on-device insights. | Not unless you opt in to sharing (county-level area only). |
| Crash logs & diagnostics | Yes — on crash/ANR. | Fix stability bugs. | Sent to Sentry. No personal data attached. |
| Personal info — email | Only if you give it (waitlist / feedback). | Reply to you; launch & tester updates. | Stored on our Cloudflare endpoint. Not sold or shared with advertisers. |
| Messages — feedback text | Only if you send feedback. | Improve the app. | Stored on our Cloudflare endpoint. May contain whatever you type, so please don't include sensitive details. |
Optional, opt-in sharing
Two separate switches, both off by default and revocable anytime in the app (Settings → Data sharing). Nothing is sent automatically; turning a switch on only lets you send, via your phone's normal share/email, when you choose. Opt-in sharing is available to adults (18+) only — for users under 18 (or who skip the age question) both switches are unavailable and cannot be enabled.
Trip & catch sharing
If enabled, you can contribute your catches to help build regional, descriptive insights. Each catch's location is reduced to a county-level area name — no exact coordinates are included. Shared fields: species, weight, depth, water temp, lure, date, and the coarse area.
Diagnostic bundles
If enabled, you can send a diagnostic bundle (a GPS-scrubbed raw sonar stream plus connection/parse and app/device details) to help us support more fish-finders. GPS coordinates in the sonar stream are removed before it leaves your phone.
Exports you control
- Share cards (still, frame-grab, video, collage, slideshow) carry no GPS or EXIF — the image is drawn fresh and the video is re-encoded, and any location shown on a card is blurred to a county area or off.
- "Export my trips" (a ZIP, in Settings) is your own full backup. It intentionally keeps your photos' original GPS and your exact track, because it's for you. It is not sent to us or any server — it goes only where you choose to send it. Treat that ZIP as you would any file containing your locations.
Sharing & selling
We do not sell your personal information and do not share it with data brokers or advertisers. The only third parties that ever receive data are the service providers named above (Sentry for crash reports; Open-Meteo for weather; your device's geocoder and Esri for the map; Cloudflare for the waitlist/feedback endpoint), each processing only what that function needs.
Security
All network requests use HTTPS/TLS. On-device data is protected by Android's app sandbox.
Permissions
SlabShot requests location (catch positions, the private map, and to connect to your fish-finder's Wi-Fi), photo/media access (to match and export your catch photos), notifications (for the recording status notification — recording works without it), nearby-Wi-Fi (to join the finder's network), and foreground-service/wake permissions (to keep recording with the screen off). It does not request background location. Denying any permission degrades gracefully — the app tells you what's affected and keeps working.
Retention & deletion
- On-device data stays until you delete a trip or uninstall the app.
- Waitlist/feedback email is kept until you ask us to remove it.
- Crash reports are retained by Sentry per their default retention and contain no personal data.
- To request access to, or deletion of, the email/feedback you sent us, see Request data deletion or email the address below. We action verified requests within 30 days.
Children & teens
SlabShot is intended for anglers 13 and older. It is not designed for or directed to children, and is not a "family" or child-audience app.
Under 13 — not permitted
At first launch the app asks for your date of birth (see How we determine age). If you indicate you are under 13, SlabShot blocks access — a polite stop screen is shown and no other part of the app opens, so no trips, catches, photos, location, or diagnostics are collected. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has somehow provided us information (for example, through the waitlist or feedback form on this site), email privacy@getslabshot.com and we will delete it.
Teens 13–17 — on-device only
For users who indicate they are 13–17 (or who skip the age question, which we treat the same way), SlabShot runs in an on-device-only mode:
- No data is shared off the device. The opt-in Trip/catch sharing and Diagnostic-bundle switches are unavailable and cannot be turned on.
- Location never leaves the device. The weather lookup and the catch-card place-name lookup are skipped entirely, and the private trip map draws your track and catch markers without requesting any satellite map tiles — so no coordinates (not even coarsened ones) are sent to any third party.
- Crash/ANR diagnostics still apply and contain no personal data (no user identifier, IP, location, photo paths, or catch data — same as for adults). If we ever needed to stop teen diagnostics entirely, that is a single switch in the app.
- Everything on-device works fully — capture, Mark Catch, photo matching, manual entry, measuring, the local map, on-device insights, share-card generation, and your own backup/export. Minors simply cannot push data off the device.
How we determine age, and what we store
- Neutral question. On first launch we ask your date of birth with no hint at a "right" answer; you can skip it (we then treat you as a minor until you say otherwise).
- Stored on-device only. Your self-declared birthdate is saved only on your phone and is never transmitted to us or anyone else. The resulting age status (adult / teen / unknown / under-13) is computed on the device and is likewise never stored on a server or sent off the device — including in crash reports.
- Play age signals. Where the law requires age assurance, the app may consult Google Play's age-signal service at runtime to confirm your age band; that result is used only to set the on-device gates above. It is not stored, and is never used for advertising, analytics, or profiling. (This pathway is built but not active in the current build.)
Parents & guardians
Because SlabShot stores a teen's data only on their device and never sends it to us, we do not hold a teen's fishing data to provide or delete. On-device data is removed by deleting a trip or uninstalling the app. If your child under 13 reached our waitlist or feedback form and you want that information removed, or you have any question about a minor's data, contact privacy@getslabshot.com and we will respond and delete as required.
Changes
We'll update this page if our practices change and revise the date above.
Contact
Questions or a deletion request: privacy@getslabshot.com.