This policy explains what information Wing Eye ("the App," "we," "us") collects, how it's used, and the choices you have. It applies to the Wing Eye Android app and any associated web version.
gallery-eye.app, contactable at email@gallery-eye.app, is the developer of the Wing Eye app. (Wing Eye is a companion app to our Gallery Eye and Castle Eye apps, built by the same developer and published under the same contact details.)
Your streak, best score and progress are stored on your device. We never collect your name, email, contacts, precise location or any account details. What we do collect is described below: anonymous usage statistics (which you can switch off), technical records about ads, and — only if you choose to use them — the Leaderboard and Friends Boards.
The first time the App needs one, it creates a random identifier and keeps it on your device. It is not your phone's advertising ID or any hardware ID, and it isn't linked to your name, email or Google account. You can see the start of it under Settings → Device ID. Uninstalling the App, or clearing its storage, deletes it; the App then starts again with a new one.
To understand how the App is used — for example how often people come back, how far they get, and which of our promotions brings players who enjoy the game — the App sends us anonymous usage statistics, keyed to the random device identifier above:
We use these statistics only to improve the App and decide where to promote it. They are not shared with anyone, sold, or used for advertising, and they are never shown publicly. You can switch them off at any time under Settings → Usage stats. Switching them off stops the App sending them and deletes the statistics already recorded from your device.
To check that advertising works properly (for example that an ad loaded, was shown, or failed), the App records technical ad events in our database: the event type, any error message from the ad service, the App version, the time, and the random device identifier. These records contain no personal details and are used only to diagnose problems.
The App includes an opt-in public Leaderboard. Nothing is added to the Leaderboard until you save a display name on the Leaderboard panel yourself — simply opening the panel to look at it does not create an entry. The moment you save a name, we store your random device identifier (see above), along with your current best streak and the display name you chose, in our database. From that point on, any new personal best is synced automatically — no further action needed, and no further prompts.
This information is public. The Leaderboard shows the top scores to everyone who opens it, including whatever display name you chose. Don't use your real name or anything identifying as your Leaderboard name unless you're comfortable with other players seeing it.
You can stop participating at any time by not saving a name again — your existing entry will simply stop updating. To have your entry removed entirely, contact us at email@gallery-eye.app with your Leaderboard display name and your approximate best score and roughly when you played, so we can locate and remove it.
The App also lets you create or join a private, password-protected Friends Board to compare streaks with a small group of people you choose. If you create or join one, we store: a random device identifier for your device, the display name you chose for that board, your best streak on that board, and — for the board's creator only — a password used to manage the board. The password is never stored as readable text; it's stored as a one-way cryptographic hash that can't be reversed back into the original password, even by us.
A Friends Board's members and their scores are visible only to other people who know that board's join code — never to the public, and never mixed with the public Leaderboard. You can leave a board at any time from within the App, which removes your entry from it immediately. The board's creator can delete the entire board (removing every member's entry) using the admin password.
Usage statistics and ad diagnostics are deleted automatically after 13 months. Usage statistics are also deleted straight away if you switch them off in Settings.
Leaderboard and Friends Board data is kept for as long as you keep using that feature — there's no automatic expiry. If you simply stop playing, your entry doesn't update anymore but isn't automatically deleted; it stays on the board until you remove it yourself (Friends Boards, from within the App) or ask us to (Leaderboard, via the contact process above). Once a deletion request or an in-App board departure is processed, the corresponding device identifier, display name, and score are removed outright — we don't retain a separate copy afterward.
Playing the App causes your device to make requests to a small number of third-party services, each of which may see standard technical information (such as your IP address, device type, and approximate location derived from your IP) as an ordinary part of serving that request. We don't control what these services log; each is governed by its own privacy policy, linked below.
Wing Eye's bird species, family/group information, and images are served from our database hosted on Supabase — a separate database area from Gallery Eye's and Castle Eye's, so no content or scores are ever shared between the apps. The usage statistics and ad diagnostics described in Section 2 are stored there, and if you opt into the Leaderboard or a Friends Board, that data is stored there too. Requests to load bird content use a public, read-only key; Leaderboard and Friends Board reads and writes go through access-controlled database functions with no ability to read or modify anything beyond what those features need.
Supabase's privacy policy: supabase.com/privacy
To source bird photographs, species names, and licensing information, and to occasionally discover additional freely-licensed photos, the App makes live requests to iNaturalist's public API. These are standard, anonymous web requests — we don't send any personal information as part of them, but iNaturalist's own servers will see your IP address, same as visiting any website.
iNaturalist's privacy policy: inaturalist.org/pages/privacy
To show background information about a species ("More about this bird"), the App makes live requests to Wikipedia's public API. These are standard, anonymous web requests — we don't send any personal information as part of them, but the Wikimedia Foundation's own servers will see your IP address, same as visiting any website.
Wikimedia Foundation's privacy policy: wikimediafoundation.org/privacy
Wing Eye is supported by advertising served through Google AdMob, under its own AdMob app registration separate from our other apps. AdMob may collect device identifiers (such as your Android Advertising ID), approximate location, and app usage information to serve and measure ads, and — where you've given consent — to personalize the ads you see.
Where required by law (including the EU, UK, and California), you'll be asked to make a choice about ad personalization the first time you open the App. You can change that choice at any time by tapping "Privacy Options" at the bottom of the App, or through your Android device's own ad settings (Settings → Privacy → Ads → Opt out of ads personalization). Declining personalization means you'll still see ads, just not ones tailored to your activity.
Google's own privacy policy explains what it collects in more detail: policies.google.com/privacy, and its policy specific to AdMob: support.google.com/admob
Here's how to delete data Wing Eye holds about you, and what happens when you do:
To make any request or ask a question about this policy, contact email@gallery-eye.app.
Wing Eye is a general-audience app about birds and wildlife identification and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or the relevant minimum age in your country). If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us at email@gallery-eye.app and we'll address it.
We take reasonable measures to protect the App and its infrastructure, including restricting our database so most of the App can only ever read data, never write or modify it, and storing any Friends Board password only as a one-way cryptographic hash, never as readable text. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.
If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, note it in the App's update notes.
gallery-eye.app
email@gallery-eye.app