HookThis Privacy Policy explains how HookID, an application published by Brainstorm Innovative Technologies LLC ("HookID," "we," "us"), handles information in connection with your use of the HookID mobile app (the "App").
Data HookID Does Not Collect
HookID itself does not collect, store, sell, rent, or share any personally identifiable information about you. We do not collect your name, email address, phone number, or contacts, and we never use your catch journal, photos, or GPS location for advertising. HookID runs no analytics or crash-reporting service of its own; in the free version, the Google Mobile Ads SDK reports its own crash and performance diagnostics to Google — see "Advertising (Free Version)" below. The only data handling beyond your device is described in "Fish Identification," "Weather & Conditions," "Advertising (Free Version)," "Purchases and Subscriptions," and "Species Photos" below.
Your Catch Journal
All catch journal entries — including photos, notes, locations, and fish data — are stored exclusively on your local device. This data is never transmitted to our servers, never uploaded to the cloud, and never accessible by HookID or any third party. It exists only on your device and is deleted if you uninstall the App.
Fish Identification
When you submit a photo for identification, the image is transmitted securely to our own identification service for the sole purpose of identifying the species. No third party receives your photo. The image is held in memory only for as long as it takes to return the result — it is never written to disk, never logged, and never stored — and nothing about it is linked to you or to your device. Images are transmitted over encrypted HTTPS connections only. Photos are stripped of their embedded metadata — including any GPS coordinates recorded by your camera — before they leave your device.
The recognition models we run are the open-source models published by Fishial.AI under the MIT License. We run them on our own servers; Fishial.AI does not receive your photo and is not involved in identifying it.
Weather & Conditions
When you open the Weather or Tides & Bites screens, the App asks for your location and sends your precise GPS coordinates (rounded to about 11 metres) to the U.S. National Weather Service (weather.gov), a United States government service, for the sole purpose of retrieving the forecast for your location. NOAA receives coordinates only — no name, no account, and no identifier of any kind. Those coordinates are not used for advertising, are never linked to you, and are not stored by HookID.
Tide predictions and water conditions are requested from NOAA CO-OPS by public tide-station number; those requests contain no coordinates at all. If you would rather not send your own coordinates, decline the location permission and choose a station manually — HookID then looks up the forecast using that public station's fixed, published coordinates instead of yours, and the weather and tide features still work.
Everything else in HookID that uses your location stays on your device: the FWC regulatory zone that adjusts the rules you see, and the "species near you" list, are both calculated on your phone and are never transmitted. HookID requests location only while you are using the App — never in the background.
Advertising (Free Version)
The free version of HookID is supported by advertising served by Google AdMob, a service of Google LLC, in two forms: a small banner anchored above the tab bar throughout the free app, and an optional rewarded video that unlocks a fish identification. Your first identification after installing is free; after that, each identification is unlocked either by watching one rewarded video or by subscribing to HookID Pro. A rewarded video never plays on its own — it starts only when you tap to watch it, and you may close it at any time; closing it early simply means no identification is unlocked, and you are offered the choice again. If an ad cannot be shown for any reason — no ad available, no connection, consent not resolved — HookID performs the identification anyway. Both formats are served by the same Google AdMob SDK under the same consent choices, and the rewarded format collects no additional categories of information. To serve and measure ads, Google may collect information from your device, such as your device's advertising identifier, IP address, approximate (coarse) location inferred from your IP address, information about your interactions with ads, and crash and performance diagnostics generated by the ads SDK itself. This collection is performed by Google under its own policies — see Google's Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from ads.
Your choices. On iOS, personalized ads are shown only if you allow tracking in the App Tracking Transparency prompt; if you decline, ads are non-personalized. Where required by law (for example, in the EEA/UK and certain U.S. states), a consent prompt is shown before any ads are served, and declining consent limits ads to non-personalized. You can also reset or limit your advertising identifier at any time in your device settings (iOS: Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking; Android: Settings → Google → Ads).
What advertisers never get: your catch journal, your photos, and your GPS location are never provided to advertisers by HookID.
Removing ads entirely: upgrading to the optional HookID Pro subscription removes all advertising from the App — both the banner and the rewarded videos — and with them the watch-to-unlock requirement, so Pro identifications are unlimited. Removing the ads also removes all ad-related data collection described in this section.
Purchases and Subscriptions
HookID offers an optional auto-renewing subscription (HookID Pro). Payments are processed entirely by the Apple App Store or Google Play — we never receive or store your name, payment-card number, or billing address.
To unlock and maintain Pro on your device, the App sends the store's purchase identifier (an Apple transaction ID or a Google purchase token) and a randomly generated, app-specific identifier to our backend, which verifies the purchase directly with Apple or Google. That random identifier is created on your device, is not derived from your identity, your advertising ID, or your device hardware, and is never used for tracking or advertising. We store only the resulting subscription status (for example, active or expired, and the renewal date) associated with the store purchase — not with your name or contact information. This processing exists solely to provide and protect the paid feature. The random identifier is deleted when you use "Delete all my data."
Species Photos
Species photographs shown in Explore, identification results, and species detail pages are loaded directly from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, services of the Wikimedia Foundation. Because your device requests those images itself, Wikimedia's servers receive your device's IP address and the name of the species being viewed, in the same way visiting any website does. HookID sends them no account, no identifier, no GPS location, and nothing from your catch journal. Their handling of those requests is governed by the Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy. Each photo's individual license and photographer credit are shown beside it in the App.
Sharing
HookID does not sell your data, and other than the advertising and the species imagery described above, does not share any of your data with third parties. The only way data or content from the App is shared is through your own explicit action — for example, if you choose to share a catch photo using your device's native share functionality. We have no control over and bear no responsibility for data you voluntarily share through third-party platforms.
Third-Party Services
Fish identification does not involve a third party. Your photo is processed on our own servers using open-source models published by Fishial.AI under the MIT License. Because the models run on our infrastructure, Fishial.AI never receives your photo and their terms do not apply to it. Advertising in the free version is served by Google AdMob in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy (see "Advertising (Free Version)" above). Species imagery comes from the Wikimedia Foundation (see "Species Photos" above). We encourage you to review their policies.
Account Deletion
HookID does not require an account, and we do not store any user accounts or cloud data on our servers. To delete all HookID data on your device, open the App, tap the ⓘ button at the top of the Identify screen to open About HookID, then Manage Your Data → "Delete all my data," or simply uninstall the App. If you no longer have the App installed and would like to confirm we hold no data associated with you, you may submit a request at hookid.app/delete-account.
Children's Privacy
HookID is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any information from children, and our advertising is configured as not child-directed. If you believe a child has provided us with information, please contact us immediately.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be reflected in an updated version of this page and the App. Continued use of HookID after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
Contact
Questions about privacy? Contact us at support@hookid.app.