Privacy policy

This policy covers the Wildlife Engine apps for Windows, Mac, Android and NAS servers, and this website, wildlifeengine.com. Wildlife Engine is made by Niraj Shaikh, Nashik, Maharashtra, India. Contact: wildlifeengine21@gmail.com.

What the app reads on your device

• Your photos, in the folders you add (or with the photo permission you grant on Android), to rate them, group bursts, sort them and name species.
• Photo details such as the date taken and camera model, to group bursts and tell camera photos from phone photos.
• Faces in photos, only to group photos of the same person on your device when you use People. Face data never leaves your device.

The results (ratings, categories, species names, people you named) are stored only on your device, and in XMP sidecar files next to your photos if you turn that on. Uninstalling the app, or clearing its data, deletes them.

What can leave your device, and only when you choose

• Species identification with cloud AI (optional). If you add your own Google Gemini API key and ask for species names, each chosen photo is cropped to the animal and sent to Google with the region you typed in Settings and the date the photo was taken. Google processes it under your agreement with Google. We never see these photos or your key. On computers you can choose another AI provider, or one running on your own network.
• Sharing a photo with another app (Open with, Edit in, Share), which then handles it under its own policy.
• Help improve (optional, off by default). If you turn it on and choose Share feedback, the app makes a small file that you send us yourself. It contains the species names you or the AI gave, each as 512 numbers that describe the animal (the photo can't be rebuilt from them), measurements of photos you moved between Selects and Rejects, your country, the app version and a random identifier. It never contains photos, file names, places, dates or people. We use it only to improve species naming and photo rating.

When you buy a licence

Purchases are handled by our payment partner, who acts as the reseller and merchant of record. They collect your name, email address, country and payment details to take the payment, calculate tax and send your receipt, under their own privacy policy. We receive your name, email address and country, which we use to send your licence key, help you with support and meet our tax and accounting duties. We never see your card details. We keep purchase records for as long as the law requires.

This website

This website has no cookies, no analytics and no advertising trackers. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes basic technical data such as your IP address to deliver pages and protect the site from attacks. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when the page loads. Help videos are hosted on YouTube and load only when you press play; YouTube then handles that viewing under its own privacy policy. If you email us, we use your email only to reply.

What we never do

• We don't collect your photos, location or contacts.
• We don't use advertising or analytics tools, and we don't sell or rent any data.
• We don't need an account. Licence keys are checked on your device, without the internet.

Internet use by the app

The app connects to the internet only for cloud species identification you request, and on computers to download place names (from GeoNames) and updates to its built-in models. These downloads send no information about your photos.

Children

Wildlife Engine is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Delete your data

Wildlife Engine has no accounts, so there is no account to delete. Everything the app works out stays on your device:

• Android: open Settings in the app and choose Clear all analysis, or uninstall the app (or clear its storage in Android settings). This removes all ratings, categories and species names.
• Windows, Mac and NAS: remove the library folder in Settings, or uninstall the app and delete its data folder. Your photos themselves are never changed unless you choose to sort or delete them.
• Feedback files you emailed us: ask at wildlifeengine21@gmail.com and we delete them within 30 days.
• Purchases: Google Play and our payment partner keep order records as the law requires; we keep only your email and licence key, and delete them on request unless the law needs us to keep the invoice.

Your rights and requests

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR in Europe, the UK GDPR or India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act), you can ask to see, correct or delete the personal data we hold about you. Email wildlifeengine21@gmail.com and we will reply within 30 days. To delete a feedback file you sent us, use the subject "Delete my data".

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date. Changes that affect what leaves your device will also be shown in the app.