Privacy Policy

When you create or use an account, we collect information necessary to establish, administer, secure, and support your account.

This may include your display name, email address, authentication information, profile settings, avatar, language and regional preferences, subscription or entitlement status, customer support communications, and other information reasonably required to provide and administer the Services.

The Services allow you to create, upload, submit, store, and, where you choose, share content.

User Content may include photographs, videos, audio recordings, species observations, collections, comments, gameplay information, feedback, reports, suggestions, and other content you voluntarily provide through the Services.

Unless you actively choose to share User Content through features intended for sharing or community participation, your User Content is not publicly visible by default.

Feedback, reports, corrections, suggestions, and similar submissions may be processed to improve species identification, correct errors, maintain platform quality, develop new features, provide support, and improve the Services.

User Content may be processed to provide the Services, identify species, improve identification accuracy, support gameplay, provide customer support, maintain platform security, develop and improve artificial intelligence and other automated technologies, support scientific research and conservation initiatives where appropriate, and otherwise operate, improve, and develop the Services as described in this Privacy Policy.

Speciefy is designed to help users discover, identify, collect, and learn about biodiversity. To provide these features, we collect and process species observations, photographs, videos, audio recordings, and related information necessary to identify species and deliver, maintain, improve, and develop the Services.

Depending on how you use the Services, this may include identified or suggested species, photographs, videos, audio recordings, observation timestamps, environmental context, approximate or precise location information, gameplay progression, collections, achievements, exploration activity, and related metadata.

Observation data enables us to identify species, improve the quality, accuracy, reliability, and safety of the Services, develop, train, validate, evaluate, and improve species identification models, artificial intelligence systems, machine learning technologies, and other automated technologies, provide gameplay and educational experiences, support biodiversity knowledge, scientific research, conservation initiatives, and environmental education, protect the integrity and security of the Services, and develop current and future products, services, and functionality.

Where appropriate and reasonably practicable, research, scientific collaboration, analytics, product development, conservation, and environmental education are carried out using aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information. Certain functionality, however, may require personal information in order to provide, maintain, secure, or improve the Services.

To help protect biodiversity, we may reduce the precision or visibility of observations relating to threatened, endangered, protected, rare, or otherwise sensitive species where we reasonably consider this necessary for conservation, public safety, legal compliance, or the protection of wildlife.

Certain features of the Services rely on location information to function as intended.

Subject to your permissions and applicable law, we may process precise or approximate location information to identify species, provide location-based features and functionality, organize discoveries, support maps and exploration features, calculate gameplay, facilitate competitions, improve biodiversity insights, detect fraud or abuse, protect sensitive species, and improve the overall quality, safety, and reliability of the Services.

You may withdraw location permissions through your device settings at any time. Doing so may limit the availability or accuracy of certain features.

To support gameplay, achievements, competitions, statistics, and future functionality, we may process activity-related information generated through your use of the Services.

Activity information may include steps, estimated distance travelled, discoveries, gameplay progression, achievements, levels, experience points (XP), rankings, streaks, participation in challenges, rarity classifications, collections, rewards, and similar gameplay metrics generated through your interaction with the Services or, where you grant permission, through capabilities made available by your device.

When you use the Services, we automatically collect certain technical information necessary to operate, secure, maintain, analyze, and improve the Services.

This may include device type, operating system, application version, application identifiers (where applicable), browser (where applicable), language settings, IP address, device identifiers, crash reports, diagnostic information, performance information, interaction data, security logs, referral information, and other technical information generated through normal use of the Services.

We use this information to maintain platform security, diagnose technical issues, improve reliability and performance, understand how the Services are used, detect and prevent fraud or abuse, measure the effectiveness of product improvements and marketing activities, and support the ongoing development of the Services.

The Services may offer free and paid features, including subscriptions, family subscriptions, premium features, digital content, one-time purchases, sponsored experiences, or other commercial offerings.

Payments are processed by trusted third-party payment providers or application marketplace operators. Empathix does not receive or store complete payment card information.

We may receive limited transaction and subscription information necessary to verify purchases, activate subscriptions or premium features, administer billing, provide customer support, prevent fraud, comply with legal and accounting obligations, and maintain accurate business records.

The Services, available subscription plans, commercial offerings, pricing, and functionality may change over time as we continue to develop and improve our products and services.

We may process personal information to understand how users discover and interact with the Services, measure the effectiveness of advertising and marketing activities, improve user acquisition, support advertising-supported experiences, personalize content where permitted by applicable law, and improve the Services.

Where permitted by applicable law, this may involve trusted advertising, analytics, attribution, measurement, or marketing partners.

Where consent is required for personalized advertising or similar processing, we will obtain your consent before processing your personal information for those purposes.

We do not sell your personal information for monetary compensation. Where applicable law defines the terms “sell”, “sale”, “share”, or similar concepts more broadly, we will provide any notices and choices required by applicable law.

We may receive personal information from trusted third-party providers and partners that help us provide, secure, maintain, distribute, improve, and develop the Services.

These providers may include providers of authentication, cloud infrastructure, hosting, payment processing, subscriptions, customer support, analytics, communications, security, fraud prevention, artificial intelligence, advertising, attribution, application distribution, and similar technology services.

If you choose to connect another Empathix product or service to your account, we may process relevant information across those services to provide an integrated user experience, improve functionality, and maintain your account, subject to applicable law and this Privacy Policy.

The technologies and service providers supporting the Services may change over time as our platform and business evolve. We may replace, remove, or introduce service providers, technologies, infrastructure, or processing partners as the Services evolve. This Privacy Policy applies regardless of the specific providers or technologies we use, unless otherwise stated.

Some third-party providers process personal information on our behalf as processors, while others process personal information as independent controllers in accordance with their own privacy policies and applicable law.

We use personal information to create and manage accounts, authenticate users, identify species, provide gameplay features, maintain collections, calculate achievements, experience points (XP), rewards, rarity classifications, rankings, and progression, support competitions, multiplayer experiences, and community features, process purchases and subscriptions, synchronize data across devices, provide customer support, and otherwise provide, operate, maintain, and improve the Services.

We continually improve the Services through research, product development, testing, quality assurance, analytics, user feedback, operational improvements, and ongoing innovation.

Personal information, including species observations, corrections, reports, feedback, suggestions, and other interactions with the Services, may be used to develop, train, validate, evaluate, deploy, maintain, and improve species identification models, artificial intelligence systems, machine learning technologies, automated systems, product features, gameplay mechanics, and future versions of the Services.

We may also process personal information to test new features, conduct beta programs, perform A/B testing, evaluate new technologies, improve system performance, identify and correct errors, and enhance the overall user experience. Where appropriate and reasonably practicable, testing and product development are carried out using aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information.

Consistent with our mission of helping people discover and learn about biodiversity, we may process personal information to support biodiversity knowledge, scientific research, scientific collaboration, biodiversity monitoring, environmental monitoring, conservation initiatives, environmental education, and other activities that contribute to the understanding and protection of nature.

Where appropriate and reasonably practicable, these activities are carried out using aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information. Where personal information is required, we process it only where permitted by applicable law and subject to appropriate technical, organizational, and contractual safeguards.

We process personal information to maintain the security, reliability, availability, and integrity of the Services, protect our users, detect and prevent fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, cheating, spam, malicious activity, and other violations of our Terms of Service, investigate suspected misconduct, enforce our policies, protect biodiversity where appropriate, and protect the rights, property, safety, and security of Empathix, our users, partners, and others.

We use personal information to communicate with you about your account, respond to enquiries, provide customer support, process feedback, moderate community features where applicable, investigate reports, notify you about important changes to the Services, deliver service-related communications, and, where permitted by applicable law, provide information about products, features, subscriptions, promotions, events, surveys, or other updates that may be relevant to you.

We may process personal information to understand how users discover and interact with the Services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, analytics, attribution, measurement, marketing, and user acquisition activities, improve our products and services, support advertising-supported experiences, personalize content where permitted by applicable law, and develop more relevant products, features, and user experiences.

Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent before processing personal information for personalized advertising or any other processing activity that requires consent.

We may process personal information to personalize your experience, recommend relevant content, improve species suggestions, tailor gameplay, present relevant challenges, adapt educational content, and otherwise enhance your experience with the Services where permitted by applicable law.

We may process personal information to comply with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, court orders, governmental requests, accounting and tax obligations, enforce our agreements, establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, protect our legal rights and interests, conduct audits, and fulfil other legal or regulatory obligations.

Where permitted by applicable law, we may process personal information for purposes that are compatible with the purposes for which it was originally collected, including supporting new features, technologies, products, services, research initiatives, and improvements introduced as the Services evolve, provided such processing remains consistent with this Privacy Policy and applicable law.

We may share personal information with carefully selected third-party service providers that perform services on our behalf. These providers support the operation, maintenance, security, improvement, and delivery of the Services.

Such providers may include providers of cloud infrastructure, hosting, authentication, payment processing, subscriptions, customer support, analytics, communications, artificial intelligence, fraud prevention, security, application distribution, attribution, advertising, and other technology services.

Our service providers are authorized to process personal information only as necessary to perform services on our behalf and are required to protect personal information in accordance with applicable law and our contractual obligations.

We may share personal information with carefully selected business partners where necessary to provide the Services, deliver joint initiatives, measure the effectiveness of campaigns, support advertising, attribution, analytics, or marketing activities, develop, improve, and support products, services, and user experiences, or otherwise operate, improve and develop the Services.

Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent before sharing personal information for purposes that require consent.

Consistent with our mission, we may share aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified information with research institutions, universities, museums, scientific institutions, conservation organizations, governmental authorities, environmental organizations, and other carefully selected partners to support scientific research, biodiversity knowledge, conservation initiatives, environmental education, and environmental monitoring.

Where personal information is shared for research or similar purposes, we do so only where permitted by applicable law and subject to appropriate contractual, organizational, and technical safeguards.

Certain information may be visible to other users as part of the Services.

Depending on the features you use, this may include your username, avatar or profile image, achievements, rankings, gameplay statistics, notable discoveries such as rare species findings, and species observations shared during competitions, challenges, multiplayer experiences, or other interactive features in which you participate.

We do not publicly display your precise location information, contact information, or other personal information unless you intentionally choose to share it or where it is necessary to provide a feature that you have chosen to use.

As the Services evolve, additional community or sharing features may become available. We design the Services with the aim of minimizing the public display of personal information wherever reasonably practicable while providing the functionality of the Services. As the Services evolve, we may provide additional privacy controls where appropriate.

We may also limit the visibility of observations relating to threatened, endangered, protected, rare, or otherwise sensitive species where we reasonably consider this necessary to protect biodiversity, wildlife, users, or the integrity of the Services.

We may disclose personal information where we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, court orders, governmental requests, or other legal obligations.

We may also disclose personal information where necessary to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, enforce our agreements, investigate suspected violations of our Terms of Service, detect or prevent fraud, abuse, or security incidents, or otherwise protect the rights, property, safety, or security of Empathix, our users, partners, or others.

We may share personal information with our professional advisers, including legal, accounting, auditing, insurance, financing, banking, investment, and other professional advisers where reasonably necessary to obtain professional services, protect our legal or business interests, facilitate financing, investment, insurance, due diligence, fundraising, or other corporate activities, or comply with applicable law.

Such advisers are required to protect personal information in accordance with applicable law and any applicable contractual or professional confidentiality obligations.

If Empathix is involved in a merger, acquisition, investment, financing, due diligence, corporate restructuring, sale of assets, bankruptcy, or other business transaction, personal information may be disclosed, transferred, or otherwise processed as part of that transaction, subject to applicable law and appropriate confidentiality obligations.

Where required by applicable law, we will notify users of material changes affecting the processing of their personal information.

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that any successor or acquiring entity processes personal information in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy, unless otherwise permitted or required by applicable law.

We may share personal information where you request or direct us to do so, where you choose to connect third-party services, share content, participate in research initiatives, beta programs, or other optional activities, export your information, or otherwise provide your consent for us to share your personal information.

To provide, operate, secure, maintain, improve, and develop the Services, personal information may be processed by Empathix, carefully selected service providers, or other authorized partners in multiple countries.

As our Services evolve, the countries in which personal information is processed, the technologies we use, and the providers with whom we work may change over time.

Where required by applicable law, we implement appropriate safeguards to protect personal information transferred across international borders.

Depending on applicable law and the circumstances of the transfer, these safeguards may include contractual protections, adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses, certifications, technical and organizational measures, or other legally recognized transfer mechanisms.

We strive to comply with applicable privacy and data protection laws in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Where applicable law provides additional rights or protections, we will implement appropriate measures to comply with those requirements.

Where required by applicable law, you may request additional information about the safeguards we use for international transfers of personal information by contacting us using the details provided in this Privacy Policy.

The length of time we retain personal information depends on the type of information, the purposes for which it was collected, the functionality of the Services, applicable legal requirements, and legitimate business needs.

Different categories of personal information may be retained for different periods depending on these factors.

We generally retain account information for as long as your account remains active.

You may request deletion of your account at any time, subject to applicable law and the limitations described in this Privacy Policy.

If you request deletion of your account, we will take reasonable steps to delete or anonymize your personal information within a reasonable period, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by applicable law, necessary to protect the security or integrity of the Services, resolve disputes, prevent fraud or abuse, comply with legal obligations, enforce our agreements, or otherwise support legitimate business purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Species observations, User Content, and related metadata may remain associated with the Services for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the functionality of the Services, maintain gameplay, improve species identification, support scientific research, biodiversity knowledge, conservation initiatives, platform integrity, product development, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other legitimate purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Where appropriate and reasonably practicable, information retained for analytics, research, artificial intelligence, machine learning, product improvement, or statistical purposes will be aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified.

Personal information may remain in backup systems, disaster recovery systems, security archives, audit logs, or similar systems for a limited period after deletion where reasonably necessary for security, legal, operational, disaster recovery, or business continuity purposes.

Such information will remain subject to appropriate safeguards until it is securely deleted, overwritten, or otherwise removed in accordance with our retention practices.

Certain information may be retained where necessary to comply with applicable laws, tax obligations, accounting requirements, regulatory obligations, legal processes, court orders, governmental requests, enforce our agreements, establish, exercise, or defend legal claims, or otherwise protect the rights, property, safety, or security of Empathix, our users, partners, or others.

Information that has been aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified so that it can no longer reasonably be associated with an identifiable individual may be retained and used for research, statistical analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning, biodiversity knowledge, conservation initiatives, product development, product improvement, environmental education, and other lawful purposes, subject to applicable law.

Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal information;
• request deletion of your personal information;
• request restriction of certain processing activities;
• object to certain processing activities;
• withdraw consent where processing is based on your consent;
• request a copy of certain personal information in a portable format, where applicable;
• request information about how your personal information is processed;
• request information about the categories of personal information we collect, use, disclose, or share, where required by applicable law;
• request information about the categories of third parties with whom personal information has been shared, where required by applicable law;
• lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority or other applicable regulatory authority, where available.

You may exercise your privacy rights by contacting us using the contact details provided in this Privacy Policy or by using any privacy tools, account settings, or other mechanisms that we may make available through the Services.

Before responding to certain requests, we may take reasonable steps to verify your identity or the authority of a person acting on your behalf in order to protect your privacy, security, and the rights of others.

Where permitted by applicable law, you may authorize another person to exercise certain privacy rights on your behalf.

Before responding to such requests, we may require verification of both your identity and the authority of your authorized representative.

Certain privacy rights may be limited or subject to exceptions under applicable law. For example, we may decline or limit a request where necessary to comply with legal obligations, protect the rights, freedoms, privacy, or security of others, prevent fraud or abuse, maintain the security, integrity, or functionality of the Services, enforce our agreements, or where another lawful basis or exception applies.

We will respond to requests relating to your personal information within the time required by applicable law.

If we are unable to fulfil your request, we will explain the reasons where required by applicable law.

Where required by applicable law, we will not unlawfully discriminate or retaliate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

However, some features or functionality of the Services depend on our ability to process certain categories of personal information. If you choose to exercise certain privacy rights, your access to specific features or functionality may be limited where reasonably necessary to provide the Services, protect the security or integrity of the Services, comply with applicable law, or otherwise fulfil our legal obligations.

The measures we implement may include access controls, authentication mechanisms, encryption where appropriate, logging, monitoring, network security, backup and recovery procedures, vulnerability management, security testing, and other safeguards appropriate to the nature of the Services and the personal information we process.

As the Services evolve, we may introduce, replace, or improve security technologies, processes, and practices to address changing risks and technological developments.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for taking reasonable steps to protect access to your account and devices.

If you believe your account or personal information has been compromised, you should notify us as soon as reasonably practicable using the contact details provided in this Privacy Policy.

While no method of transmitting, storing, or processing information can be guaranteed to be completely secure, we continuously work to improve the security of the Services and reduce security risks through appropriate technical and organizational measures.

Where required by applicable law, we will notify affected individuals and relevant authorities of certain security incidents or personal data breaches.

We regularly review and update our security practices, technologies, policies, and procedures to improve the protection of personal information and to address new security threats, legal requirements, and developments in technology.