salinity.live

Privacy Policy

This Policy explains how Salinity handles information across the website, Android app, cloud dashboard, boat-data connection, support, and owner-directed sharing. Salinity is designed to keep identifiable boat activity private and show only aggregate account activity publicly.

1. Scope and controller

This Policy applies to Salinity’s websites, mobile applications, account and authentication flows, cloud dashboard, NMEA 2000 and device integrations, support communications, field previews, and related services (the “Service”). Salinity is the controller of information it determines how to use. A mechanic, marina, vessel owner, employer, app store, equipment provider, or other third party may separately control information under its own policy.

Privacy questions and rights requests may be sent to hello@salinity.live.

2. Information we collect

Account and subscription information

Legal name, account email, date of birth, home address, account identifiers, authentication provider and login metadata, plan status, subscription and transaction references, Family Pro owner or member role and display name, seat and membership status, masked and one-way-hashed invitation email, invitation status and dates, messages you send to our support email, consent version and time, acceptance method, browser description, and phone-activation and account-deletion records. Salinity collects the identity and address fields to establish the adult account holder and preserve evidence of who accepted which legal documents. These entries are user-provided and are not independently identity-verified unless Salinity expressly tells you otherwise. Payment-card details should be processed by the applicable app store or payment provider rather than stored directly by Salinity.

Boat, equipment, and NMEA 2000 information

Vessel names and identifiers; hull, registration, home-port, engine, gateway, chartplotter, sensor, battery, tank, and equipment details; network device identity; supported parameter-group data; readings such as engine speed, hours, fuel flow, temperature, pressure, voltage, heading, depth, wind, position, speed, gear, and alerts; learned groups; and timestamps, quality indicators, fault codes, and diagnostic-event records.

Trips, places, conditions, and maintenance

GPS and precise location, tracks, marks, routes, ramps, docks, slips, ports, anchorages, hazards, destinations, catches, notes, photos, crew information, weather and tide preferences, fuel and range records, service history, mechanics, parts, receipts, manuals, and uploaded files.

Credentials, vessel documents, and rule preferences

Personal or vessel association, credential type, issuing jurisdiction, masked license or document number, issue and expiration dates, endorsements, restrictions, reminder settings, official renewal or verification links, user-entered verification state, and images or files you choose to upload for fishing licenses, permits, merchant-mariner credentials, registrations, documentation, insurance, radio records, inspections, or similar records. Do not store Social Security numbers, complete payment-card numbers, or unrelated identity documents. In the Android app, license and document photos stay in an encrypted vault on your phone and are not uploaded to Salinity.

Safety and potentially sensitive information

Float plans, people aboard, emergency contacts, MMSI or radio details, safety-equipment locations, meeting points, and medical or accessibility notes you choose to store. Only provide information that is necessary and that you are authorized to provide.

Device, app, and usage information

From the Android app. When you sign in, the app activates that phone so one phone can be active on each account. It sends a random installation identifier, which Salinity stores only as a one-way hash, plus a device public key, the platform (Android), a generic device label, and the app version. Each protected request carries a timestamp and a single-use code. Salinity keeps activation, replacement, and last-verified times. While you are signed in and online, the app also checks in at most once every 15 minutes. For that check-in Salinity stores only a one-way account hash, your first and last check-in times, and a free or paid label, and uses them only for aggregate active-user counts.

From the website. Essential session cookies; the browser description saved with your legal acceptance; and display preferences such as units, language, and date format if you save them. Salinity’s server uses your IP address to limit abuse and keeps it only as a one-way hash in short-lived rate-limit records. Our hosting and authentication providers may keep ordinary request logs, including IP addresses, under their own terms.

What we do not collect. Salinity does not use analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting tools. It does not record which screens or features you use, how long you use the app, your device model or operating-system version, your permission settings, or your connection state. If the app crashes, it saves a crash record on your phone only. That record leaves your phone only if you choose to share it, for example by email to support. If Salinity ever offers automatic crash reporting, it will be off unless you turn it on.

Support-assistant messages

If you use the website support assistant, Salinity receives the text you submit and a short portion of the conversation needed to answer. Do not submit passwords, payment-card details, precise location, medical information, private vessel records, or emergency details. When AI mode is enabled, Salinity sends that text from its server to the configured AI service provider to generate an answer. Guided mode uses Salinity’s curated support answers without sending the question to that AI provider.

3. Where information comes from

We receive information from you; your phone and granted permissions; connected gateways, NMEA 2000 equipment, sensors, and vessel networks; authentication, app-store, payment, hosting, and support providers; mechanics or other people you direct to share information; and public or licensed sources used for weather, tides, maps, charts, rules, or conditions.

4. How we use information

• Provide accounts, sign-in, subscriptions, synchronization, storage, backups, exports, and support.
• Bind one active phone to each account, manage Family Pro invitation tokens and seats, prevent replay, and investigate plan or device-limit evasion.
• Receive and organize vessel readings, trips, maintenance, marks, conditions, and incident records.
• Create learned operating groups and identify changes in recorded relationships.
• Deliver owner-requested alerts, exports, mechanic packages, float plans, and sharing.
• Maintain security, prevent abuse, investigate problems you report to us, and improve the Service using aggregate active-account counts and your feedback.
• Communicate service, safety, legal, billing, and product notices.
• Meet legal obligations, enforce agreements, and protect users, Salinity, and others.

5. Location and background access

Trip recording, tracks, position-linked boat readings, marks, float plans, weather/tide context, and incident timelines may require precise location. If a feature records while the screen is off or another app is open, it may require background location or background processing. The app should explain what it collects, why, whether it leaves the device, and how to stop it immediately before requesting the permission.

On the public Live Tides page, choosing “Use my location” sends the coordinates supplied by your browser to Salinity’s server only to select the nearest NOAA water-level station and return station data. The Trip Planner can also send a selected waypoint to Salinity’s server, which passes that coordinate to NOAA to retrieve tide and depth information. The current planner draft and worldwide display preferences are stored in that browser’s local storage unless you remove them. Signed-in worldwide preferences can also be stored in the private dashboard preference record so the website and app can use the same coordinate, unit, language, date, clock, and time-zone choices. Map tiles and chart assets are requested through Salinity’s server, which contacts the listed data provider. Public lookups do not intentionally write the precise coordinate to an account record. Network and security logs may still include ordinary request metadata as described in this Policy. You can instead search or enter a position manually.

In the Android app, Salinity looks up weather, tides, and currents for the Home or Vacation area you save, including automatically in the background up to twice a day. For weather, the app sends that area’s coordinates directly to the U.S. National Weather Service. For tides and currents it sends only NOAA station identifiers. Maps and ocean layers are loaded for the area on screen, so the map provider sees which map tiles are requested. Addresses you type into the area search are sent to Salinity’s server, which uses Google to find matching places. If that service is unavailable, the app sends the search directly to Komoot’s Photon service. These lookups are not saved to your account unless you save the place.

You may decline or revoke location in device settings, but location-dependent features will not work correctly. Disabling permission does not automatically delete information previously synchronized; use the deletion controls or contact us for that.

6. Legal bases for processing

Where laws such as the GDPR or UK GDPR apply, we process information as needed to perform our contract with you; based on your consent, including certain device permissions and optional sharing; to comply with law; to protect vital interests in limited circumstances; and for legitimate interests such as securing, operating, supporting, and improving the Service where those interests are not overridden by your rights. You may withdraw consent prospectively, but prior lawful processing remains valid.

7. How we disclose information

We may disclose information to vendors that help provide authentication, hosting, databases, object storage, email, support, app distribution and updates, payment, address search, mapping, weather, tides, bot protection, and security. These currently include Supabase (sign-in, database, and file storage), Cloudflare (website hosting, storage, and bot protection), Resend (account email), Google (address search), Komoot (backup address search), OpenAI (the website support assistant, when AI mode is on), Expo (app updates), and public data services such as NOAA, the U.S. National Weather Service, and USGS. Salinity does not use analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting vendors. Website subscription checkout and billing management use Stripe; iOS in-app subscriptions use Apple’s App Store and Android in-app subscriptions use Google Play. Salinity may use RevenueCat to validate store purchases and synchronize subscription entitlements. Those providers receive the account, transaction, billing, device, and payment information needed to process and protect purchases under their own terms and privacy policies. Salinity stores provider customer, subscription, entitlement, event, and invoice references but is designed not to receive or store complete payment-card numbers. Service providers may use information only for their contracted services and legally permitted purposes.

If AI support is enabled, the configured AI provider processes the support message and limited recent chat context needed to return an answer. Salinity’s server requests non-persistent API processing where the provider supports that setting, but provider security, abuse-monitoring, and legal-retention rules may still apply. Use the FAQ or email contact instead if you do not want to submit a question through AI mode.

We disclose information to mechanics, crew, contacts, or others when you direct us to create or send a share, export, mechanic package, or float plan. We may also disclose information in a business transfer; to comply with valid legal process; or when reasonably necessary to prevent fraud, abuse, security incidents, or serious harm.

Salinity does not publicly list users, boats, locations, trips, catches, engine events, or mechanics. The website may show aggregate counts such as accounts active in the last 24 hours or seven days. Those counts use a pseudonymous account key and last-seen time. Salinity does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising as those terms are commonly defined. If that practice changes, this Policy and legally required choices must change first.

8. Data that remains on the device and data synchronized

On the Android app, your catches, marks, boats, maintenance records, Emergency Plan, and Home and Vacation areas stay on your phone until you choose to back them up. Nothing is uploaded automatically unless you turn on Automatic trip backup in Settings, which is off by default, or tap Sync now. Catch photos, vessel photos, and the license and document photos in your private vault stay on your phone. Records you create on the website dashboard are stored in your Salinity account. Offline or failed sync can create gaps or conflicts. Keep independent copies of records you cannot afford to lose.

9. Retention

We keep account and user-created information while the account is active and as reasonably needed to provide the Service. Expired signed-request codes are routinely deleted. Phone-activation records are deleted with the account. Family Pro invitation, membership-change, and replacement-limit records may remain for security, fraud prevention, and dispute periods. The legal name, acceptance-time email, date of birth, address snapshot, accepted document versions, timestamp, method, and browser description are kept as an agreement record while the account exists and for six years after the account is deleted, so we can show which terms applied if a dispute arises. They are then deleted, unless a legal hold requires us to keep them longer. We may also retain billing, security, dispute, and compliance records for applicable tax, chargeback, or legal periods. Backups and logs may persist for a limited rotation period after deletion. We delete or de-identify information when it is no longer reasonably needed, subject to legal holds and lawful exceptions.

10. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to know or access information, correct it, delete it, receive a portable copy, object to or restrict certain processing, withdraw consent, opt out of certain sharing or targeted advertising, and appeal a denied request. You may also complain to your local data-protection authority.

Use available account controls or email hello@salinity.live from the account address. We may verify identity and authority before acting. We will not discriminate for exercising a privacy right. Some information may be retained when permitted or required for security, legal compliance, transactions, or legal claims.

11. Account deletion

You may request deletion from within the app or through the public account-deletion page. Before deleting account data, Salinity attempts to stop future renewal of an active website subscription. A subscription purchased through Apple’s App Store or Google Play must also be managed under that store’s cancellation rules. Deletion is intended to remove or de-identify the account’s Salinity-controlled boat records, trips, marks, locations, maintenance, safety records, files, billing mappings, and authentication identity, subject to transaction, tax, fraud, dispute, legal-retention, and backup exceptions. Payment processors may retain transaction records under their own legal duties. Deleting the app from a phone does not delete the account. Information already shared with another person may remain in that person’s possession.

12. Launch waiting list

Salinity keeps a waiting list for people who want to hear when the app reaches the app stores. You join it on the Founding Fleet page or the Roadmap page. The list is separate from a Salinity account: joining does not create an account, and deleting an account does not remove a waiting-list entry.

What we store. Your email address; the date you joined; your place on the list (founding seat or general waiting list) and any seat number; your invite code and the invite code you joined with, if any; whether you ticked the build-update box, when, and which wording you saw; and whether you have left the list. The boat, engine, NMEA 2000 gateway and country questions are optional, and we store only what you enter. Anyone who has your invite code can see your seat number and how many people joined with it, but not your email address or theirs. Anyone who types your email address into a join form can see that it is already on the list and, on the Founding Fleet page, whether it already held a founding seat, but not your seat number or your invite code. Every waiting-list email we send you includes your invite link and any seat number. Our server also uses your IP address to limit abuse, as described in section 2.

Why. We use your email address to send one email when Salinity reaches the app stores. If you hold a founding seat, that email also opens your seat so you can start your thirty days. You asked for that email by joining. If you ticked the build-update box, we also email you a build update about every two weeks. We send those only because you agreed, and you can withdraw that agreement at any time. We use the optional answers only to decide which boats, engines and gateways to support first. We do not sell the list, use it for advertising, or give it to partners. The email service that delivers our messages, named in section 7, processes your address for us. Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, the launch email is based on steps you asked us to take before a possible subscription, build updates are based on your consent, and the optional answers and abuse limits are based on our legitimate interests.

How to leave. Every waiting-list email has an unsubscribe link. Open it, confirm, and you are off the list at once. You can also reply to any of our emails, or write to hello@salinity.live from the same address, and ask to leave; we act on that within 10 business days. Leaving stops every future email from the waiting list, including the launch email, and removes you from the public waiting-list count. It does not change any Salinity account you have. Unsubscribe links do not expire.

How long we keep it. We keep your entry while the waiting list exists. If you leave, your entry stays, marked as unsubscribed, so that the list never emails you again. To have it deleted completely, email hello@salinity.live from that address and we will delete it within one month. To rejoin after leaving, write to the same address.

13. Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards appropriate to the nature of the information, including access controls, protected transport, scoped storage, and account authentication. No device, radio link, gateway, network, cloud service, or storage method is perfectly secure. You are responsible for device locks, current software, safe credentials, recipient selection, and promptly reporting suspected compromise.

14. International transfers

Salinity and its providers may process information in the United States and other countries where privacy laws differ. Where required, we use a lawful transfer mechanism and supplementary safeguards. Contact us to request information about applicable safeguards.

15. Children

The Service is for adults and is not directed to children under 13 or the higher minimum age required locally. We do not knowingly create accounts for children. Contact us if you believe a child provided personal information without valid authorization.

16. Essential cookies and similar storage

The website uses essential session cookies and local device storage needed for sign-in, security, password recovery, and interface operation. We do not currently describe an advertising-cookie program. If non-essential analytics or advertising technologies are added, Salinity must provide the notices and choices required in the visitor’s location before using them.

17. Changes

We may update this Policy as the Service, vendors, or law changes. The date and version appear at the top. We will provide additional notice and obtain consent when required for a material new use. Prior versions should remain available on request.

18. Contact

Email privacy questions or requests to hello@salinity.live. Do not include passwords or unnecessary medical, payment, or precise-location information in ordinary email.