Privacy Policy

Effective July 28, 2026

RiverWatcher (“we”, “us”) provides daily river conditions, tides, and fishing intelligence for anglers across the United States. This policy explains what personal data we collect through riverwatcher.app and the RiverWatcher mobile app, how we use it, and the choices you have.

What we collect

• Account info you give us: email address, password (stored only as a bcrypt hash — we never see the plaintext), home state, list of states you’ve hidden, ZIP code (optional, for local weather), and your preference to receive the daily newsletter.
• App-generated data: account creation date, last-login timestamp, email verification status, secure random tokens used for password reset and mobile-app sign-in, and a per-day counter of your Guide.AI question usage (used to enforce fair-use limits).
• Suggestions you submit: the text of any feedback you send through the in-app suggestion form.
• Server logs: standard web-server access records including IP address and user-agent, retained short-term for security and debugging.

We do not collect location beyond the ZIP you enter, do not use ad-tracking pixels, and do not sell or rent your data.

How we use it

• Deliver the daily fishing newsletter to subscribers who opt in.
• Authenticate you and keep you signed in on the mobile app and web.
• Personalize the report to your home state, hidden-state preferences, and local weather via your ZIP.
• Answer Guide.AI questions by matching your question against our fishing-facts knowledge base and generating a grounded response.
• Detect abuse (rate-limit signups, cap Guide.AI usage) and respond to security incidents.

Third parties we share limited data with

• Amazon Web Services (AWS SES): your email address is sent to SES so we can deliver newsletters, verification emails, and password-reset emails.
• Anthropic: when you use Guide.AI, the text of your question and matched knowledge-base facts are sent to Anthropic’s Claude API to generate an answer. Anthropic does not train on this data. See Anthropic’s privacy policy.
• Public data providers (NWS, NOAA, USGS, Weather Underground, WDFW): our servers fetch weather, tide, gauge, and closure data from these sources; no personal information is sent to them.

We do not use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or any advertising trackers.

Data retention

Account records are kept for as long as your account exists. If you request deletion, we remove your row from our users database and revoke all your mobile-app sign-in tokens. Server access logs are rotated within 30 days.

Your rights

• Access & edit: view and edit your profile inside the app (Settings → Profile).
• Delete: email nickzent89@gmail.com with the subject “Delete my account” from your registered email address. We’ll confirm and delete within 7 days.
• Opt out of email: uncheck “Email me the daily newsletter” in Profile.
• Export: email the same address to request a copy of your data.

Children

RiverWatcher is intended for anglers 13 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, please email us and we will delete it.

Security

All traffic to riverwatcher.app is encrypted with TLS. Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes. Mobile sign-in tokens expire after 60 days of inactivity and can be revoked by signing out.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we’ll update the effective date above and, for logged-in users, show a notice on next sign-in.

Contact

Questions or requests: nickzent89@gmail.com.

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