Privacy Policy

Introduction

Spotter is operated by Mynetra Pty Ltd (ACN 678 559 736) (“Mynetra”, “we”, “our”, or “us”), an Australian company. We value your privacy and are committed to protecting your information. This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, how we use and share it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have when you use the Spotter mobile application on iPhone and Android. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

Information We Collect

You do not need to give us your name, email address or phone number to use Spotter. We collect:

• Identifiers: a random user ID created on your device, an automatically generated username (which you can change), and device security identifiers (Apple App Attest or Google Play Integrity) that let our servers confirm requests come from the genuine app. We also keep your push-notification token (Apple or Google) so we can send you alerts.
• Location: your device’s location. When you allow it, the app uploads your last known location and the time it was updated to our servers, including periodically in the background if you allow “Always” location access. We use it to work out which alerts are near you and, if you use Family Safety, to share your location with the people you approve.
• Reports and media: incident reports you submit (type, notes, location, and an optional photo), comments, and “thanks” you send. Photos you attach to a report are uploaded to our cloud storage provider.
• Family Safety: your connections and invitations, and the location you share with approved family members (see below).
• Saved places: if you save places such as Home, School or Work (up to five), we store each place’s name, position and size, and show them only to you. Your phone notices when you arrive at or leave one and tells us “arrived” or “left”; we then tell the people connected to you the place’s name (never its address or position). You choose, place by place, who is told. Nothing is recorded or sent while you have paused sharing or share only an approximate location. Arrival and departure records are kept for 30 days and then deleted.
• Names: a nickname you give someone connected to you (for example “Dad”) is stored and shown only to you. An optional display name you set for yourself is shown to the people connected to you.
• Quick messages: when you send a preset message such as “Are you OK?” to someone connected to you, we record who sent which message to whom, and when, so we can deliver it and stop repeats. It carries no location and is deleted after 30 days.
• App version: the version of the app you use is sent with your requests and stored with your device record, so we can see who needs an update and keep older versions working.
• Messages you send us: if you use Send feedback in Settings, we store your message, the type you chose (bug, idea or question), your user ID and username, the app version, and your phone model and system version, so we can answer you and fix problems. Please do not put sensitive information in a message.
• Settings and subscription: your notification preferences (alert types and radius) and whether you have Spotter Plus. Purchases are handled by Apple or Google; we do not receive your payment card details.
• Technical logs: our servers keep operational logs (such as request times and errors) to run and secure the service. We do not use third-party advertising or analytics tools in the app.

How We Use Your Information

• To send you safety alerts near your location and the notifications you have turned on
• To show community reports and alerts to people nearby
• To provide Family Safety location sharing between people who have approved each other
• To provide and verify Spotter Plus
• To protect the service from abuse and misuse (for example, device verification and a reliability score for reports)
• To respond to your questions and requests

We do not use your information for advertising, we do not track you across other apps or websites, and we do not sell your information.

Face Data & Biometric Information

Faces you save or compare on your device

Spotter processes face data when you choose to save a face, take or select a photo to compare, or when a received alert image is compared. All face detection, alignment and numerical “embedding” generation for these happens on your phone. This may include:

• Cropped face images derived from images you select, capture or receive
• Numerical face embeddings (mathematical vector representations)

Your saved faces, and the embeddings made from them, stay on your device and are never uploaded to our servers or sent to other users. The app does not collect names, real-world identities, or government-issued identification for the people in those images.

Comparison with public wanted and missing person records

Face Search compares a photo against images that police and Crime Stoppers organisations have publicly released for wanted and missing persons. We copy those public images, and the embeddings calculated from them, to our servers so the app can download them. This is public information about the people those agencies have published, not information about Spotter users. Matches are only suggestions and must never be treated as confirmation of someone’s identity.

Face images in alerts

If you choose to submit an image in an incident report or a face alert, the image (not an embedding) is uploaded and shared with nearby users, together with the location and a similarity score. Please only share images when it is lawful and appropriate to do so.

How face data is used

• Allowing you to keep a private face vault on your own device
• Performing face similarity comparisons on your device
• Displaying saved face images to you, and letting you delete them

Face data is not used for advertising, analytics, profiling, tracking, or identity verification.

User-to-User Image Sharing

The app allows users to share incident or alert images with other users through notifications. These shared images may contain faces.

• Shared images are delivered to nearby users’ devices as alerts
• If a recipient chooses to save a face, all face processing for that happens locally on their own device
• Face embeddings are never sent between users

Family Location Sharing

Spotter's Family Safety feature lets you share your live location with people you explicitly approve. This is different from face data — location updates are transmitted to our servers so they can be routed to approved family members in real time, so this is not end-to-end encrypted or zero-knowledge. Here's exactly how it works:

• Family connections require mutual approval — an invite must be accepted before any location is shared
• Location data travels over an encrypted (TLS) connection and is only ever visible to approved family members, never sold or shared with third parties
• You can pause sharing at any time, for a set period or indefinitely, without notifying the other party
• You can choose to share an approximate, suburb-level location instead of your exact position
• Removing a family connection takes effect immediately and is not announced to the removed member

If you're concerned about someone else's access to your location, you can remove them at any time from the Family tab. In immediate danger, call 000. For confidential support, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7.

Public Information in the App

Some alerts come from public sources rather than from users, including official emergency services feeds (such as VicEmergency, the NSW Rural Fire Service and the Queensland Fire Department), police stolen-vehicle information and publicly listed stolen-vehicle sources, and police and Crime Stoppers wanted and missing person notices. This information is not about you; we show it to help keep communities informed and credit its source where required.

Who We Share Information With

We do not sell or rent your personal information. We share it only as follows:

• Other users: the reports and images you choose to submit are shown to nearby users, and your location is shown to family members you approve.
• Service providers that run Spotter for us: Apple (push notifications, device verification, maps and subscriptions), Google (Firebase for notifications and file storage, and Google Play services, billing and maps on Android) and our server hosting provider. They process information only to provide their service to us.
• Where the law requires it, or to protect legal rights and the safety of people.

Some of these providers store or process information outside Australia. By using Spotter you understand that information may be handled overseas by these providers; we take reasonable steps to make sure they protect it.

Data Storage, Retention & Deletion

• On your device: face images and embeddings you save are stored in the app’s sandboxed storage and kept only as long as you choose. You can delete individual faces or all face data in the app, and deleting the app removes them from your device.
• On our servers: your device record (identifiers, push token, notification settings and last known location), your reports and your Family Safety connections are kept while you use Spotter. Deleting the app does not by itself remove them from our servers.
• Reports and alerts: alerts from official sources and community reports are kept so we can show patterns over time and improve features such as Area Insights and Risk Radar. A community report is stored with its type, notes, the location you submitted, any photo you attached, and your user ID. Other people never see who sent a report, and Area Insights and Risk Radar use only approximate areas and counts. You can ask us to delete the reports linked to your user ID (see below).
• Feedback messages: kept for up to 12 months, then deleted automatically. They are read only by us, are not shown to other users, and are not used for advertising. You can ask us to delete yours sooner (see below).
• Deleting your data: email partnerships@spotterapp.com.au and include your user ID (shown on your Profile screen). We will delete the information we hold against that user ID, including your device record, location, reports and Family Safety connections, within 30 days. We may keep limited records if we are required to by law.

Security of Your Information

We apply reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect your information, including encrypted (TLS) connections, device verification of requests to our servers, and access controls. Information stored on your device benefits from iOS or Android system-level encryption and sandboxing. No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

Your Rights & Choices

• Turn off location access, background location or notifications at any time in your phone’s settings, and choose which alert types you receive in the app
• Pause location sharing, share only an approximate location, or remove a family connection at any time
• Delete saved face data on your device at any time
• Ask us for access to, correction of, or deletion of the information we hold about you by contacting us (see above)
• If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, contact us first. If we cannot resolve it, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au

Children’s Privacy

Spotter App is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal or face data from children.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. Updates will be posted here with a revised effective date. Continued use of the app indicates acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, or want to make a request about your information, contact Mynetra Pty Ltd (ACN 678 559 736) at partnerships@spotterapp.com.au.