Watercast Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 8, 2026 Last updated: September 8, 2026 Applies to: Watercast for iOS (bundle identifier app.watercast.mobile), including its widgets, Live Activities, and Siri/Shortcuts App Intents.

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1. Who we are

Watercast is developed and published by Just Use Flint, LLC ("Just Use Flint," "we," "us," or "our"), an Indiana limited liability company.

This policy explains what happens to information when you use Watercast. It is written to describe the app as it actually behaves, feature by feature.

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2. The short version

Watercast has no servers of its own. We do not operate a backend, a database, an account system, or an analytics pipeline. There is no place for us to store your information, and we do not receive it.

Everything Watercast knows about you is held in one of three places:

1. On your device, in Watercast's own private app storage.
2. In your personal iCloud account, in a private database that only your Apple Account can open — including on our side. We have no ability to read it.
3. Sent directly from your device to the public weather and water-data services that supply conditions (NOAA, USGS, EPA, Open-Meteo, OpenStreetMap, and others listed in Section 12), which necessarily receive the coordinates you are looking at and your device's IP address.

Watercast contains no advertising, no advertising identifiers, no third-party analytics or telemetry SDKs, no crash-reporting services, no social-media SDKs, and no cross-app or cross-site tracking of any kind. We do not sell or share personal information, and we do not use your information for targeted advertising or profiling.

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3. Summary table

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4. Information we do not collect

To be explicit, Watercast does not:

• create an account for you on any server we control;
• transmit your profile, journal, photos, routes, health data, or saved spots to us or to any third party for our benefit;
• include the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), request App Tracking Transparency permission, or perform any tracking as Apple defines it;
• embed any third-party software development kit — the app links only Apple system frameworks (SwiftUI, MapKit, CoreLocation, HealthKit, CloudKit, StoreKit, ActivityKit, WidgetKit, PhotosUI, UserNotifications, AppIntents, and similar) and has no external package dependencies;
• collect contacts, calendars, microphone audio, files, browsing history, or your device's advertising identifier;
• use your information to build advertising or marketing profiles;
• sell your personal information, or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Watercast's App Store privacy disclosure reflects this posture. Where Apple's framework requires it, data linked to you (such as your saved spots) is stored in your iCloud account rather than collected by the developer.

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5. Information stored on your device

The following is written to Watercast's private, sandboxed storage on your iPhone. It is protected by iOS file protection and, where you have a passcode set, by device encryption. It is included in your device backups (local or iCloud) according to your own backup settings.

Profile. If you complete onboarding or edit your profile, Watercast stores the display name, username, age, gender, body weight, experience level, how often you get on the water, your primary interest, your goals, and how you heard about the app. Every one of these fields is optional. Age, gender, and body weight, where provided, are used solely on your device — for example, to estimate calorie burn and heart-rate zones. Your profile photo, if you set one, is stored as an image file in Watercast's private storage.

Activity journal. Activities you log or import are stored as a single JSON file in Watercast's Application Support directory. Each entry may include the activity type, title, date and time, duration, distance, calories, your notes, your rating, a place name, catch details, and — for activities you record live — the full sequence of GPS coordinates that makes up your route. Photos you attach are stored as separate image files in a private journal_images folder inside the app's container.

Saved spots (local cache). A copy of your saved spots is kept on device so they appear instantly and work offline, even before iCloud is reachable.

Gauge alerts. The alert rules you create — the station, the metric, the direction, and your threshold — are stored on device and evaluated on device.

Preferences and caches. Units, chart types and chart overrides, card layouts, recently viewed stations, cached map pins, downloaded offline waterway data, and similar operational state.

Last known coordinate. Watercast stores your most recent location fix on device so that background refreshes can prepare "conditions near you" notifications without waking location services. It is a single coordinate, overwritten each time, and it is never transmitted to us.

Sign in with Apple identity. See Section 7.

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6. Information stored in your iCloud account

Watercast uses Apple's CloudKit so your data follows your Apple Account between devices. Two mechanisms are used, both inside the iCloud container iCloud.app.watercast.mobile:

Your private CloudKit database. Saved spots are written here as records containing the spot's name, any notes you added, its latitude and longitude, and the date you created it. A private CloudKit database is readable only by the signed-in Apple Account that owns it. Just Use Flint cannot access, query, or export the contents of your private database. We can see no user data through CloudKit.

Your iCloud key-value store. Your chart preferences are mirrored here so the same chart styles appear on your other devices. This contains display settings only — no personal or location data.

Data held in iCloud is subject to Apple's Privacy Policy and iCloud terms in addition to this one. You can review what Watercast has stored, and remove it, in Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage.

Community waterway reports. Watercast's code includes an unfinished feature for submitting hazard and pollution reports to a shared public CloudKit database. This feature is disabled in the current version and cannot be used. No public reports are submitted or published. If we enable it in a future release, we will update this policy first and describe clearly what becomes publicly visible.

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7. Sign in with Apple

Signing in is optional. You may use Watercast fully as a guest.

If you choose Sign in with Apple, Apple returns to your device a stable user identifier, and — only on your very first sign-in, and only if you permit it — your name and an email address. If you elect to hide your email, Apple provides a private relay address instead of your real one. Watercast stores these values on your device only. They are not transmitted to us, because we have no server to transmit them to; the sign-in handshake happens between your device and Apple.

We use this identity for exactly two purposes: to show your name in the app, and to keep two people's data separate if they both sign in on the same device (signing in with a different Apple Account clears the previous account's local personalization).

Revoking and signing out. You can sign out in the app at any time, which erases the stored identity. You can also revoke Watercast's access entirely in Settings → [your name] → Sign in with Apple; the next time you open Watercast, it detects the revocation and signs you out automatically.

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8. Location information

Permission. Watercast requests "When In Use" location access. If you decline, the app still works: it falls back to a default coastal location, and you can search for and pin any place manually.

What it is used for. Your coordinates are used to show conditions near you, to center and orient the map, to score nearby spots, and — through Apple's MapKit reverse-geocoding — to display a friendly place name and identify your country so that Explore can be scoped sensibly.

Background location while recording. When, and only when, you actively start recording an activity, Watercast enables background location updates so your route keeps tracing while the app is minimized or your phone is locked. iOS displays its standard indicator while this is happening. Recording stops when you stop it; the resulting route is stored in your journal on your device. Watercast does not track your location in the background at any other time.

Where coordinates go. Fetching conditions inherently requires telling a data service which place you want conditions for. Watercast therefore sends coordinates — a latitude and longitude, or a bounding box for the map area — to the public data services listed in Section 12. Those requests carry no name, no account identifier, no device identifier, and no advertising identifier. As with any internet request, the receiving service can see your device's IP address and standard network metadata. Coordinates are also embedded in the map-tile requests those services serve.

Precision. For general conditions, Watercast requests roughly 100-metre accuracy. While recording an activity it requests the best available accuracy, because a route drawn from coarse fixes is not useful.

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9. Apple Health data

Watercast integrates with Apple Health so your water activities appear in your journal without re-entering them.

Read-only. Watercast requests read access only. It does not write, modify, or delete anything in Apple Health. (iOS requires apps to declare both a read and a write purpose string; ours states plainly that we do not write.)

What is read. With your permission, Watercast reads: workouts whose type is a water activity (swimming, water fitness, water polo, water sports, surfing, paddle sports, rowing, sailing, and underwater diving); active energy burned; swimming and walking/running distance; and, while you are recording, live heart-rate and energy samples used to display current, average, and maximum heart rate and time in each heart-rate zone. Non-water workouts are ignored so your journal stays a water diary.

Where it goes. Health data read by Watercast is used on your device and, for imported workouts, written into your on-device journal. Health and fitness data is never transmitted to us, never sent to any third party, and is never used for advertising or marketing, or shared with data brokers — consistent with Apple's HealthKit requirements.

Control. You can grant or revoke each category at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Watercast, or in the Health app. Revoking access does not delete workouts already imported into your journal; you can delete those in Watercast.

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10. Photos and camera

You can attach photos to journal entries and catch logs, either by choosing existing photos or by taking a new one.

• Choosing existing photos uses Apple's system photo picker. The picker runs outside Watercast and hands over only the specific images you select — Watercast never gains access to your photo library as a whole.
• Taking a photo uses the camera, for which iOS asks your permission the first time.

Photos you attach are copied into Watercast's private storage as image files on your device. They are not uploaded to us and are not synced to iCloud by Watercast. Deleting a journal entry, a photo, or your account deletes the corresponding files from disk.

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11. Notifications, background activity, widgets, and Live Activities

Notifications are local. Watercast has no push server and does not use Apple Push Notification service to send you anything. Every notification you receive is composed on your device: gauge threshold alerts you created, daily nudges, good-conditions notices, severe-weather advisories, and tide reminders. Your alert rules never leave your device. Watercast declares the time-sensitive notification entitlement so that safety-relevant water alerts can break through Focus.

Background refresh. Watercast registers background refresh and processing tasks (app.watercast.mobile.refresh and app.watercast.mobile.maintenance). When iOS chooses to run them, the app fetches current conditions from the services in Section 12 and evaluates your alerts. You can disable this in Settings → General → Background App Refresh.

Widgets and Live Activities. Watercast writes a small snapshot into a shared App Group container (group.app.watercast.mobile) so its widgets and Live Activities can render without launching the app. The snapshot contains a place name, condition scores and words, temperatures, wind, wave height, air-quality index, water level, whether an alert is active, your unit preference, and the names and scores of your saved spots. It stays on your device. Note that Live Activity and widget content is visible on your Lock Screen, so anyone holding your phone may see it.

You can revoke notification permission at any time in Settings → Notifications → Watercast.

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12. Third-party data sources

Watercast is a front end for public environmental data. When you view conditions, your device contacts the services below directly. Each receives the coordinates or map area you are viewing, your IP address, and standard request metadata (such as your user-agent). None receives your name, your Watercast profile, your journal, your health data, or any identifier we assign — we assign none.

These services are independent controllers of the data they receive; their handling is governed by their own privacy policies, including:

• Apple — https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/
• Open-Meteo — https://open-meteo.com
• NOAA / National Weather Service — https://www.weather.gov/privacy
• U.S. Geological Survey — https://www.usgs.gov/policies/privacy
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — https://www.epa.gov/privacy
• api.data.gov — https://api.data.gov
• OpenStreetMap Foundation — https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy
• Wikimedia Foundation — https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Privacy_policy
• Google — https://policies.google.com/privacy
• RainViewer — https://www.rainviewer.com

The Overpass mirrors are operated by independent volunteers and organizations that publish their own policies. Links and endpoints may change as services evolve; the current set is always the one shipped in the app version you are running.

We have no control over, and accept no responsibility for, the privacy practices of these independent services. Some are located outside the United States, which means viewing conditions may involve an international transfer of the coordinates in your request (see Section 17).

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13. Subscriptions and payments

Watercast Pro is an auto-renewing subscription sold through the Apple App Store (product identifiers app.watercast.mobile.pro.monthly and app.watercast.mobile.pro.yearly).

Apple processes the transaction, not us. We never see or receive your payment card number, billing address, or Apple Account credentials. Watercast uses StoreKit to read whether your device currently holds a valid Pro entitlement — effectively a yes-or-no answer, verified by Apple — and unlocks Pro features accordingly. Apple provides us with aggregate, anonymized sales and subscription reporting through App Store Connect, which does not identify individual customers.

Manage or cancel your subscription in Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions. Apple's handling of your purchase information is governed by Apple's privacy policy and the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.

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14. How we use information — and our legal bases

Because Watercast processes data on your device, the purposes are narrow and functional:

We do not engage in automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects about you.

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15. Retention and deletion

We hold nothing, so we retain nothing. Data persists only as long as it exists on your device or in your iCloud account, both of which you control.

You can:

• Delete individual items — journal entries, photos, catch logs, saved spots, and alerts — inside the app at any time. Deleting a journal entry also deletes its photo files from disk.
• Delete your account and its data. The profile screen offers account deletion. This erases the stored Apple identity, your journal (including every attached photo), your saved spots both on device and in your private iCloud database, and your local personalization. If iCloud is unreachable at that moment, the local copies are still erased immediately and the cloud records are removed on the next successful connection.
• Delete the app. Removing Watercast deletes its entire on-device container, including your journal and photos. Records in your private iCloud database survive app deletion — remove them under Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage, or delete your account in the app first.
• Revoke permissions for location, Health, notifications, and camera in iOS Settings at any time, independently of one another.

Because we never receive your data, we cannot delete it on your behalf, restore it for you, or recover it if you lose the device without a backup.

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16. Security

Watercast relies on the iOS security model rather than on a security perimeter of our own:

• App data is stored in Watercast's sandboxed container, protected by iOS file protection and by device encryption when you have a passcode enabled.
• Network requests use HTTPS/TLS.
• iCloud data is protected by Apple's encryption, both in transit and at rest, under your Apple Account. Private CloudKit databases are not accessible to us.
• Sign in with Apple uses a cryptographically random, SHA-256-hashed nonce to bind each authorization request to its response and harden the flow against replay.
• The app requests only the permissions its features actually need, and each is independently revocable.
• No user data is transmitted to infrastructure we operate, which removes the largest category of breach risk entirely.

No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. Keep your device passcode-protected and your Apple Account secured with two-factor authentication.

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17. International users and data transfers

Just Use Flint, LLC is based in the United States. Because your data stays on your device and in your Apple account, Watercast does not itself transfer your personal information across borders.

However, the data services in Section 12 are located in various countries — Open-Meteo and several Overpass mirrors are operated in Europe; NOAA, USGS, and EPA are United States federal agencies. When your device requests conditions, the coordinates in that request travel to wherever that service is hosted. Where such a transfer involves personal data of individuals in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, it happens as a necessary part of delivering the feature you requested, and the receiving service acts as its own independent controller under its own policy and safeguards.

Apple's handling of iCloud data, including its geographic location, is governed by Apple's privacy policy.

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18. Children's privacy

Watercast is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13 (or under the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Watercast's optional profile includes an age field. It is used solely on device to improve fitness estimates, and it is not transmitted to us. If a child has entered information into the app on a shared device, a parent or guardian can remove it by deleting the profile fields, deleting the account in the app, or deleting the app. Because we operate no servers and receive no data, there is nothing held by us about a child to request the deletion of. If you believe a child's information has somehow reached us, contact support@justuseflint.com and we will act promptly.

Watercast contains no advertising, no in-app browsing of arbitrary web content, and no social or user-to-user communication features.

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19. Your California privacy rights (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have the right to know, delete, and correct personal information a business has collected about you; to opt out of its sale or sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising; to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

Applied to Watercast:

• Categories collected by us: none. We do not collect, receive, or maintain personal information about you. Personal information described in this policy is stored on your device and in your own iCloud account.
• Sale of personal information: we have never sold personal information, and we do not.
• Sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising: none. Watercast contains no advertising or tracking technology.
• Sensitive personal information: precise geolocation and health-related information are processed on your device for the features you enable. We do not receive them and do not use or disclose them for purposes requiring a right-to-limit offering.
• Retention by us: none, as described in Section 15.
• Exercising your rights: you can exercise deletion and correction directly and immediately using the in-app controls in Section 15. You may also email support@justuseflint.com, including an authorized agent acting on your behalf. Because we hold no records, we generally cannot verify or match a request against stored data, and our response will confirm that no personal information about you is held by us.

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20. Your rights in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland (GDPR)

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, objection to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdrawal of consent at any time. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

Because Watercast stores your information on your device and in your own iCloud account, you can exercise most of these rights yourself, immediately and without asking us:

• Access and portability — view your journal and saved spots in the app, and export your activity data as a CSV or an image card using the in-app export tools.
• Rectification — edit any profile field, journal entry, or saved spot.
• Erasure and restriction — delete individual items, delete your account, revoke any permission, or delete the app (Section 15).
• Withdrawal of consent — revoke location, Health, notification, or camera access in iOS Settings; features that depend on them stop, and the rest of the app continues to work.

For anything you cannot do yourself, contact support@justuseflint.com. We have not appointed an EU or UK representative under Article 27, on the basis that our processing of EEA and UK personal data is occasional, does not involve large-scale processing of special-category data by us, and is unlikely to result in risk to data subjects — because we receive no personal data at all. We will appoint one if that assessment changes.

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21. Other United States state privacy laws

Residents of states with comprehensive privacy laws — including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, and others as they take effect — have rights to access, correct, delete, and obtain a portable copy of personal data, and to opt out of targeted advertising, sale, and certain profiling.

Watercast conducts no targeted advertising, no sale of personal data, and no profiling in furtherance of decisions producing legal or significant effects. The in-app controls in Section 15 satisfy access, correction, deletion, and portability directly. To appeal a decision on any request, reply to our response or email support@justuseflint.com with "Privacy Appeal" in the subject line.

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22. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Watercast is not a web browser and does not track you across websites or apps, so there is nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to change. We honour these signals by design: we conduct no tracking to begin with.

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23. Third-party links

Watercast links out to source agencies, station pages, attribution pages, news articles, and our own support and legal pages. These open in an in-app Safari view or in your browser. Once you follow a link, the destination site's privacy policy governs — not this one.

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24. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Watercast evolves. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above and publish the new version at https://justuseflint.com/watercast/privacy, where the same text is available inside the app under Menu → Privacy Policy.

If a change materially expands what data is collected or how it is used — for example, if we enable community waterway reports, add a server-side component, or introduce any analytics — we will say so prominently and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before the change takes effect. Continuing to use Watercast after a non-material update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

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25. Contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about privacy:

Just Use Flint, LLC Email: support@justuseflint.com Support: https://justuseflint.com/watercast/support Postal: 125 Pleasant Run, Crawfordsville, IN 47933

We aim to respond to privacy requests within 30 days, and within any shorter period required by applicable law.

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Appendix A — App Store privacy disclosure mapping

Provided for transparency about what Watercast declares in App Store Connect.

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Appendix B — Permission prompts you will see

Declining any prompt leaves the rest of the app fully functional.

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© 2026 Just Use Flint, LLC. All rights reserved.