Your data, in plain language.

Who we are

Sturgeon is a digital stewardship platform for park systems around the Great Lakes basin. This policy covers information collected through getsturgeon.com, our partner park systems' mobile apps built on this platform, and any related services.

Sturgeon licenses datasets, directories, taxonomies, benchmarks, and related data from Whole Atlas LLC, an Ohio limited liability company. Sturgeon does not acquire ownership of that Whole Atlas-licensed data merely by using it to provide the platform.

What we collect from visitors

• An email address, when you create an account on getsturgeon.com or in a Sturgeon mobile app.
• Profile information you choose to provide, such as a display name, private full name, profile photo or Sturgeon avatar, home ZIP code, age range, gender identity, activity interests, and the Great Lakes you feel connected to. These fields are optional. We do not ask for your exact birth date or street address.
• Your check-ins: which stamps you've collected, when, and the approximate location at the moment of the check-in.
• Photos you upload, only if you choose to upload them. Photos default to private (visible only to you and the park system's staff).
• Groups, outings, posts, comments, reports, blocks, and your acceptance of the Community Standards when you use community features.
• Stewardship reports you choose to send, including the issue category, urgency, notes, observation and submission times, precise location and accuracy, selected park, and up to three optional evidence photos. We also retain whether you confirm a nearby alert as still present or apparently clear.
• Daily step and wheelchair push totals, only when you explicitly connect Apple Health or Android Health Connect. Sturgeon requests read-only access to steps and wheelchair pushes, excludes manually entered values where the platform makes that distinction available, and does not collect raw samples, routes, workouts, heart data, or other medical information.
• Website analytics: pages visited, session engagement, general device type, coarse geography, and a random first-party browser identifier that is hashed before storage. Analytics are enabled only when you accept analytics cookies. Used to improve Sturgeon, not to build an advertising profile.
• App content analytics: which feed cards, posts, events, and challenges are delivered; whether at least half of an item stays on screen for one or three seconds; and opens, link clicks, reactions, joins, shares, or dismissals. A random identifier is created for each app launch and hashed before storage. Park systems and sponsors receive aggregate performance reports, not individual activity or identity data. We use these measurements to improve content and report sponsor placement performance, not to build behavioral advertising profiles.

What we don’t collect

• We don't track your location when the app is closed. Geofencing checks happen only when the app is in use.
• We don't sell your data. To anyone. Ever.
• We don't use third-party advertising trackers.

Multi-tenant isolation

Each park system on the platform is a separate tenant. Your data is stored alongside data from other tenants in a single database, but it is isolated at the database layer using row-level security. Park system staff from one tenant cannot see visitor data from another tenant. Period.

Who can see your data

• You, always: your own check-ins, photos, and rewards.
• Park system staff: anonymized completion data for their tenant, de-identified aggregate profile insights, plus moderation access to photos uploaded inside their tenant's app and the precise details of stewardship reports assigned or submitted through their tenant. Aggregate profile results with fewer than five people are suppressed.
• The Sturgeon team: only when needed for technical support, debugging, or legal compliance, and never for marketing.

Profile insights

Accounts are for people 13 and older. At sign-up we ask your birth month and year to confirm the minimum age, and we keep only the birth year; a refused sign-up stores nothing.

Profile information you choose to provide, including ZIP code, age range, gender identity, activity interests, and Great Lakes connections, may be used for personalization and de-identified aggregate reporting. Under the Terms, community details you provide are included in this reporting by default rather than through a separate opt-in. Every reported group must include at least five people. This helps Sturgeon, participating park systems, and Whole Atlas research understand regional reach and improve activities. Your individual profile answers are not provided to a park system. Providing these fields remains optional, and you can edit or remove them at any time without losing access to any feature.

We may create aggregated and de-identified statistics, benchmarks, patterns, classifications, taxonomies, models, insights, metadata, and service improvements ("Derived Data"). Derived Data excludes personal information, visitor content, park-system source records, and confidential information; it may not identify a person or park system or permit a reasonable person to reconstruct the source records. Subject to applicable law and written agreements, Whole Atlas LLC owns Derived Data and may retain and use it after an account is deleted, data is exported, or a park system stops using Sturgeon.

Community safety data

When content is reported, we preserve a snapshot of the reported content, the reason selected, optional details, and the moderation decision. Reports are visible to the reporter and authorized safety staff, not to the reported account or the public. Block relationships are used to prevent the two accounts from seeing or interacting with one another in Groups.

Stewardship reports and trail alerts

A stewardship report is private to you, authorized staff for the intake or assigned park system, and authorized Sturgeon operations staff. When the reported category is a current trail-safety issue, Sturgeon may show nearby visitors a temporary alert containing only a fixed category label, urgency, rounded location, age, distance, expiration time, and aggregate still-there or looks-clear counts. We do not publish your identity, notes, photos, or precise report coordinates. Reports about dumping, trash, vandalism, wildlife, or other sensitive matters do not create public alerts.

Location is checked while the app is open to submit a report, find nearby alerts, or verify that you are near an alert you confirm. Sturgeon does not add background location tracking for this feature. Public alert expiration does not delete the underlying staff case.

Optional step tracking

If you connect step tracking in Settings, Sturgeon reads up to 31 days of daily step and wheelchair push totals from Apple Health or Health Connect. Pushes count the same as steps so wheelchair users compete on equal footing. We store one bounded total per day so we can show your progress and calculate the leaderboards assigned to you and any challenges you choose to join. Step tracking is optional and is not required to use parks, events, badges, groups, or any other core feature.

Some challenges display a sponsor's name and logo. Sponsors never receive your data — not your totals, not your identity, not your participation. Sponsorship is branding on the challenge, not access to the people in it.

Whole Atlas may receive aggregate step and push totals by day and source for network measurement only when a cell includes at least five people. Those rollups contain no names, account IDs, raw samples, or routes. In Settings you can disconnect step tracking and delete every synced total from Sturgeon. You can also revoke Sturgeon's source permission in Apple Health or Health Connect; doing so does not delete anything from your phone's health store.

Third-party services we use

• Supabase: database, authentication, file storage. Hosted in the United States.
• CARTO: map tiles displayed in the mobile app.
• Resend: transactional email, including welcome messages, sign-in codes, and reward confirmations. Welcome messages may include links to Sturgeon's app-store pages.
• Google Analytics: aggregate website traffic and engagement measurement. We do not use it for advertising.
• Apple and Google: account sign-in only when you choose the corresponding sign-in option, plus Apple Health or Health Connect only when you separately connect optional step tracking.

Your rights

You can:

• Export your data: every check-in, photo, and reward we have on you. Email email support.
• Delete your account and associated content from My account in the app, or use our external deletion instructions at getsturgeon.com/delete-account.
• Revoke individual permissions (location, photo library, and health steps and wheelchair pushes) any time in your phone's settings. Disconnecting step tracking inside Sturgeon also deletes its synced totals.

Changes to this policy

If we change anything that materially affects how we handle your data, we'll send you an email and post a banner on the home screen of any app you've installed. The version history of this page lives in our public source repository.

Contact

Questions about this policy: email Sturgeon.