Save Our Seas iPhone App

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 26 September 2026

Looking for the Android app instead? See the Android privacy policy.

What we collect

Nothing. We have no servers receiving your information, no way to identify you, and no way to see anything you record in the app.

Version 1.0 made no network requests at all. There are now two features that use the internet — campaign announcements and updating the product list — and both only travel one way, towards your phone. Each has its own section below. Nothing you track, log, scan or photograph is involved in either of them.

What the app stores on your device

The app saves what you enter so it's still there next time you open it. This is kept in the app's own private storage on your iPhone and never leaves it:

• Plastic tracker — the counts and dates of single-use items you've avoided.
• Your action list — the actions you add, any notes, and whether you've ticked them off.
• Beach clean logs — the place, date, number of bags, volunteer counts and notes you record.
• Photos you choose to add — a copy is saved inside the app's own storage.
• Your settings — such as whether you've turned the daily reminder, the weekly recap or campaign announcements on, and the date you last updated the product list.

Photos

When you add a photo, iOS shows you its own photo picker and passes the app only the single image you select. The app is never given access to your photo library — it cannot browse, read or upload your other photos. The image you pick is copied into the app's private storage, and deleting the entry deletes the copy.

Notifications

The daily reminder and the weekly recap are both optional. Each is scheduled by iOS on your own device — neither is a push notification, nothing is sent from a server, and we are not told whether you have them on or what they say. Campaign announcements, below, are the one exception: those do arrive over the internet.

Campaign announcements

From version 1.1, the app can show the occasional announcement from the campaign — a beach clean coming up, or something we think is worth knowing. It needs an iPhone signed in to iCloud.

It works through Apple's own iCloud push service. Your phone subscribes to a single shared message that we edit; when we change it, Apple delivers the new wording to everyone who has this switched on. Nothing about you travels the other way. No account is created, we never receive your name, your email address, your device or anything you have recorded in the app, and we are not told who has announcements switched on.

Being straightforward about one thing: this starts switched on. When you finish or skip the tour the first time you open the app, it turns itself on and iOS asks your permission for notifications at that moment. You can switch it off whenever you like under Settings → Campaign announcements in the app, which deletes your phone's subscription outright rather than just hiding the setting — a real off, not a pause.

Updating the product list

Scan & Swap looks barcodes up in a list that ships inside the app, which is why it works in a supermarket aisle with no signal. That list is fixed at the moment the app is built, so it misses own-brand and very new products. From version 1.2 there is an Update scans button in the app's Settings that downloads the products people have sent in since, and the app suggests using it about every two months.

Nothing about you, and nothing about what you scan, is sent. Tapping the button asks our website for one public file and nothing else. It carries no barcode, no scan history, no account and no identifier of any kind — there is no account to carry. As with any request to any website, our web server sees that a request arrived, from an IP address, at a time; it is not told which app or phone or person it came from, and we do not use it to build any record of you. Scanning itself still never touches the internet at all.

It never downloads on its own. You tap the button, or you answer the two-monthly prompt — and if you never do either, the app keeps working exactly as it does now, on the list it was built with.

The websites inside the app

The Websites tab shows copies of our English, French and Group sites that are built into the app itself. They are loaded from the app's own files, so they work with no internet connection and make no requests to us or to anyone else while you read them.

Backups to your own Apple Account

iOS has its own backup feature — iCloud Backup, and encrypted backups made to a computer — which you switch on or off in your iPhone's settings, not in this app. If you have it on, your Save Our Seas entries and photos are included, so that setting up a new iPhone brings them back with everything else rather than starting you from zero.

This is worth being clear about, since the rest of this page says nothing is uploaded. That backup is Apple's, not ours: it goes to your Apple Account, it is encrypted, and it can only be restored to this same app on a device signed in as you. It never reaches the campaign, and we have no way to see it, request it or restore from it. The same applies to the direct device-to-device transfer iOS offers when you set up a new iPhone. If you would rather none of it were copied anywhere, you can turn this app off under iCloud Backup in your iPhone's settings.

Sharing and third parties

We do not share, sell or transfer your information, because we never receive any. The app contains no advertising, no tracking technologies, and no third-party analytics or software development kits. Two outside services are involved anywhere in the app: Apple's own iCloud, which delivers the announcements described above and whose handling of that is covered by Apple's privacy policy rather than this one, and our own website saveourseas.org.uk, which serves the product-list file when you ask for it.

Deleting your data

You can delete individual entries at any time inside the app. Deleting the app from your iPhone removes everything it has stored, including any photos you added. As we hold no copy of any of it, there is nothing for you to request from us and nothing for us to delete on your behalf. If you have iCloud Backup switched on, a copy may remain in your Apple Account for a while after deleting the app — that copy is yours, and it is managed in your iPhone's own settings.

Children

The app is suitable for all ages. Because it collects no data whatsoever, it does not knowingly or unknowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes in a way that affects this policy, we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a future version were ever to collect anything, we would say so here clearly and ask your permission in the app first.

Contact

If you have any questions about this policy or the app, email us at info@saveourseas.org.uk.

This policy covers the Save Our Seas iPhone app. The app requires iOS 17 or newer. The Android app is covered by a separate policy.

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