ECHO Privacy Policy

Effective Date: July 10, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how ECHO ("ECHO," "we," "us," or "our") handles information when you use the ECHO app, website, cloud sync, collaboration, research, export, publishing, and notification features. This page is provided for transparency and is not legal advice.

1. Information We Process

Depending on the features you use, ECHO may process the following categories of information:

Account and device information, such as Apple sign-in verification results, user ID, device ID, platform, app version, session state, roles, and security credentials.
Observation records, such as titles, descriptions, tags, timestamps, record state, comments, social interactions, reports, and moderation information.
Media content, such as photos, videos, audio, AR camera frames, thumbnails, filenames, codec information, image dimensions, duration, and upload status.
Location and direction information, such as latitude, longitude, altitude, horizontal and vertical accuracy, location timestamp, compass heading, magnetic accuracy, device attitude, and motion data.
Camera and analysis data, such as camera intrinsics, camera transform, lens information, exposure, zoom, target bounding boxes, tracking confidence, ARKit tracking state, and local model outputs.
Cloud service data, such as sync cursors, upload sessions, export jobs, notification preferences, push tokens, groups, invitations, collaboration rooms, verification jobs, and research datasets.
Support and safety information, such as request logs, error codes, request IDs, abuse detection signals, account deletion requests, consent records, and consent revocation records.

2. Permissions and Local Controls

ECHO accesses system permissions only after you grant them. You can disable permissions in iOS Settings at any time. Some features may stop working if permission is disabled.

Camera and microphone permissions support capture, video recording, audio recording, AR observations, and synchronized sensor capture.
Location permission supports observation location, direction tracks, map views, clustering, and nearby observations. You can choose precise, approximate, or hidden location handling.
Bluetooth and local network permissions may support nearby-device discovery, signal scanning, or local collaboration features.
Notification permission supports sync, group, moderation, export, and collaboration alerts.

3. Location Privacy

ECHO provides location privacy modes:

Precise: keeps precise coordinates, altitude, and accuracy fields.
Approximate: rounds coordinates to about 0.01 degrees and removes finer-grained fields such as altitude.
Hidden: excludes coordinates from the record or synchronized data.

When you choose approximate or hidden location handling, ECHO also attempts to remove location metadata from media before saving or uploading it.

4. How We Use Information

We use information to:

Provide capture, recording, archiving, search, maps, cloud sync, export, notification, and account management features.
Support group collaboration, public publishing, comments, reports, moderation, and safety controls.
Run local or cloud analysis, verification, triangulation, research datasets, and quality assessment features.
Troubleshoot issues, prevent abuse, protect service security, and comply with legal obligations.
Show selected observation content to other users or the public when you explicitly consent or publish it.

5. Cloud Sync, Publishing, and Research

Data you create on your device may remain local by default. When you use cloud sync, upload, export, groups, public publishing, verification, or research features, related records, media, and sensor data are sent to our servers. Content you publish or share with a public group may be visible to other users.

Research and verification features may involve more detailed sensor, camera, and location data. We process this data according to the consent scope you grant in the app. You may revoke consent, but revocation does not affect processing already completed before revocation.

6. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information. We may share information in the following situations:

Service providers: cloud hosting, object storage, push notification, identity, logging, security, and analytics providers, limited to what they need to provide services for us.
People or projects you choose: group members, collaboration room members, public viewers, export recipients, or research projects you authorize.
Safety and legal reasons: to comply with law, enforce terms, prevent fraud, process reports, and protect users or the service.
Business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or asset transfer, subject to continued protection of your information.

7. Retention and Deletion

We keep information only as long as needed for the purposes described in this policy. You may delete observation records, revoke consent, export data, or delete your account in the app. After account deletion, we delete or de-identify information directly tied to the account unless a longer retention period is required for legal, safety, anti-fraud, dispute resolution, or backup recovery reasons.

8. Your Rights

Depending on applicable law, you may request access, correction, export, deletion, restriction, or objection to processing of your personal information. You may also revoke consent or disable system permissions.

9. Children

ECHO is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information to us, contact us and we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

10. International Processing

Your information may be processed on servers located outside your country or region. We use reasonable contractual, technical, and organizational measures to protect information and comply with applicable data protection requirements.

11. Security

We use access controls, encrypted transport, key management, logging, auditing, and least-privilege practices to reduce risk. No internet service can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Please protect your device, Apple ID, and account access.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced through the app, website, or another reasonable method. Continued use of ECHO after an update means you acknowledge the updated policy.

13. Contact

Privacy and support requests: happyshchev@gmail.com