In short
- SafeBoat is free and has no ads. We do not sell, rent or trade your data, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.
- The anchor alarm and I’m OK work without an account. Their alarms run on your phone.
- Your location leaves the phone only for what you use: a forecast for a place, a route to plan, a trip you record, an anchor or a check-in that a paired phone can watch.
- Signing in stores your email address, or your Apple or Google identity, and the things you make: trips, routes, boats, manuals, questions, anchorage notes.
- You can delete your account, and everything tied to it, from Settings in the app or by following the steps here.
1. Who we are and what this covers
SafeBoat is made and operated by an independent developer based in Turkiye. This policy explains how the SafeBoat app for iOS and Android and the website at safeboat.com (together, the “Services”) handle your information. Questions go to [email protected].
By using the Services you agree to this policy. If you do not agree, please do not use them.
2. What stays on your phone
Most of what SafeBoat does, it does on the device. The following is stored only on your phone and is removed when you uninstall the app:
- The anchor position, the alarm zone and the track of your swing, and your alarm settings and sounds.
- The I’m OK timer and its state.
- Offline maps you download and the last forecasts you looked at (kept for three hours so they can be read without signal).
- Your preferences: units, language, map style, theme.
- A short diagnostics log of recent errors and taps. It never leaves the phone unless you copy it into an email yourself.
3. What reaches our servers, and why
Each feature sends what it needs and nothing more. Here is the list, feature by feature.
An account, even before you sign in
On first launch the app creates an anonymous account on our server: a random identifier, the phone’s operating system, and an identifier for push notifications. It holds no name and no email address. It is what lets a paired phone reach yours, and what your data is filed under until you sign in.
Signing in
When you sign in with an email address, we store the address and email you a one time code (through the email service Resend). When you sign in with Apple or Google, we store the identifier they give us and the name and email address they share with us, and nothing else from those accounts. We keep session tokens so you stay signed in.
Anchor alarm
The alarm itself runs on your phone. When you set the anchor, the app also sends the anchor position, the zone you chose, your recent track and your current position to our server, and keeps them updated at the interval you pick in Settings (every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes, and every 10 seconds while the alarm sounds). This is what a paired phone watches when you are ashore. It happens whether or not you are signed in, and it ends when you remove the anchor. The record stays with your account.
I’m OK
Each check-in is stored with its time and your GPS position. While the timer runs, the app also keeps our server up to date with its state and your position, and after a missed check-in with the phone’s trail, so that a paired watcher can see where you are.
Pairing
Pairing stores which accounts are paired and what each side has chosen to share. Alerts to a paired phone (a dragging anchor, a lost GPS signal, a missed check-in, a test alert) are delivered as push notifications through OneSignal, and carry your position when the alert is about it. You can unpair at any time.
Weather
To show a forecast, the app sends the coordinates of the place you are looking at (your position, or a bookmark) to our weather service, which fetches model data from Open-Meteo. The live wind map sends the area of the map you are viewing. We log each forecast request with its coordinates, the time and, when you are signed in, your account, to run and size the service. Place search, and the place names shown next to coordinates, come from OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim service, which your phone contacts directly with the search text or the coordinates.
Route planner
When you plan a route, the start, the end, the stops, your boat type and speed, any notes you type and the forecast along the way are sent to our server and passed to an AI model provider (Google’s Gemini, with OpenAI as a fallback) that writes the plan. To find sheltered bays, your phone queries the Overpass API of OpenStreetMap directly with the corridor of the route. Routes you save are stored with your account.
Trips
A recorded trip is stored with your account: the track, the distance, the duration, the average and top speed, and where and when it started and ended.
BoatGPT
Your boats and their equipment, the manuals you upload, your questions and any photo you attach are stored with your account. To answer, we send your question, the photo if any, and the relevant manual pages to Anthropic, whose Claude models write the answer; conversations are kept so you can return to them. A person on our team reviews every uploaded manual. A manual stays private to you unless we approve it as shared, in which case its pages can be cited to other users, without your name. Manuals we reject are removed within 30 days. Questions and uploads are limited per day.
Anchorages
When you rate the place you anchored, leave a note or keep it as a bookmark, the rating, the note, the position and the month are stored with your account. Ratings and notes are shown to other users without any name. Bookmarks are yours alone. Another user can report a note, and a person on our team then keeps or removes it.
Maps
Standard map tiles and offline maps come from our own servers, built from OpenStreetMap data. When you switch to the satellite view, the imagery tiles are fetched by your phone directly from Esri.
Errors
When something fails on our servers, the technical context of the failed request is reported to FaultFixer, an error monitoring service, so we can fix it. The app itself sends no crash reports.
4. The website
safeboat.com sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from third parties; even the fonts are served from safeboat.com. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes your IP address to deliver the pages and keeps standard server logs.
5. Who else handles your data
Providers that work for us, and receive only what the feature above needs:
- Cloudflare
- Hosting, database and file storage for the app’s servers, the weather service and this website.
- OneSignal
- Push notifications: alarms, check-ins and paired alerts.
- Resend
- Sends the one time sign-in codes by email.
- Apple and Google
- Sign in with Apple, Sign in with Google.
- Anthropic
- Writes BoatGPT’s answers from your question and the manual pages.
- Google and OpenAI
- Write the route planner’s suggestions from your route and the forecast.
- Open-Meteo
- Weather model data, requested by our weather service, not by your phone.
- FaultFixer
- Error monitoring for our servers.
Services your phone contacts directly, which therefore see your IP address and the request:
- OpenStreetMap Nominatim
- Place search, and place names for coordinates.
- Overpass API
- Coastline and bay data for the route planner (overpass-api.de and overpass.kumi.systems).
- Esri
- Satellite imagery tiles, only in the satellite map style.
Beyond these, we share personal data only when the law requires it, or to protect the safety, rights or property of our users or others.
6. What we do not do
- No advertising, no advertising identifiers, no sale or rental of data, no data brokers.
- No tracking across other companies’ apps or websites.
- No location in the background unless the anchor alarm, the I’m OK timer or a trip recording is running. When all three are off, the app does not read your position in the background. On Android a persistent notification shows while the watch runs.
7. Permissions the app asks for
- Location, including in the background, for the anchor alarm, I’m OK and trip recording, and for forecasts at your position.
- Notifications, for alarms, check-in reminders and paired alerts.
- Camera and photos, only when you choose to attach a photo to a BoatGPT question.
8. How long we keep things
- Data tied to your account (anchors, check-ins, trips, routes, boats, manuals, notes, pairings, devices) stays until you delete it in the app or delete the account.
- Forecast request logs are kept for service statistics. Once an account is deleted, its entries can no longer be linked to anyone.
- A manual we rejected is removed within 30 days. A manual approved as shared stays in the library, without your name, even after your account is gone.
- BoatGPT questions and answers you have not deleted yourself remain stored without any link to an account after the account is gone. Delete a conversation in the app if you would rather not leave it behind.
- What is on your phone goes when you uninstall the app.
9. Deleting your account, and your rights
Signed in, open Settings in the app and tap Delete Account. Your account and the data tied to it are deleted from our servers at once, and the app returns to an anonymous session. If you no longer have the app, this page explains how to ask us instead.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to see the data we hold about you, to correct it, to object to or limit how we use it, and to receive a copy. Write to [email protected] from the address you signed in with, and we will answer as quickly as we can, always within the time the law allows.
10. Children
The Services are meant for people aged 18 and over. Under 18, use them only with a parent or guardian who accepts the terms. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
11. Security
Everything travels encrypted, access to our servers is limited to the people who run them, and uploaded manuals and photos are stored privately. No online service can promise absolute security, and neither can we; if we ever learn of a breach that affects you, we will tell you.
12. Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and if the change matters to you we will say so in the app or here. Continued use after a change means you accept it.
13. Contact
For anything about this policy or your data: [email protected].