Our Privacy Promise
HotSpringer is built to be private by design. Your hot springs, visits, photos, notes, and location history belong to you and stay on your device.
- No accounts or sign-in.
- No ads, no analytics, and no tracking across apps or websites.
- We never sell, rent, or share your personal information.
- SentraSense has no servers that receive your hot springs, visits, photos, notes, or location.
There are two narrow exceptions, both explained below: anonymous crash reporting, and Apple's map services.
Information Stored on Your Device
Everything you create in HotSpringer — hot springs, coordinates, regions, tags, notes, visits and soak times, trip plans, photos and their metadata (such as the time, location, and compass direction they were taken), your home location, and your settings — is stored only in HotSpringer's private storage on your device, protected by iOS.
Private (locked) photos are additionally encrypted on your device. SentraSense cannot see or access any of this information.
Location
HotSpringer uses your location to show where you are on the map, measure distances, and — only if you turn on Auto-Visit Detection and allow "Always" location access — notice when you arrive at a hot spring you have saved, so it can record the visit.
Your location is processed on your device and is never sent to SentraSense. You can change location access at any time in iOS Settings; the rest of the app keeps working without it.
Apple Maps Services
Maps, driving-distance and drive-time estimates, place search, and directions are provided by Apple. To provide them, your device sends Apple the information needed for the request, such as map areas being displayed, route start and end points, or a search term. Opening directions hands off to the Apple Maps app.
Apple handles this information under its own privacy policy (apple.com/legal/privacy). SentraSense does not receive it.
Crash Reports
To find and fix bugs, HotSpringer uses Firebase Crashlytics, a service provided by Google. If the app crashes, it sends a crash report containing technical details: the error and where in the code it occurred, device model, iOS and app versions, device state such as free memory and disk space, and the time.
Crashlytics also sends a small "session started" event when you open the app, so we can measure how often the app crashes, and it uses a random identifier that Firebase creates for this installation of the app.
Crash reports never include your name, contact details, location, hot springs, notes, or photos, and we do not use them to identify you. Crash reporting is always on in this version of the app. Google processes this data on our behalf under its privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy).
Photos, Camera, and Notifications
HotSpringer accesses the camera or your photo library only when you choose to add a photo, and saves its own copy on your device.
Notifications, such as a visit being recorded, are created on your device. No notification service or server is involved.
Sharing and Exports
Information leaves HotSpringer only when you choose to share or export it, using your device's standard sharing features. You decide what is included and who receives it.
Shared hot springs never include your visit history, and private photos are included only if you choose to and enter your lock code. Full backups include all of your data — including visit history and private photos in readable form — so keep backup files somewhere safe. Once shared, a file is controlled by whoever receives it.
Retention and Deletion
Your data stays on your device until you delete it within the app or delete the app, which removes all of its data from your device. Because we do not hold a copy of your data, we cannot access, export, or delete it for you, and we cannot recover it.
Crash data is retained by Firebase for a limited period and then deleted automatically.
Your Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal information about you. Because HotSpringer keeps your information on your device, you can exercise these rights directly in the app. Crash reports are not linked to your identity. For any privacy question or request, contact us through hotspringer.app.
Children
HotSpringer is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Changes to This Policy
If we change this policy in a way that affects your privacy, we will update the effective date and ask you to review the new version in the app. We will never begin collecting your hot springs, visits, photos, notes, or location without telling you first.
Contact
HotSpringer is made by SentraSense, LLC, Idaho, USA. Questions or requests: hotspringer.app.