Your information, clearly explained
Rivistry is designed to make community river observations useful without exposing more personal information than necessary.
Effective August 22, 2026This Privacy Policy explains how Rivistry handles information when you visit rivistry.org, use the Rivistry iOS or Android app, sign in, save rivers, ask questions, or submit a community observation. It covers information collected directly by Rivistry and information processed by service providers that help us operate the service.
Rivistry is an educational monitoring and community-observation project. It is not an emergency, medical, or public-health service.
Depending on the features you choose, Rivistry may collect:
You can browse river pages, maps, public measurements, galleries, and Weekly Updates without creating an account.
Rivistry uses information to authenticate accounts, save favorite rivers, receive and review observations, provide AI-assisted explanations, organize public galleries, send requested transactional emails, respond to support requests, prevent spam and abuse, secure the service, and maintain an accurate community record.
We do not sell personal information, use community photos for targeted advertising, or use your content to make a safety determination.
Every observation is held for review before it appears in a public gallery. If approved, the public record may show the selected river, a broad area or town when you allow it, the observation date, your chosen description, and the AI-assisted label. Your account email and private deletion token are not shown publicly.
Location sharing is optional. Leave it off for private places, sensitive wildlife, homes, or anything that could identify a person or protected site. Images are resized and metadata is removed before storage; you should still avoid faces, license plates, house numbers, and other private information.
When you request an identification or explanation, the image, question, and relevant observation details are sent to an AI service for processing. Rivistry uses the result as a starting point and may store the returned suggestion with the observation so it can be reviewed and displayed.
AI output can be wrong, incomplete, or overconfident. It is not a verified species record, pollution finding, medical opinion, emergency instruction, or water-safety determination. Do not upload confidential, identifying, or sensitive material.
Rivistry uses carefully selected providers to operate the service. Depending on the feature, information may be processed by:
Approved community content is shared publicly as described above. We may disclose information when required by law, to protect users or the service, or to investigate fraud, abuse, security incidents, or rights violations. We do not rent or sell community content for advertising.
Rivistry uses essential cookies or similar storage for signed-in sessions, security, saved rivers, anonymous-upload deletion controls, and interface preferences. The app may also store a local list of your own pending uploads so you can manage them on that device.
Rivistry does not currently use third-party advertising cookies or an advertising identifier. Removing cookies or local storage may sign you out or remove local-only controls, but it does not delete server-side account data.
We retain information only for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the requested feature, review and maintain the community record, prevent abuse, resolve disputes, or satisfy legal obligations. Approved observations may remain as part of the public record until they are removed, anonymized, or no longer needed.
We use access controls, authenticated requests, server-side validation, image resizing, deletion tokens for guest uploads, and encrypted connections. No online service can guarantee absolute security, so do not submit information that must remain secret.
You can delete eligible uploads from the account or device controls. You can request account and associated-data deletion from the account deletion page, available on the web and in the app. Revoking Google or Apple sign-in does not by itself delete previously published observations.
You may browse without an account, decline location access, leave location sharing off, choose whether to submit an image, request deletion, and contact us about access or correction questions. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to certain processing.
For privacy requests, email support@rivistry.org. We may need to verify your identity before acting on an account request.
Rivistry is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13 without legally required parental involvement. If you believe a child submitted information, contact support so we can review and delete it where appropriate.
Rivistry and its providers may process information in countries other than the one where you live. By using the service, you understand that information may be transferred and protected under the laws that apply to the relevant provider.
We may update this policy as Rivistry changes. We will post the revised policy here and update the effective date. If a change is material, we will provide additional notice when reasonably practicable.