Your privacy
AviaQuest stores the data needed to run your account and the birding records you choose to save. Community discovery sharing is off by default, and shared map locations are coarsened server-side. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more.
Updated 23 August 2026
AviaQuest stores the information needed to operate your account and the birding records you choose to create. Depending on the features you use, this can include your account identifier, display name and profile information, confirmed bird observations, collection and learning progress, saved places, Bird Walk routes, journal notes, community relationships and preferences.
Precise coordinates can be stored with your own observations and walks so those private features work for you. Those source coordinates are protected by owner-only access rules and are not returned as exact locations to other birders through Community features.
BirdNET sound identification runs in your browser/device. The sound window used for normal BirdNET identification is processed locally rather than uploaded to AviaQuest for identification. The BirdNET model itself may need to be downloaded and cached before use.
Audio evidence is retained only when you explicitly choose to keep it. Journal photos, Journal voice recordings, saved recording sessions, retained observation evidence and your personal Profile Gallery are stored as private files. AviaQuest creates short-lived signed links when a private file needs to be displayed or analysed.
Photo identification requires the selected image to be uploaded to private storage and made available to the identification service through a short-lived signed link. If you choose not to retain the photo as observation evidence, AviaQuest does not attach that private file reference to the saved observation. The current Base44 file interface does not provide AviaQuest with a verified immediate-delete operation for that temporary private upload, so we do not claim that its underlying storage object is destroyed immediately.
Photo Contest entries are deliberately shared with signed-in AviaQuest members. The original contest file is stored privately and a temporary signed display link is provided to viewers. Contest images and captions are moderated before publication.
Community discovery sharing is off by default. You can enable or disable it from Profile → Location Privacy. When enabled, confirmed sightings may appear in Community feeds and maps.
Community map coordinates are generated server-side from broad many-to-one location cells rather than from the original GPS point. Ordinary shared sightings use a cell of roughly 5 km; sensitive wildlife uses a substantially larger cell of roughly 20 km. This prevents the public map transformation from being reversed using a sighting ID.
Publishing a Bird Walk is a separate explicit choice. Shared walk APIs do not expose another birder's raw breadcrumb trail. Sensitive species remain approximate even where the account owner is using Adult mode.
Your collected species list and detection total are shown on your birder profile to other signed-in AviaQuest users. This does not expose the exact coordinates, private notes, retained evidence or raw detection records behind those species. Community discovery sharing remains a separate optional setting. Basic social profile fields such as your chosen display name, avatar, bio, badges and progression can also be shown as part of the Community experience, so avoid putting contact details or other sensitive personal information in your public-facing bio.
Child mode is the default and keeps map locations approximate. A user who explicitly confirms they are 18 or over can enable Adult mode, which may show that user's own non-sensitive observations more precisely. Adult mode never grants precise access to somebody else's observations or routes.
AviaQuest uses specialist service providers to operate parts of the app, including Base44 for application services and storage, Mapbox for maps and Stripe for supported subscription/payment functions. A legacy Wix payment webhook may also be used to recognise supporter purchases.
Mapbox requires a public browser token (a pk. token) to render maps; that token is public by design and is not a secret credential. Secret payment/API credentials stay server-side. AviaQuest does not intentionally send your raw private BirdNET audio to Mapbox or Stripe.
Private user records use owner-scoped access controls, while privileged operations are performed by authenticated backend functions with additional authorization checks. Sensitive backend endpoints use request-method restrictions, abuse controls and restricted error responses. Payment webhooks validate signed provider requests before changing account entitlements.
You can use Delete My Account from AviaQuest settings. The deletion flow removes the active AviaQuest account and associated application records, including observations, routes, journal data, learning history, saved places, social links and other user-owned records, and attempts to cancel an active Stripe subscription before account erasure.
Some infrastructure backups, provider-side transaction records or records that must be retained for legal, fraud-prevention or accounting reasons may not disappear instantly. Media created before AviaQuest's private-file migration may also have been stored using an older public-file mechanism; AviaQuest removes active database references during account deletion, but the current Base44 integration does not expose a verified API that lets us promise immediate physical deletion of every historical storage object.
For privacy questions or data requests, please use our contact page.