Tu Palomar is an app for pigeon flyers. This page explains, without fine print, what the app stores, why, who sees it and how you delete it. If anything is unclear, write to [email protected].
Who is responsible for your data
Tu Palomar is developed and operated by Rafael Portilla, an independent developer in Florida, United States. For anything about privacy: [email protected].
What the app stores
- Your account: name, email address and password. The password is stored hashed; nobody, including me, can read it. The app assigns you a public @username based on your name.
- Your profile (optional): city and zone, phone number, profile photo and your loft's motto. Only what you decide to fill in.
- Your loft: your pigeons with name, band, breed, color, sex, status, photos and videos, and the pedigree you build.
- Your captures: photo, band, sex, date, category, method, the bird that brought it in, notes and, if you allow the app to use your location, the coordinates of where the capture happened. Those coordinates are yours and nobody else's (see What other flyers see).
- Rivalries and transfers: who you captured from, who captured from you, which claims you accepted or declined, and the pigeons you handed over or received.
- Marketplace and messages: your listings, your lost-bird posters and the messages you exchange with other flyers inside the app.
- Notifications: the phone's identifier for sending you alerts (the push token), the phone's language so alerts arrive in your language, and which alerts you want.
- Subscription: whether you are Pro, since when and until when. Payments are processed by Apple or Google: the app never sees your card or bank details.
- Usage: the date you last opened the app, so reminders don't bother you while you are active.
What it is used for
- To provide the service: showing your loft, your captures, your pedigree and your ranking.
- For the social side of the sport: rivalries, marketplace, lost birds, messages. Your city and zone are used to show you what is happening near you.
- To alert you: a claim, a message, a lost bird nearby, a change in the rankings. Every kind of alert can be switched off in the app.
- For the Pro subscription: knowing whether it is active.
- To email you only when needed. Today, only the code to reset your password. No newsletters, no marketing email.
What is not done: your data is never sold, there is no advertising, and there are no trackers or third-party analytics in the app.
If the app crashes: it sends an error report (what broke, on which screen, on which phone and app version, and your account number) so it can be fixed. It never carries your password, your email or the place of a capture, and it is only sent when something fails; it is not analytics.
What other flyers see
Showing off your loft is the point of the sport, so part of what is yours is public inside the app:
- Your name, your @username, your photo, your city and zone, and your loft's motto.
- Your pigeons (name, band, breed, color, photo, status) and your pedigree.
- Your capture count, your position in the rankings and, for each capture, the photo, the date, the city, the category and the method.
- Your listings and your lost-bird posters.
- The improvements you ask the app for, once I publish them, with your name ("Asked by…"). Until then only you see them.
- The card of a bird with a coded ring. If you put a QR code on a bird (a ring with a code, or one you create in the app), anyone who scans it opens a card of that bird on tupalomar.com with no app and no account: the bird (name, band, breed, color, sex, photos, status), your name, your @username, your photo, your loft's name and motto and your city; your phone only if you switched on "Phone visible"; and the lost-bird poster while it is lost. Never your captures or your zone. Whoever finds it can leave you their name and phone from that card: it reaches you as an alert in the app. You decide which bird carries a code, and you can take it off.
And what nobody ever sees:
- The location of your captures. A capture is logged where you fly your birds, which is your home. The coordinates never leave your account under any circumstances; others see, at most, the city.
- Your notes and links on each capture, who you tagged and the state of a claim.
- Your email address.
- Your phone number, unless you switch on "Phone visible" in Profile: then it appears only on your listings and on the poster of a lost bird of yours.
Who it is shared with
Nobody, in the sense of selling or handing it over. It does pass through the providers that make the app run, all under contract and only for that:
- A cloud hosting provider in the United States: the app's server, the storage for photos and videos, and the database.
- The phone's notification service, through Expo: delivering the alerts.
- RevenueCat: managing the Pro subscription. It receives the state of your purchase from Apple or Google, never your card.
- Sentry: the app's error reports. It receives what failed, on which phone and app version, and your account number; never your password, your email or the place of a capture.
- App Store and Google Play: billing the subscription, under their own privacy policies.
- An email provider, only for the password-reset code.
The app runs from the United States; if you use it from another country, your data travels there. I would hand data to an authority only if the law requires it.
How long it is kept
As long as you have an account, with one exception: messages between flyers delete themselves 30 days after they are sent (the app says so in every conversation). The conversation itself — which bird, with whom — is kept. When you delete the account, everything of yours is deleted: account, profile, pigeons, photos and videos, captures, listings, messages and alerts. System backups roll over within 30 days at most.
Two things survive, because they belong to someone else: a capture a rival logged and you acknowledged stays in his record, without your name. And a pigeon you handed over to another flyer is his, with the pedigree it took along. A third, because it belongs to the community: an improvement you asked for that was already published stays on the board, but without your name and without your words — only the public text remains. The ones still in review, and your votes, are deleted.
Your rights
- See and correct your data: almost everything is editable in the app (Profile, My loft, each pigeon and each capture).
- Delete the account: in the app, Profile → Delete account, or by writing to me. Steps in Delete your account.
- Switch off notifications: in the app (Profile → Notifications) or in the phone's settings.
- Revoke the location, camera or photos permission: in the phone's settings, any time. The app keeps working; you only lose what that permission gave.
If you live in California, the European Union or anywhere else with its own privacy law, these same rights apply to you and are handled through the same email.
Children
Tu Palomar is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child opened an account, write to me and I will delete it.
Security
All communication is encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored hashed, never in the clear. Sessions use tokens that expire and rotate. No system is perfect: if I detect a breach that affects you, I will tell you.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, you will see it on this page with a new effective date, and in the app if the change is significant.
Questions about your data? [email protected]