This Privacy Policy explains what data the Alpha application ("Alpha", "the app", "we", "our") collects, how it is used, and what choices you have. Alpha is a local-first application: your dog profiles and walk history are stored on your device. However, unlike a fully offline app, Alpha does use the internet for specific, limited purposes described below — most notably to turn your GPS route into a walk quality score (terrain and weather lookups) and, if you choose to participate, to publish your dog's results to Alpha's shared "Alfa" leaderboard.
Alpha handles the following categories of data:
Dog profiles, walk records, and preferences never leave your device except for the specific, narrow network calls described in Sections 2 and 3 below. Alpha does not require you to create an account, and does not collect your name, email address, or any other directly identifying information.
Alpha uses your device's precise (GPS) and approximate location to record a walk's route while you are actively tracking a walk. Location is collected only in the foreground, while tracking is running and the corresponding notification is visible — Alpha does not request or use background location access, and cannot track your location when the app is closed or a walk is not in progress.
To calculate a walk's quality score, Alpha needs to know what kind of terrain you walked on and what the weather was like at the time. To do this, sampled coordinates from your route (and, for the shared leaderboard, a single representative point) are sent to the following third-party services. These services receive only bare geographic coordinates and, where noted, a timestamp — never your dog's name, your identity, or any other profile information.
| Service | What it receives | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap Overpass API (overpass-api.de and mirror instances) |
Sampled route coordinates | Looking up terrain type (path, trail, park, pavement, etc.) along your route |
| Nominatim (nominatim.openstreetmap.org) |
A coordinate pair | Reverse geocoding — resolving coordinates to a general place/area name |
| Photon by Komoot (photon.komoot.io) |
A coordinate pair | Reverse geocoding fallback if the above is unavailable |
| BigDataCloud (api.bigdatacloud.net) |
A coordinate pair | Reverse geocoding fallback if the above are unavailable |
| Your device's built-in Geocoder (Android system service, on supported devices) |
A coordinate pair | Final reverse geocoding fallback; on most devices this is relayed through your device manufacturer's or Google's own geocoding backend, outside of our control |
| Open-Meteo (api.open-meteo.com) |
A coordinate pair and a timestamp | Looking up the historical temperature/weather at the time and place of your walk |
These lookups are transient — each request is used only to answer that one query and is not linked to any account or identifier we control. We do not operate any of these services ourselves; each is a separate, independent provider with its own privacy practices, and we encourage you to review their policies if you'd like more detail on how they handle inbound requests.
Alpha includes an optional feature that lets you compare your dogs' walk scores against other Alpha users in your area, called "Alfa". Participation happens automatically as you record walks, but no personal information is ever required or collected for it:
You can avoid contributing to the shared leaderboard entirely by not recording walks (all core walk-tracking and scoring functionality works fully offline, locally on your device, even without any network connection — only the terrain/weather lookups in Section 2 and the leaderboard sync described here require connectivity).
| Permission | Why Alpha requests it |
|---|---|
ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION / ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION | To record your route's GPS coordinates while a walk is being tracked |
FOREGROUND_SERVICE / FOREGROUND_SERVICE_LOCATION | To keep GPS tracking running reliably while a walk is in progress, with a visible ongoing notification |
POST_NOTIFICATIONS | To show the ongoing walk-tracking notification and walk-related alerts |
INTERNET / ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE | To perform the terrain, weather, and leaderboard network calls described in Sections 2 and 3 |
Alpha does not request background location access. Location is only ever collected while you are actively tracking a walk in the foreground.
Alpha uses Android's built-in Auto Backup, which may back up your local app data (your dog profiles, walk history, and preferences) to your Google Account as part of your device's normal Android backup process, subject to Google's own backup policies and your device settings. Alpha uses the platform's default backup configuration and does not customize which local data is included or excluded.
This is separate from the Alfa leaderboard data described in Section 3, which is stored on our servers rather than on your device, and is therefore not part of your device's local backup.
Alpha uses the following third-party services. None of them are used for advertising or behavioral tracking — Alpha does not include any advertising SDK, analytics SDK, or crash-reporting SDK.
Local data (dog profiles, walk history, preferences) stays on your device for as long as you keep the app installed. You can delete individual dogs or walks at any time from within the app, clear the app's storage from your device settings, or uninstall the app to remove all local data immediately.
Leaderboard data: deleting a dog or a walk within the app also removes or reduces that dog's corresponding contribution to the Alfa leaderboard, provided you do so from the same installation (i.e. using the same anonymous identifier that originally submitted it). Please note that we do not currently operate an automatic expiry process for old leaderboard periods — if a contribution is not removed via in-app deletion (for example, because the app was uninstalled before the walk was deleted), it may continue to appear in historical leaderboard periods. We are working on adding automatic cleanup of old leaderboard periods in a future update; until then, if you would like a past leaderboard contribution removed and cannot do so from within the app, please contact us using the details in Section 11.
Because Alpha communicates with services such as Google Firebase, OpenStreetMap-based providers, Komoot, BigDataCloud, and Open-Meteo, data sent as part of those requests (see Sections 2 and 3) may be processed on servers located in countries other than your own. Each of these providers maintains its own safeguards for cross-border data handling.
Alpha is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 (or the relevant minimum age in your jurisdiction). Since Alpha does not collect names, email addresses, or other identifying account information from any user, no age-specific personal data is collected in the first place.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example as Alpha's features change. Any changes will be reflected by an updated "Effective date" at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this page periodically.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how Alpha handles data, please contact us at: mail.redstaffcorp@gmail.com