Privacy

This is a plain-language description of what we do with your data, not a legally reviewed document. Consult a lawyer before treating this as a binding agreement.

Last updated: 10/10/2026.

The COM Argentina app is developed and managed by the Club de Observadores de Mariposas de Argentina (comargentina). It is built around the idea that observing biodiversity should not require giving up control of your data. This page describes — without legalese — what we collect, where it goes, what we never see, and what you can do about any of it.

What we collect

When you use COM, we may receive or generate the following data:

• Email address — only if you sign in. Guest mode requires no account.
• Photos and short audio clips you attach to observations.
• GPS coordinates when you grant location access (or extract them from a photo's EXIF metadata).
• Observation metadata — the timestamp, habitat, weather, evidence type, any free-text notes you write.
• Sync timestamps — when each observation was created and last synced.
• IP address and user agent — captured by Supabase auth/access logs and Cloudflare's R2 edge logs in the normal course of serving requests.
• Service-worker telemetry — your browser tells us indirectly (via fetch failures, cache misses) when the offline path runs. We do not pair this with your account.

We do not run third-party analytics, ad networks, fingerprinting libraries, or session-replay tools. There is no COM tracking pixel.

Where it goes

When you ask for a species identification:

• A photo may be sent to the PlantNet API — only when you trigger an ID run, only the image, and only if a key is configured.
• A photo may be sent to the Anthropic Claude API — only when you have brought your own (BYO) key in Profile → Edit. The key is stored in your browser's localStorage and forwarded per call. COM servers never store it or log it.
• Audio is only ever processed on your device by BirdNET-Lite (the model is downloaded once to your browser; inference runs locally).

The following models, when used, run entirely on-device and the media never leaves your phone:

• BirdNET-Lite (audio)
• EfficientNet-Lite0 (photo, offline base classifier)
• Phi-3.5-vision (photo, fallback vision LLM)
• Llama-3.2-1B (text, used by the chat page to phrase replies)

Sensitive species and coordinate obscuration

COM enforces coordinate obscuration for protected species. If you log a sensitive species:

• Public-readable views see the location coarsened to roughly a 10×10 km square (obscure_level = 'public').
• Only you and credentialed researchers (when authenticated and authorised) can read the precise coordinates.
• The obscuration is enforced by a database trigger that sets a separate location_obscured column at insert/update time, so the public view never even has the raw value.

You can also opt to obscure coordinates voluntarily for any observation, sensitive or not — the same mechanism applies.

Account and Data Deletion (Google Play)

In compliance with Google Play guidelines, any user of COM Argentina (developed by Club de Observadores de Mariposas de Argentina) can request the total deletion of their account and associated data at any time.

Option 1 — From the app or web:

1. Sign in.
2. Go to /profile/edit/.
3. Click Delete account and confirm.

Option 2 — Without the app installed (Via Email):

You can email comargentina1@gmail.com with the subject "Account and Data Deletion Request - COM Argentina", specifying your registered email address. We will process your deletion within 30 days.

For detailed deletion instructions, see: Account Deletion Instructions .

Data deleted vs data retained

• Permanently deleted data: Your auth.users record, email address, public profile (@username, display name, avatar, bio), and local session tokens. Photos in Cloudflare R2 are queued for deletion within 30 days. Audio clips are deleted immediately.
• Anonymously retained data: Biodiversity and species observation records are retained in an irreversibly anonymized form (severing any link to your user ID) as they represent citizen-science contributions under open licenses (CC-BY / CC0) for biological research and ecological conservation.
• Technical server logs: Network server logs are automatically purged after a rolling 30-90 day period for technical security and fraud prevention.

Cookies and local storage

COM uses localStorage (not cookies) for:

• Your authentication session token (managed by Supabase).
• Your bring-your-own (BYO) API keys for PlantNet and Anthropic, if you set them. Stored under the rastrum.byoKeys key. Cleared on sign-out only if you also clear them via the UI; localStorage survives sign-out by default.
• Theme preference (light/dark).
• Locale preference (EN/ES).

The service worker maintains an offline cache of the static site shell. You can clear it via your browser's "site settings → clear data" or by unregistering the service worker in DevTools.

Children

COM is not directed at users under 13 years of age . If you are aware that a child under 13 has created an account, please contact us so we can remove it. Some jurisdictions set a higher threshold (16 in much of the EU); guardians should apply the local rule.

Last updated: 03/10/2026.