Privacy Policy

Version 2026-10-19 · in effect from 19 October 2026

Helmsmate records where your boat has been, which is about as personal as data gets. This document says exactly what we collect, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and what you can make us do about it. It is written to be read rather than to be survived.

1 Who we are

Helmsmate is a trading name of SpectraKey Ltd, a company incorporated in England and Wales under company number 07208132, with its registered office at 13 Hazelwood Close, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, HP5 3DR.

We are the data controller for the personal data described here, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration number ZC147179.

For anything about your personal data, including the requests described in section 9, write to privacy@helmsmate.app.

2 What we collect

Everything below is either given to us by you or generated by your use of the app.

Account: Your email address, however you get in. There are three doors: an email address and a password, an emailed sign-in link, and Continue with Google. All three are handled by Google's Firebase Authentication, and we never see your password. Signing in with Google also hands us the name and profile picture on your Google account, which become your Helmsmate profile unless you change them. There is no sign-in with Apple or Facebook.
Profile: Your display name, your profile picture if you upload one, and a short free-text location you can set, usually where the boat is kept. All optional except the name.
Location while recording: When you record a trip we collect precise position fixes (latitude, longitude, altitude, accuracy, speed and time) continuously, including while the app is in the background and your screen is off. See section 4.
Boat GPS: If you fit a GPS unit aboard, it sends position, speed, heading, satellite count and time to us over the mobile network, whether or not anyone's phone is on. These build your boat's track history and its live position.
Trips: The complete route of each recorded trip, plus start and stop points, pauses, distance, elapsed and moving time, lock and bridge counts, the name you give it, the boat it was aboard, and who crewed it.
Photographs: Pictures you attach to a trip or a review, stored as your device produced them, including the metadata embedded in the file, which commonly holds the coordinates and the time the picture was taken and the make and model of the device. We keep that on purpose: the place and time are what put a trip photograph on the trip map where you took it, rather than in an undated pile at the end of the trip. When you post one to a trip, the app reads the place and time from it on your phone and stores them with the trip as well, and makes a small copy of the picture for the map, which carries no metadata at all.
…and what that means: The metadata travels with the picture, so anybody who can see the trip or the review can read it as well as us. On a trip that includes the photographs the crew post: everyone who can see the trip sees them, and the time and place in them. If you would rather a particular photograph did not say where it was taken, take it with location switched off, or strip the metadata before you upload it. On Android, the app asks for access to your photos' locations before you choose from your library, because Android removes them otherwise; say no and the photograph is still posted, placed by the time it was taken instead.
Social: Who you have asked to gongoozle, who has asked to gongoozle you, and which of those requests were approved. Also your likes, your comments and your reviews.
Saved places and plans: Moorings, locks and bridges you bookmark, and any routes you plan. Plans are private to you.
Boats: A boat's name, its mark, its photograph, its members, and any particulars you enter: length, stern type and home mooring.
On your device: The app keeps an offline copy of your data on the phone itself: a Firestore cache of up to 200 MB, a snapshot of any trip in progress (including its route so far) in local storage, and the canal map data you have downloaded. Signing out or deleting the app removes it.
Technical: Standard information that reaches any internet service (your IP address, the type of device and app version) as part of ordinary request logs held by our infrastructure providers. The app also asks Google to vouch that it is running on a real Android device before it will send a sign-in link, which tells Google a request came from this app on this device.
Diagnostics: When the app crashes or hits a fault, it sends us a report: what went wrong and where in the code, which screens you had moved between and whether a recording was running, the app version, and your device model and Android version. We do not attach your account, your name or your email address to it, and it carries no route and no photograph, so a report does not by itself say which boater it came from.
Beta feedback: If you test pre-release builds for us and send feedback from the app, we receive what you write, a screenshot of the screen you were on (which can show the map and where you are on it), the email address we invited you as a tester with, and which build you are running. Nothing is sent unless you send it.

We do not collect your contacts, your calendar, your microphone, your advertising identifier, or anything about what you do in other apps. There is no analytics SDK and no advertising SDK in Helmsmate: nothing counts which buttons you press, and nothing profiles you. The crash reporter described above is the single exception, and it only ever speaks when something has gone wrong.

3 Why we use it, and our lawful basis

Under UK data protection law we need a lawful basis for each use. Ours are:

To provide the app – performance of a contract: Creating and running your account, recording and storing your trips, showing you the map, and sharing what you have chosen to share with the boaters you have chosen to share it with. This is the service you signed up for; without this processing there is no app.
Email we send you – contract, and legitimate interests: A sign-in link is part of running your account: you asked for it by typing your address into the app. A welcome message when you first join is a service message rather than advertising, and rests on our legitimate interest in explaining the thing you have just signed up to. We do not send promotional email; if that ever changes, we will ask you first.
Device permissions – consent: Access to your location in the background, and permission to send you notifications, are granted by you at the operating-system level and can be withdrawn there at any time.
Keeping things working and safe – legitimate interests: Diagnosing faults (including from feedback testers send us), preventing abuse and misuse, protecting accounts, and enforcing our terms. Our interest is in running a service that works and is not abused; we have weighed that against your interests and it does not involve profiling you or building any picture of you beyond what the app plainly does.
Meeting our legal obligations: Responding to lawful requests, and keeping records where the law requires it.

We do not use your data for advertising, we do not profile you, and there is no automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

4 Location, specifically

Location is the most sensitive thing the app collects, so it is worth setting out exactly what happens.

We collect precise location, not approximate. A recorded route is an accurate trace of where your boat went, at what speed, with timestamps.
We collect it in the background. Once you start recording, collection continues with the app closed and the screen off, until you stop. Android will show a persistent notification for the whole time this is happening.
We only collect it when you are recording a trip, or when the map is open. There is no background collection at any other time.
A boat GPS unit reports independently of your phone. If you have fitted one, it sends your boat's position even when nobody aboard is using the app. Its live position and its track history are visible to the boat's members.
You can withdraw location permission at any time in your device settings. Recording will stop working; nothing else will break.

Location data is not, in law, a special category of personal data. We treat it as sensitive anyway, because a year of a boat's movements says a great deal about the people aboard it.

5 Who can see what

Helmsmate is a social app, so some of your data is visible to other people by design. This is what is actually enforced, not merely what the screens show:

Your trips, including their full route: You, the crew on the trip, the members of the boat it was recorded on, and the boaters whose request to gongoozle you you have approved. Nobody else: a link to a trip does not grant access to somebody outside that group. You can stop the boat's members watching a trip live in your settings.
Your name, profile picture and location text: Any signed-in Helmsmate user. These appear as the byline on trips, next to reviews, and in boat member lists, so they cannot be hidden while you are using the social features.
Your email address: Nobody but you. It is not stored on your public profile. Another boater can find you by typing your exact email address into the search box, but the search only tells them an account exists and returns the name and picture, never the address itself.
Your reviews of moorings: Any signed-in user, along with your name and picture. Reviews are public contributions; that is the point of them.
Your saved places and route plans: Saved places appear on your own profile and are visible to any signed-in user. Route plans are private to you.
Your boat: Its name, mark, photograph, members and particulars (including its home mooring if you set one) are visible to any signed-in user. Its live position and its track history are visible only to its members.
Who you gongoozle, and who gongoozles you: The counts and lists appear on your profile. A pending request is visible only to the two people involved.

Anything you share leaves our control to the extent the people you shared it with keep their own copies. Think before adding somebody as crew or as a member of your boat, and before approving a request.

7 Where your data is

Our server code runs in the United Kingdom. Some of our suppliers, Google and Mapbox in particular, are based in the United States and may process data there or elsewhere.

Where data leaves the UK, we rely on the safeguards UK data protection law requires: an adequacy decision where one applies, and otherwise the International Data Transfer Agreement or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum. You can ask us at privacy@helmsmate.app which applies to a given supplier.

8 How long we keep it

Your account, profile, trips, reviews and photographs: Until you delete them or close your account. A logbook is meant to last, so we do not expire trips.
Boat GPS track history: 180 days, then deleted automatically. The trips built from it are kept as above.
A trip in progress: Held on your device until you finish or discard it.
Crash reports: 90 days, then deleted by Firebase Crashlytics automatically. We cannot extend it.
Beta feedback: Until we have dealt with what it reports, then deleted.
Request logs held by our infrastructure providers: Kept on their standard retention schedules, typically a matter of weeks.
Backups: Deleted data may persist in backups for a short period before being overwritten in the ordinary course.

Closing your account deletes your profile, your trips and their routes, your comments, your reviews, your saved places, your plans, your photographs (including any you posted to somebody else's trip as crew, which leave that trip), your follows in both directions, and any boat you own alone together with its GPS history (a boat you own with somebody else stays with them), and then the login itself. It is a genuine deletion, it runs on our servers rather than in the app, and it cannot be undone.

One deliberate exception: a trip somebody else has claimed onto their own logbook stays in their record when you delete a boat, because it is their trip too.

9 Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

Be told: what we do with your data, which is what this document is for.
Get a copy: of the personal data we hold about you.
Correct it: if it is wrong. Most of it you can edit yourself in the app.
Have it erased: yourself at any time with Settings → Account → Delete account, or by asking us. There is a page on how to do it, setting out both routes and exactly what goes.
Restrict or object to: how we use it, including processing based on legitimate interests.
Take it elsewhere: in a structured, machine-readable format, where we hold it on the basis of your consent or our contract with you.
Withdraw consent: for anything based on it (location and notification permissions, in your device settings) without affecting what we did lawfully beforehand.

To exercise any of these, write to privacy@helmsmate.app. We will respond within one month. We will not charge you, and we will not make it difficult.

One of these is handled by hand today rather than by a button in the app: getting a full copy of your data. Ask and we will do it; we are building it properly. Deleting a single trip without closing your account no longer needs us: the trip page does it.

10 Keeping it safe

Data travels encrypted and is stored on Google's infrastructure, which encrypts it at rest. Access to your data is enforced on the server by security rules rather than only in the app, so what section 5 describes is what is enforced.

No service is perfectly secure. Use a password you do not use anywhere else, and tell us at privacy@helmsmate.app if you think something is wrong with your account. If a breach ever puts your rights at risk, we will tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.

11 Children

Helmsmate is not for children. You must be at least 16 to hold an account, and we do not knowingly collect data about anyone younger.

If you believe a child has created an account, tell us at privacy@helmsmate.app and we will delete it.

12 Changes to this policy

We will update this policy as the app changes. The version and date at the top tell you which one you are reading. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.

13 Complaining

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first at privacy@helmsmate.app; we would rather fix it.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, at any time and without going to us first.

Regulator: Information Commissioner's Office
Address: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Helpline: 0303 123 1113
Website: ico.org.uk
Our registration: ZC147179