Your field notes, handled plainly.

Account information includes your name, email address, Badland account identifier, an Apple account identifier when you use Apple sign-in, encrypted account authorization credentials, Tallgrass sessions, and an optional profile photo.

Discoveries include the photos, RAW files, and videos you choose to post. Videos can include sound. Tallgrass also keeps file and capture details, the caption and place name you enter, and the precise latitude, longitude, and available accuracy used for the discovery.

Tallgrass stores activity needed to provide the journal and game, including AI reports, content-screening results, scores, rankings, likes, comments, visits to other members' discoveries, reports, blocks, challenges, private field-guide questions and replies, group names and memberships, sharing choices, moderation actions, and upload and processing status. If you enable push notifications, Tallgrass stores an Apple Push Notification service device token linked to your account.

Tallgrass saves your current theme and whether you have seen the theme introduction. It records theme-menu openings, previews, and changes with your account identifier, the theme, the menu entry point, and the time received, to understand theme use and improve the app. These records are removed when you delete your Tallgrass account.

Tallgrass saves which kinds of notifications you want and applies those choices when it sends notifications. It also records each change to your settings, such as notification choices, appearance, motion, music and sound, the camera's starting mode, the narrator, activity status, post sharing, and the world you equip, with your account identifier, the old and new value, whether the change came from the iPhone app or the website, the app version, and the time received, to understand how people set up Tallgrass and improve it. These records are removed when you delete your Tallgrass account.

Tallgrass keeps original uploads and derived viewing copies for posted discoveries, including edited JPEG variants. Earlier uploads covered by a recorded beta media-retention choice may also remain archived after removal from an unfinished draft. Photo-edit settings and the link between an edited copy and its original are stored with the upload.

Operational AI records include the model used, request timing and outcome, token counts, cache usage, and available cost estimates linked to account and discovery identifiers. These records help us enforce limits and understand the cost of running Tallgrass.

When the quick first look at a draft's photo was ready before you posted, Tallgrass records whether you posted that draft or discarded it, whether the app showed the first look before you posted, how long the look took, whether this came from the iPhone app or the website, the app version and build, and the time, with your account identifier and the upload identifier of the draft's photo, which for a posted draft also identifies the discovery, to learn whether showing a first look early changes how often people post. These records are kept when the discovery is deleted and are removed when you delete your Tallgrass account.

The website, which the Android app also shows, sends anonymous page-performance reports: Core Web Vitals timings for loading, responsiveness, and layout stability, with the page route, a device class, and the connection type. They carry no account identifier, IP address, or query string, and are kept for 30 days.

Beyond the theme and settings records above and the discovery visits listed earlier, Tallgrass is adding broader first-party usage analytics that record which screens and controls a signed-in member uses and how long they spend in each, linked to the account, to improve the app. This notice will describe what is kept and for how long before that broader recording begins.

When you start Live Scan, Tallgrass processes small camera preview images, your typed or transcribed questions, and recent observations to provide a spoken field guide. These preview images are processed in memory rather than saved as discovery uploads. If you capture a discovery, a compact recent observation can be saved privately with that capture to help its final analysis. Live Scan does not publish a discovery by itself.

Earlier versions of the app sent three photos for a free personal website or iOS app. Only Cole sees them, with location and device details removed, and they are deleted when the open request is withdrawn or the account is deleted.

Email sent to an @tallgrass.social address can include sender and recipient addresses, routing information, subject, message content, and attachments. Cloudflare forwards mail for [email protected] to the Badland LLC operator's Gmail inbox; messages to other recipients at that domain are collected in an admin-only operational inbox.

Tallgrass uses this information to authenticate members, save and display discoveries, prepare media, place discoveries on the map and calendar, provide AI identification and conversation, calculate scores and rankings, support social features, prevent duplicate requests, enforce service limits, deliver requested notifications, and keep the service secure and reliable.

Tallgrass does not use this information for targeted advertising and does not share it with data brokers. The current app does not include third-party advertising, analytics, or crash-reporting SDKs.

Uploading discoveries does not require permission to retain abandoned drafts for model development. Earlier recorded beta participation choices continue to apply to media submitted under those choices. Infrastructure and AI providers process data under their applicable terms and settings.

Discoveries are friends-only by default: you and members of any group you currently share can see them. With no groups, only you can see your friends-only discoveries. Joining a group shares your earlier friends-only discoveries with its members, and you can see theirs. Group owners can invite or remove members; leaving a group ends access through that group.

You can share an individual discovery globally when posting or afterward. The setting to share all posts globally applies to your existing and future discoveries and replaces their previous individual sharing choices; you can then change individual discoveries again. Globally shared discoveries can appear in the Global feed and discovery boards, including their photos or playable video, caption and place name, AI report, score, and challenges. Global means signed-in members with Tallgrass access, not visitors to the public website.

Your explorer name, profile photo, public profile text and field marks, and aggregate counts, scores, and standings are visible to other members even when your discoveries are friends-only. Private discoveries contribute to those scores, without making their photos, captions, species identifications, or locations global. Group standings compare that group's members using the same saved scores.

Activity sharing is on by default. Current members of your groups can see when Tallgrass reports you online and your last-seen time; blocked members cannot. You can turn off “Share activity status” in your account settings to hide both and clear your last-seen timestamp from the live service. Network interruptions can temporarily delay an offline update.

Exact map locations have a separate audience: you and current members of the groups recorded when you posted or enabled map sharing. Joining a different group or making a discovery global does not add that group or the global audience to its location sharing. New members of a group already in that audience can see its shared locations. Earlier private locations stay private, and earlier approximate map locations remain approximate.

Comments made on a globally shared discovery can be seen by its audience. Comments made while a discovery is friends-only stay with the groups the commenter and discovery owner shared at that time, plus the commenter and discovery owner. Making the discovery global does not make those earlier comments global. Current membership in those original groups still controls access. Identification challenges made privately keep the same kind of separate group audience. People who can see a discovery can see who liked it.

When at least half of another member's discovery stays on your screen for a second in the feed, or when you open it, its author and Tallgrass administrators can see your name in its viewer lists. Everyone else who can see the discovery sees only how many people saw it, not who. Members who hide their activity status are neither listed nor counted, and opening a public share link does not record a view. These records are deleted with the discovery or with your account.

Members of the earlier closed beta start together in Original field club to preserve their existing sharing. New Tallgrass members do not automatically join that group.

Your email address, account credentials, private AI conversations, RAW originals, and ordinary discovery responses containing exact coordinates are not shown in the shared feed. Your private AI conversation is visible to you, although the discovery owner and other members may see the underlying shared discovery. Blocking another member hides each member's content and activity from the other while the block remains in place.

Tallgrass sends prepared photographs or sampled video frames to AWS Bedrock Mantle for processing by an Anthropic Claude model. Identification can also include your caption and place name and, as identification clues, the discovery's approximate location rounded to about 10 km, its hemisphere and season, and the local time of day it was taken. A quick first look at a reduced, metadata-free copy of the first photo can start as soon as it finishes uploading, while you are still writing. It goes to the same AWS Bedrock service or, when Tallgrass enables its faster route, to Google Gemini. It is shown only to you and is never posted unless you share the discovery. Reassessment can include the earlier report and your challenge reason. Private field-guide chat can include the discovery, saved report, and recent messages in that conversation. AI processing does not receive precise coordinates, account name, email address, account identifier, passwords, session credentials, RAW originals, or the audio track of a video.

The same AI response separately screens new media for a narrow set of clearly prohibited content before publication. A discovery with an explicit prohibited result is rejected. A new discovery cannot publish when a valid screening result is missing or unavailable. Existing resolved discoveries are not automatically rescreened, and identification uncertainty is not treated as a content-safety violation.

Live Scan sends compressed preview images and bounded recent conversation to AWS Bedrock Mantle by default. When the fast Live Scan route is enabled, it sends the current preview to Cloudflare Workers AI (Clef) for organism and same-subject checks, may send the preceding preview for comparison, and sends the current preview plus a bounded question and recent observations to Google Gemini when a fresh identification or answer is needed. Starting a scan requires a separate explanation and your action in the camera. The iPhone app transcribes voice questions on your device when local speech recognition is available; otherwise you can type. Web voice questions use your browser's speech-recognition service, which may send audio to its provider. The browser explains this before you enable voice questions. Tallgrass receives the resulting question text, not a recording of your microphone. Spoken replies and discovery reveals send the narration text to xAI Grok's text-to-speech service. Tallgrass plays the returned audio; it does not send camera frames, microphone recordings, or account credentials to xAI for narration. Voice memos are stored for playback and are not sent to the identification model. Once a voice memo is ready, Tallgrass sends that single recording to OpenAI's speech-to-text service and saves the returned text with the memo. You can edit the transcript or clear it from view at any time; your edit is stored separately, the original text is kept as returned, and neither editing nor clearing deletes the recording. A discovery may consist of voice memos alone; such a post is not identified or scored.

When the optional next-find feature is enabled and you request suggestions, Tallgrass sends TypeSafe Jev the selected region description plus the common names, scientific names, and categories of guide species already in your collection and the undiscovered guide candidates. It does not send photographs, captions, place names, coordinates, your name, email address, account identifier, or credentials for this feature. Jev returns bounded scores that reorder the existing candidates; it does not identify a discovery or guarantee that a species is currently present.

When enabled, Badland LLC's Langfuse service receives operational AI metadata for cost and reliability monitoring. That telemetry excludes photographs, video, precise locations, prompts, replies, names, email addresses, and account credentials. Voice usage records include request outcomes, character-based cost estimates, and latency, without narration text or generated audio.

Tallgrass also uses Badland services for account access, Cloudflare for email routing, Google for the Gmail inbox that receives support mail and when you choose Google sign-in, and Apple when you choose Sign in with Apple, enable push notifications, or install the app. Tallgrass stores an encrypted Apple authorization credential when Apple sign-in is linked to your Tallgrass account. Those providers process information under the service terms and settings that apply to Badland LLC's accounts. This notice does not promise a provider retention period or training policy beyond those applicable terms and settings.

AI analysis is part of the Tallgrass service, not an optional setting: the processing described above happens for every account. Tallgrass checks immediately before each provider request that every account involved still exists and is not awaiting deletion. Requesting account deletion pauses new, queued, and retried provider requests, and deletion stops them.

Incomplete server upload sessions expire after 24 hours. Original uploads and derived viewing copies remain while their discovery is stored. Completed uploads covered by an earlier recorded beta media-retention choice can remain archived for future Tallgrass model development after they are removed from a draft. Other discarded uploads follow normal deletion. Device-local drafts remain on that device until submitted, discarded, or removed with account cleanup.

Live Scan preview images are not added to the private-beta original-media archive. Active scan context is temporary and is cleared when the session is stopped or expires. A compact observation attached to a discovery follows that discovery's data lifecycle. Stop scanning, leaving the camera, or backgrounding the app stops new preview transmission and cancels the client's active request; an image already transmitted may have been processed. Operational usage records remain for cost monitoring without preview images or conversation text.

Deleting a discovery removes it and its associated stored media from live systems; an original still used by another discovery remains until it is no longer needed. Separately archived draft media can remain until account deletion. Deleting your account (on iPhone, Profile, then Delete account; on the web and in the Android app, tap your profile photo, then Delete Tallgrass account at the bottom of the page) removes your live profile, discoveries, active and archived media, rankings, sessions, chats, comments, likes, discovery visits, reports, blocks, challenges, group memberships, groups you own, notification tokens, pending uploads, and any free site or app request. Transfer group ownership first if the group should continue. If an Apple authorization is linked, Tallgrass also asks Apple to revoke its saved authorization. It also asks this device to remove locally saved Tallgrass drafts and media. A password account created through Tallgrass is deleted first. A separately created Badland account remains available to other Badland products. Security and moderation audit records can remain when needed to document operator actions. You can also ask for deletion by email, without the app: see Delete your Tallgrass account.

Operational backups may retain earlier copies after live deletion while Badland LLC establishes and applies a documented backup-rotation schedule. Tallgrass does not currently publish a fixed backup deletion period.

Support and operational email, including envelope and routing details, message content, and attachments, remains available to the operator while needed to answer the request, operate or secure Tallgrass, or keep a necessary business record. Badland LLC deletes it when it is no longer needed or in response to a valid deletion request, except where retention remains needed for security, legal, or operational records.

Tallgrass is not directed to children under 13, and you must be at least 13 years old to use it. Badland LLC does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has a Tallgrass account, email [email protected] and we will delete it.

You choose your discovery audience, groups, and whether to enable notifications. Tallgrass asks for a location when you post: the iPhone app needs a precise location first, while on the web and in the Android app a discovery posts without one when location is denied or unavailable. A saved location is shared as described above. You can remove your own discoveries and comments, report a discovery, comment, or member, block a member, or delete your Tallgrass data in the app.

You can upload without accepting a separate beta media-retention agreement. For questions about an earlier beta participation choice, contact support. Account deletion removes retained account media from live systems as described above.

For help with access, correction, deletion, or a privacy question, email [email protected] or visit the Tallgrass Support page.