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CastMate privacy policy

Last updated: 15 October 2026

Who this is about

CastMate is a fishing journal for Android and iPhone. It is published by Mārcis Roznieks, an individual developer in Latvia, referred to below as “we”. Questions about this policy: info@castmatefishing.com.

The short version

Your journal — your catches, your spots, your photos, your trips — is stored on your phone, in a database only CastMate can read. We do not have a copy of it, we cannot read it, and nothing about it is sent anywhere unless you take one of the actions described below.

What stays on your phone

What leaves your phone, and when

Location. CastMate reads your device location to show where you are on the map, to stamp a catch with where it happened, and to record a GPS trail. While a GPS trail or a shared session is recording, location is collected even when the app is closed or the screen is off, and Android shows an ongoing notification for as long as that lasts. It stops when you stop the recording. Location is stored in your journal on the phone. It is sent off the phone only in the two cases below.

Shared sessions. When you create or join a shared session, the other anglers in that session see your display name, your position on the map, your catch count and the catches you log during the session. This is carried by Google Firebase Realtime Database. It lasts as long as the session does: when the session ends, the session's data is removed. Ghost mode hides your position from the others while keeping you in the session.

Weather. To show conditions and the bite forecast, CastMate sends your approximate coordinates to OpenWeather (openweathermap.org). Nothing else about you is sent with it.

Searching for a place. When you search the map, the text you type and your approximate position are sent to Photon (photon.komoot.io), an OpenStreetMap search service, to find matching waters.

Map tiles. The map is drawn from tiles fetched from OpenFreeMap, CARTO and Esri. Fetching a tile tells those services which square of the map you are looking at.

Backup to your own Google Drive. If you turn on backup, CastMate signs in with the Google account you choose and uploads your journal and photos to your Drive, in an app folder. We have no access to it. You can turn it off and delete the files from Drive yourself at any time.

Feedback and bug reports. If you send one, it carries what you wrote, your name and email if you gave them, and — for a bug report — a copy of diagnostic information you can review before sending.

Anonymous conditions, if you switch it on. CastMate's bite forecast can only judge a day against your own catches, so it says nothing at all until you have logged a few. If you turn on Help improve the forecast in Settings, each catch that carries weather also sends the conditions it happened in — air pressure, air temperature, the moon, the month, the hour, and your country. It also sends which fish it was, but only when that fish is one of the species CastMate itself starts you with, and always as a fixed code rather than as the word you or your language use — anything you typed or renamed yourself is sent as no species at all. It never sends the weight, the coordinates, the place, the photo, or anything that identifies you or your phone. There is no account, device or installation identifier attached, which is why there is nothing here to look up and nothing to delete on request. It is off unless you turn it on, and turning it off stops it.

Crash reports and usage statistics. Release builds send crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics) and basic usage events such as which screens are opened (Firebase Analytics). These describe the app, not your journal: no catches, no coordinates, no photos. CastMate does not collect an advertising ID, does not show ads, and does not sell or share anything for advertising.

Accounts

CastMate creates an anonymous account with Firebase Authentication so that shared sessions can tell participants apart. It is not an account you log into, it has no password, and it carries no name or email.

If you turn on Drive backup, you sign in with a Google account. That sign-in is used only to read and write CastMate's own files in your Drive.

Deleting your data

Website visits

This website does not use analytics or advertising cookies, browser storage, or tracking pixels. Google Search Console reports aggregate activity from Google Search, not a record of everyone who visits this site. Firebase Hosting processes technical request data to serve the pages. Contact links open your email app; the website cannot tell whether you send an email.

Children

CastMate is not directed at children and is not designed for them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is published at this address with a new date at the top.