Privacy Policy

Who we are

Art of Birding is operated by 508 Life LLC (“we”, “us”), Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418. Contact: hello@artofbirding.com.

What this service does

Art of Birding helps you display living bird artwork in your home. A WiFi microphone or optional phone listener at your location identifies birds locally. The cloud receives species detections and generates scheduled artwork for your private display.

Information we collect

• Account information — email, password (hashed), name, shipping/billing address, timezone, and listening location details you provide.
• Device & detection data — pairing status, device heartbeats, and bird species detections (common/scientific name, confidence, timestamp). We do not receive audio, recordings, or waveforms from your microphone unless you (or a designated Testing Account) explicitly authorize time-limited support access after a privacy warning. That extra permission is off by default, can be revoked anytime, and is logged.
• Artwork & preferences — generated canvases (kept about 7 days in cloud storage), art-style choices, notification settings, and display keys. Members may download a copy to their own device.
• Payment — processed by Stripe when billing is enabled. We do not store full card numbers on our servers.
• Analytics — we may use Google Analytics to understand how the marketing site is used (see our Cookie Policy).
• Communications — messages you send via the contact form or email, and optional marketing emails if you opt in.
• Researcher registration — if you request Science API access: name, email, organization, stated research intent, and API usage logs tied to your key.

How we use information

• Provide, secure, and improve the service (pairing, detections, artwork generation, display).
• Process one-time setup payments and subscriptions via Stripe, ship hardware (such as a WiFi microphone), and support your account.
• Send transactional emails (pairing, digests, daily reports, Wi‑Fi microphone offline alerts) according to your settings. These go through our email delivery provider (Mandrill).
• If you leave product updates on, add your email to our Mailchimp audience for occasional marketing. You can turn this off anytime in the dashboard.
• Process subscriptions and prevent abuse.
• Respond to contact requests and legal obligations.
• Support the free Science API for registered researchers using anonymized detection metadata (see “Citizen science & Science API” below).

We never sell or share personal information

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share personal information with third parties for their own marketing. We use trusted processors only as needed to run the product — for example hosting, email delivery, cloud storage for canvases, payment processing, analytics, and AI image generation (Gemini) from species lists and style preferences (not from audio). Separately, anonymized species detections (never your identity or precise home location) may be shared with registered researchers via the Science API as described below.

Citizen science & Science API

With member participation, anonymized species detections may be made available to registered researchers through our free Science API. That dataset includes species names, rounded confidence, UTC observation day, and coarse regional location (geohash / region label). It does not include your name, email, street address, precise GPS, audio, or device identifiers.

Researchers must register, confirm their email, and agree to non-commercial use with attribution. We log API usage (key identity, query parameters, timestamps) to operate and protect the service. Learn more at /researchers.

Local identification (BirdNET)

Bird identification runs on your WiFi microphone or phone listener using BirdNET-class models. Audio stays on that device — it is never uploaded. Only detection results (species metadata) are sent to Art of Birding servers.

Retention

Account data is kept while your account is active. Generated canvases are removed from our cloud storage after about seven days. Download a copy to your computer if you want to keep the artwork. You may request account deletion by emailing us.

Security

We use industry-standard practices such as hashed passwords, session cookies, and access controls for private displays. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure.

Children

The service is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Your choices

You can update account settings, notification preferences (species digests and daily reports), and Mailchimp product-update opt-in in your dashboard. Turning off product updates unsubscribes that address from our Mailchimp audience. For access, correction, or deletion requests, email hello@artofbirding.com.

Changes

We may update this policy from time to time. The “Last updated” date will change when we do.