Privacy Policy

Who we are

HabitatLab is a nature-collection game published by OTECH Labs LLC (otechlabs.io). The product is branded HabitatLab and is served at habitatlab.app. Contact: privacy@otechlabs.io.

Some app-store listings or package identifiers may still use a previous product name; they refer to the same HabitatLab service operated by OTECH Labs LLC.

Kids & families

HabitatLab is designed for kids and families. We do not run third-party advertising, do not use behavioral tracking SDKs, and do not sell any personal information.

Purchases, account changes, and account deletion are gated behind a multi-digit math challenge so a child cannot complete them alone. That gate is not verified parental consent (VPC). HabitatLab is built for families and does not claim COPPA-complete status. The gate is not applied to every outbound link.

Public leaderboards & profiles

HabitatLab operates public competitive leaderboards (by U.S. state and a USA board) and optional public explorer profiles (for example, pages at /u/your-handle on our websites). These pages can be viewed by anyone on the internet, including people who are not signed in.

What public boards show

• Explorer handle (a chosen display name, not your legal name)
• Home state (the state you selected for play, not a street address, ZIP code, precise GPS, or map pin)
• Collection-based score, rank, and related play stats (for example species and catch counts)

What public profiles may show

• The same handle and state-level ranking context
• High-level collection highlights you have not kept private (for example featured species or a latest find)
• We do not intend to show your face, legal name, email, or precise location on public boards or profiles

Default visibility

• Solo and adult ("grown-up") accounts are listed on public boards by default. You can switch this off at any time in-app (go private / leave the public board).
• Child seats on family accounts stay private by default and do not appear on public boards or public profiles unless a parent or guardian turns public ranking on for that seat.

Opt-out / go private

You can leave public boards and hide your public profile in account or privacy settings, or by contacting privacy@otechlabs.io. Leaving the public board does not delete your account or your Living Dex.

Important limits

Public ranking is not verified parental consent (VPC). HabitatLab does not claim COPPA-complete status. Do not create a solo or adult account for a child; use a family child seat so the child remains private by default.

What we collect

• Account: email, display name, chosen home state (never precise GPS).
• Catches: photos you take in-app, plus a rarity score and species tag.
• Play data: catches, coins, streaks, adventure progress, leaderboard rank.
• Purchases: subscription status only (payment details are held by Stripe).
• Public listing: if your account is public, your handle, state, score, rank, and limited collection highlights may be shown on habitatlab.app leaderboards and public profile pages.

Location precision

Every card stores location at the precision you choose — city, state, or hidden. We never publish precise GPS.

How we use it

To run the game, verify catch quality, award coins, and power leaderboards. If your account is public, your handle, state, score, rank, and limited profile highlights may be shown on habitatlab.app leaderboards and public profiles. That's it.

Sharing

Service providers only: Lovable Cloud (hosting + database), Stripe (web billing), Apple and Google (in-app purchases), RevenueCat (in-app subscription status), Google Gemini via the Lovable AI Gateway (photo identification, with your chosen region), and OpenAI text-to-speech via the Lovable AI Gateway (reads species facts aloud; no personal data). Creature catalog photos are served from iNaturalist (including its Amazon S3 open-data bucket), static.inaturalist.org, and Wikimedia Commons (some catalog images are loaded from Wikimedia's servers). A small background-removal model is downloaded onto your device from Hugging Face (via jsDelivr) so shiny-card silhouettes stay on-device and the photo itself is not sent to those hosts. If you turn on notifications, OneSignal receives a device push token, a subscription ID, your device type, and the account ID we link to it, so we can send the reminders you chose. You can turn notifications off in Settings or on your device. We count page views with our hosting provider's first-party analytics (Lovable). Cloudflare provides host security. No advertisers, no data brokers.

Cookies and similar

We don't use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Our host's security service (Cloudflare) sets __cf_bm to filter bots, and our hosting sets __dpl to keep you on one version of the site. Both are strictly necessary and expire quickly. We count page views with our hosting provider's first-party analytics (Lovable), which doesn't use advertising IDs. The app also saves your settings in your browser's local storage.

Your rights & deletion

You can delete your account and all associated data at any time in-app at Profile → Delete Account. Or email privacy@otechlabs.io. Or go to https://habitatlab.app/delete-account.

Image credits

A few homepage photos are self-hosted copies of Wikimedia Commons images. We keep the license and author credit required by those licenses:

• Northern Cardinal: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source · License
• Luna Moth: David notMD, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source · License
• Red Fox: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Source · License

Creature catalog photos come from the iNaturalist community. See Photo credits.

Retention

We keep your data while your account is active. On deletion, personal data is purged within 30 days.

Contact

OTECH Labs LLC · privacy@otechlabs.io