Privacy Policy

Effective date: November 1, 2026 · Last updated: November 1, 2026

Nautilytics ("we," "us," or "our") operates the PlateQuest mobile application. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your choices. We've written it in plain language because we believe you deserve to understand what's happening with your data.

1. Information We Collect

Information you provide when creating an account:

• Display name
• Email address (via Google Sign-In or Sign in with Apple)
• Avatar appearance choices (stored as style selections, not images)
• Home state (optional preference)

Information created through your activity:

• Plate designs you've captured (state and design category — not plate numbers)
• Quest progress, spotting days, levels, and points
• Road trips you start (the trip name, start and end times, and which of your catches belong to it) and the state stickers you earn
• Notification preferences

Purchase information (only if you buy PlateQuest Pro):

• Apple-signed transaction records — transaction identifiers, product, purchase date, and refund/revocation status — which we keep to verify and maintain your Pro unlock across your devices
• Apple processes the payment itself; we never see or store your payment method, card number, or billing address

Reports and blocks (only if you use them in the friends race):

• If you report another player, we keep the report — who you reported, the reason you picked, anything you wrote, and your account ID — so a moderator can review it. The player you report is not told who reported them
• If you block another player, we keep a record of the block (their account ID and the display name they had then) so we can stop them reaching you. They are not told

What other players can see: your public profile holds your display name, any profile photo link from your Apple or Google account, avatar and car (including custom plate text and pinned stickers), home state, points, spotting days, weekly race stats, the name of your last catch and the date of your last activity. Other PlateQuest accounts can read it, and players you race see parts of it on the Race tab. Your plate photos, email address and plate collection are not part of it. You can only be added to a race if you have created an account.

Information collected automatically:

• Device type and operating system version
• App version
• Crash reports (if the app crashes) — these are associated with your account ID so we can investigate problems you report to us
• Anonymous usage events (e.g., screens visited, features tapped)
• Push notification token (only if you opt in to notifications)

Approximate location (state only): To help you log a plate in the right state, PlateQuest may read the location tag already saved in a photo you pick from your library. That tag is converted to a two-letter U.S. state on your device and only the state is kept — the underlying GPS coordinates are never uploaded or stored. PlateQuest never requests location permission and does not track your movements or your precise location.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To run your account and save your plate collection
• To power spotting days, road trips, stickers, quests, and leaderboard scores
• To send push notifications you've opted into
• To verify and maintain your PlateQuest Pro purchase, if you buy it
• To diagnose crashes and fix bugs
• To understand which features are used so we can improve the app
• To train and improve the on-device model that recognizes license-plate designs

We never sell your information. We never use it for advertising.

3. Camera and Photo Data

When you tap the capture button, PlateQuest opens your device camera — you control when a photo is taken. When you submit a capture, we upload a cropped image of the license plate (which may show the plate's characters) and, on some devices, a few extra frames from the same moment. Submitted photos are:

• If you capture a plate without a connection, kept in protected storage inside the app on your device (excluded from device backups) until the app is next open with a connection, then uploaded and deleted from the device. A capture that hasn't uploaded within 14 days, or that fails to upload five times for a reason other than a lost connection, is deleted from the device without being uploaded. Deleting your account also deletes any captures still waiting on your device
• Uploaded over an encrypted (TLS) connection to access-controlled cloud storage available only to you, our reviewers, and service providers processing the photos on our behalf
• Reviewed by a Nautilytics moderator to confirm the plate design. Your photos are not sent to any AI service for review
• Retained to improve and train the on-device model that recognizes plate designs — we do not automatically delete them after review
• Never sold and never used for advertising. We do not give them to third parties for their own use; service providers may process them only on our behalf and on our instructions

Featured captures: for a small number of plate designs that have no official image, a moderator may choose an approved capture as that design's picture in the shared plate atlas, where other players can see it. Featured images show only the cropped plate and are reviewed by a person before they appear. If you'd rather your captures never be featured, email us and we'll exclude your account.

We use these photos to identify the plate design — its state and design category. We do not read, extract, or store the plate's number as text; our interest is the design, not the vehicle or its owner.

Images we add to our training set are organized by state and plate design, not by your name or email. If you delete your account (see Section 6), we remove the photos you submitted — both from our submission storage and from the training set.

4. Third-Party Services

We use the following services to operate the app. Each is operated by Google LLC, Apple Inc., or OpenAI and has its own privacy policy. These providers process data only to provide their service to us — they may not use your data for their own purposes.

We do not integrate any advertising networks or data brokers, and we use no services other than those listed above. We send OpenAI only your display name and custom plate text, never your photos or email, and our OpenAI API configuration does not allow OpenAI to use them to train OpenAI's models.

5. Children's Privacy

PlateQuest is a general-audience service and is not directed to children under 13. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account.

If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, please email platequest.support@nautilytics.com with the subject line "Child account removal" and we will delete that account and all associated data promptly.

6. Data Retention and Deletion

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. Crash reports are retained by Firebase Crashlytics for 90 days; analytics events are retained per Firebase's standard retention (up to 14 months); our server logs are kept for about 30 days.

When you delete your account:

• Your authentication record is removed from Firebase Auth, so you can no longer sign in
• Your profile, plate collection, friends, and related records are deleted — including your quick-capture history, road trips, and stickers — and your display name is removed from any shared catalog entries that credited you as a plate's first finder
• The plate photos you submitted are deleted — from both our submission storage and our model-training set — and your submission records are anonymized (your account identifier and links to your photos are removed from them)
• Records of what our recognition model guessed for your captures are kept to measure its accuracy, with your account identifier removed
• Reports you filed about a plate are anonymized: we keep which design was reported and the reason, without your identity or anything you wrote
• Reports you filed about another player, and reports other players filed about you, are anonymized: we keep the reason, without your identity, your display name, or anything that was written
• Players you blocked, and other players' blocks of you, are deleted
• If you bought PlateQuest Pro, a record of the purchase (Apple's transaction ID, the product, the date, and its refund status) is kept without your account identifier, for refunds and fraud prevention. A purchase that wasn't refunded can still be restored with the same Apple ID
• If one of your captures was featured as a design's image in the shared plate atlas (see Section 3) and the atlas shows the photo you uploaded, it is deleted with your other photos and the design is left without an image. If the atlas shows a separate cropped copy made for it, our moderators are automatically notified and will find a replacement; that copy is no longer linked to your account, and may remain visible until the replacement is in place
• We keep a minimal deletion record — internal account identifiers, when the deletion happened, and counts of what was removed — so that nothing can be saved to the deleted account again
• Crash reports and server logs created before you deleted your account can still contain your account identifier until they expire (90 days and about 30 days, as above)
• Versions of our plate-recognition model trained before your deletion are not affected, but your photos are no longer available for any future training
• Aggregated, anonymous analytics data (e.g., total app opens) is not individually identifiable and may be retained

You can delete your account any time in the app: Me tab → Delete Account. Account access is removed immediately. Your remaining records and photos are then deleted automatically, usually within minutes; a step that fails is retried automatically, and if it still can't finish we are alerted. You can also email platequest.support@nautilytics.com with subject "Delete my account" and we'll do it for you.

7. Data Security

All data is transmitted over TLS-encrypted connections. Firebase Security Rules ensure each user can only read and write their own private data; your public profile (Section 1) can be read by other PlateQuest accounts, and only our servers can change it. Submitted photos are stored in access-controlled buckets not accessible to the public or to other users, with one exception: a capture featured as a design's shared atlas image (Section 3) is visible to other players.

No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure. We commit to notifying affected users promptly in the event of a data breach.

8. Your Rights and Choices

• Access — email us to request a copy of the data we hold about you
• Correction — update your avatar and home state in the app at any time. Your display name comes from your Apple or Google account, so change it there or email us
• Deletion — see Section 6
• Push notifications — opt in or out in your device's notification settings at any time
• Analytics — PlateQuest does not track you across other companies' apps or websites, so it does not use Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. Analytics events are recorded against an anonymous app-instance identifier, not your account

9. Changes to This Policy

We'll post any material changes here and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. For significant changes, we'll also notify you through the app.

10. Contact Us

Nautilytics
platequest.support@nautilytics.com