TideLine Privacy Policy
TideLine is a local events app for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This policy explains what information TideLine handles, why, and what happens when you delete your account. Questions or requests: support@tidelinenow.com.
Browsing without an account
You can browse events, the map and event details without an account.
Location
If you allow it, TideLine reads your phone's approximate location. It never asks for precise location.
- TideLine rounds the location on your phone (to about 0.7 miles) before using it.
- To name your area (for example, “Gulfport”), the rounded location is passed to your phone's built-in place-name service. On most Android phones that service is provided by Google.
- To find events near you, a rounded geographic area around that point is sent to TideLine's event service with the request for nearby events. TideLine doesn't save that area in its database.
- Your rounded location, or a place you chose yourself, is saved on your phone so TideLine remembers where to look. It is not saved to your account.
You can use TideLine without sharing location by choosing a place yourself.
Accounts
You can sign in with a one-time code sent to your email, or with Google. Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider, Supabase. Your account holds your email address; if you sign in with Google, also your name and a link to your Google profile picture, which TideLine shows on your Account screen. Your sign-in session is kept on your phone so you stay signed in.
What your account stores
- Saved events (Favorites) — private to you.
- Thumbs up — events show a public count; who gave a thumbs up is never shown.
- Not Happening reports — your reports that an event isn't happening as listed. Events show a count, never who reported.
- Tidepools — events you collect stay on your phone until you send them. When you send a Tidepool, TideLine stores it with your account and creates a share link. Anyone with the link can see the Tidepool's events without an account; the page does not show who sent it. TideLine stores a scrambled form of the link, not the link itself.
- Beacons and sightings — the photos you send and the event details you confirm (see below).
- An optional “Posted by” name — if you turn it on, the name you enter appears on Community Beacons you post.
- Category filters — while you're signed in, the event categories you switch off are saved, so your filters come back when you sign in again. They are private to you and only filter the events you see. Signed out, your filters aren't saved anywhere.
TideLine uses this information to provide these features.
Community Beacons and photos
A Beacon is a photo of an event flyer or sign that you send to TideLine. A sighting is a photo you send of an event that's already listed.
- Your original photo is stored privately and is not shown to other members. It may include information your camera added, such as where and when it was taken. TideLine keeps it as the record of your Beacon until your account is deleted.
- To read the flyer, TideLine's servers send a copy of the photo, with that camera information removed, to an AI service (Mistral). This happens only as part of processing Beacons — never just because you opened the app.
- You review what TideLine read and confirm the event's name, date and place (and optionally its times). If your Beacon is published as a Community Beacon, those details become public, and the flyer may be shown as the event's picture using a separate copy with camera information removed.
- Your name appears on a Community Beacon only if you turned on “Posted by.”
AI
Opening the TideLine app does not call any AI service. AI is used on TideLine's servers to read Beacon photos, as described above. TideLine also uses AI services on its servers to read public event information from venue websites and other public pages; that works on public content, not on your account data.
Service providers
- Supabase — accounts and sign-in, the event database, and file storage (including Beacon photos).
- Mistral — reads Beacon flyer photos, from copies with camera information removed.
- Google — Google Sign-In, if you choose it; Google Maps, which shows the map in the app (Google may collect information when the map is used, under Google's own privacy policy); and, on most Android phones, the phone's place-name service.
- Cloudflare — hosts tidelinenow.com, including shared Tidepool pages.
- Email delivery — sign-in codes are emailed to you by our authentication provider's email service.
TideLine cannot promise how long these providers keep their own backups or logs.
Links to other websites
Ticket links and Nearby suggestions open other websites. TideLine does not track which links you tap. Those websites have their own privacy practices.
Analytics, advertising and your information
TideLine does not sell your personal information. TideLine currently includes no analytics, crash-reporting or advertising software. Current Nearby suggestions are chosen by TideLine and are not paid placements. If this changes, we will update this policy.
Security
Information sent between the app and TideLine's services is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Access controls keep account data private to its owner, and public counts never reveal who. Beacon originals are kept in private storage. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect what you share with us.
How long information is kept
Account information is kept while your account exists. You can remove saved events, thumbs up and Not Happening reports in the app at any time, turn off “Posted by,” and switch your category filters back on. Beacons and Tidepools can't currently be removed one by one in the app; they're removed when your account is deleted, as described below.
Deleting your account
You can ask TideLine to delete your account and its data at tidelinenow.com/delete-account, without opening the app. TideLine completes deletion within 30 days after the request has been verified. TideLine deletes:
- your account and sign-in identity;
- your saved events, thumbs up, Not Happening reports and Tidepools (including their share links);
- your “Posted by” name and your saved category filters;
- your unpublished Beacons and sightings, including their photos and what was read from them;
- your original Beacon photos, TideLine's stored copies of them, and any public images made from them.
If one of your Beacons was published as a Community Beacon, the event itself may stay listed as public event information — its name, date, place, and that it came from a Community Beacon — without your name, your photo or any link to your account. TideLine may keep a note, containing no personal information, that its photo was removed because of an account deletion. Copies may remain for a limited time in our service providers' backups or logs until they are overwritten.
Children
TideLine is not designed or directed to children.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date.