First Light Privacy Policy

What we collect

Core app (Species, Legal Times, Calendar, Field Guide, Deer School) — no personal data collected:

• No account required
• Anonymous page-view statistics via GoatCounter (aggregate traffic only) — see Third-party services
• No cookies placed on your device by First Light
• No advertising identifiers collected

Cull Diary (optional) — requires an account:

• Email address and password for authentication
• Cull records you enter (species, date, location, weights, photos, notes)
• Diary data is stored securely in Supabase and accessible by you; entries you intentionally share to a syndicate are also accessible to relevant syndicate members
• You can delete any entry or your entire account at any time

Your location

If you grant location permission, your GPS coordinates are used on your device only to calculate sunrise, sunset, and legal shooting times. This calculation happens entirely within your browser.

First Light does not operate its own server, so your coordinates are not sent to us. Two external calls may be made with location data: an anonymous request to OpenStreetMap Nominatim to reverse-geocode your nearest place name, and an anonymous request to Open-Meteo to fetch the weather for your area. Both are described below.

You can also set your location manually using the search or preset locations, in which case no GPS data is used at all.

Cull Diary entries with a GPS pin: if you choose to attach a location to a cull entry (either by dropping a map pin or by granting GPS access inside the diary form), those coordinates are stored with the entry in Supabase under your account. Map tiles for that pin are loaded from the tile providers listed below. You can remove the pin from any entry, or delete the entry entirely.

Third-party services

First Light is a static site plus a managed database; everything else comes from external providers. When your browser loads a page or a map, it will contact the following services directly. In each case the only information the provider sees is what any website contact reveals — your IP address, browser user-agent, and (for map and weather calls) a coordinate.

Used by all features:

Used by the core app (Species, Legal Times, Calendar, Field Guide):

Used by the Cull Diary (optional — requires an account):

Field Guide — partner organisation logos:

The names and logos of UKDTR, BDS, and BASC are trademarks of their respective owners. They are shown only to identify those organisations and point you to official resources; display does not imply that First Light is endorsed by them.

Data storage

First Light uses your browser's localStorage to remember your last-used location (coordinates and place name), active tab, and whether you have seen the legal disclaimer. This data never leaves your device and can be cleared at any time by clearing your browser's site data.

If you use the Cull Diary feature, your cull records and photos are stored in Supabase under your account. Supabase also stores your authentication token in localStorage to keep you signed in between sessions — this token never leaves your device except when communicating with Supabase. This data is associated with your email address and is protected by row-level security — only you can access your own entries. The Cull Diary also uses an on-device IndexedDB queue to hold entries you create while offline, so nothing is lost when signal is poor; once you reconnect, those entries are uploaded to Supabase and removed from the local queue.

No data is stored on any First Light server at any point — First Light does not operate a server of its own.

Data retention

Core app: nothing is retained anywhere except the localStorage values listed above, which live on your device until you clear them.

Cull Diary: your account and diary data are retained for as long as your account exists. You can:

• Delete an individual cull entry at any time — it is removed immediately from Supabase (including any attached photos).
• Delete your entire account at any time, using the Delete my account & all data button in the diary. This triggers a server-side procedure that immediately removes all of your cull entries, photos, syndicate memberships, and the Supabase auth account itself. No "soft-delete" or recovery window is kept.

Backups held by Supabase as part of its normal database operations may retain deleted records for a short period before being overwritten; see Supabase's own retention terms.

Your rights under UK GDPR

First Light is operated from the United Kingdom and subject to the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. The core app collects no personal data, so most of these rights apply only to the Cull Diary.

If you use the Cull Diary, your account email and diary entries are processed on the lawful basis of consent — you choose to create an account and enter data. You may withdraw consent at any time by deleting your account. You have the right to:

• Access your data — it is already visible to you in the app; on request we can confirm what is held.
• Rectify incorrect data — edit any entry directly, or contact us.
• Erase your data — delete individual entries or your entire account in-app (see Data retention above).
• Portability — export your diary from the Stats tab as CSV, PDF, Season Summary, and Larder Book (season and permission/ground scoped where the export asks for it). Photos referenced on entries remain in secure cloud storage.
• Restrict or object to further processing — stop using the diary, or delete your account.
• Complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe your data has been mishandled: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Children

First Light is intended for adults involved in or learning about legal deer management in the UK. It is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect any data from minors.

Changes to this policy

If this privacy policy changes materially, the updated date at the top of this page will reflect that. Most changes affect the optional Cull Diary processing and third-party providers listed above; core non-account features remain privacy-light.

Copyright & Ownership

First Light — including its name, design, written content, question bank, code and all associated materials — is the original work of Sohaib Mengal and is protected by UK copyright law.

You may use the app for your own stalking activity, including the lawful commercial side of it (selling venison to game dealers, issuing declarations, and so on). You may share/export generated declarations and reports for your own lawful record-keeping and compliance workflows. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, modify, or create derivative works from First Light's code, design, written content, question bank, or document templates/layouts to build, sell, or republish a product/service without express written permission from the copyright holder. The full licence and acceptable-use terms are in the Terms of Use.

Contact & data controller

First Light is a free, independently developed app. The data controller is Sohaib Mengal, operating from the United Kingdom. For any privacy question, access or deletion request, or to exercise any of the UK GDPR rights above, please contact:

firstlightdeer@gmail.com