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Living Dex Privacy Policy

Last updated: 30 October 2026

Living Dex is designed to collect as little as possible. This policy explains exactly what leaves your device, where it goes, and how long it is kept. Living Dex is published by Midgar Oy, a company in Finland, which is the controller of the information described here. Every call the app makes to our servers goes through Midgar's gateway at api.midgarcorp.cc, which is hosted on Cloudflare.

Identifying a photo

Every identification happens in the cloud: the app has no on-device species model. When you capture a photo, the app shrinks a copy (longest side 1,536 pixels, JPEG) and sends it over an encrypted connection to our backend, operated by Midgar Oy. The backend forwards it to Google (Gemini) solely to identify the organism and returns the result. We do not save the photo or add it to any gallery: our servers keep no copy once the answer is returned. Google processes it under its own terms and privacy policy, which may include a short retention period for safety and abuse monitoring. We do not use your photos to train AI models, and we ask our providers not to. The full-resolution original stays on your device.

Field entries

The written field entry for a species is generated on your device with Apple Foundation Models when your device supports it. Otherwise the species name, its classification, and a short factual summary (never your photo, location, or identity) are sent through our backend to Anthropic (Claude) to write the text.

Species information lookups

To rate rarity, build your Nearby list, and fill in each species' card, the app contacts the Living Dex service, a Cloudflare Worker run by us and reached through the gateway. It looks up public sources with the species' scientific name: GBIF (occurrence counts and taxonomy), Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons (summaries and images), and Xeno-canto (recordings). The Worker stores nothing and has no database; it does not receive your account, your photos, or your purchases. Like any web service, Cloudflare may keep standard request logs (such as the request address and your IP address) for a limited time.

Location

Location is optional and used only while the app is open (While Using the App). If you allow it, each sighting is tagged with its place on your device. To rate how rare a species is where you are, the coordinates of the sighting, first rounded to about 11 km, are sent to the Living Dex service, which asks GBIF how often that species is recorded within about 150 km. A photo you pick from your library or a bundled sample carries no location, so its rarity is rated from worldwide data. To build the Nearby list, the app sends the centre of a roughly 55 km grid cell around you. We do not store these coordinates; they appear only in the standard request logs described above, and in a short-lived cache that is keyed to an area of roughly 11 km and not to you. Your location is never sent to the AI providers, never shown to other players, and never linked to your account. If you decline location access, identification still works; rarity is rated from worldwide data instead and the Nearby list cannot be built.

Identity

Living Dex works without an account. On first launch the app creates a random device identifier, kept in your Keychain, and uses Apple DeviceCheck so that Apple can confirm the request comes from a genuine Apple device; Apple tells us only yes or no. We use that to create an anonymous account holding an account ID, an access key, and your credit balance. Each new device receives 30 free identifications once; after that, identifications need Living Dex Pro or purchased credits.

The anonymous Midgar ID

The app also asks our server for an anonymous Midgar ID: a random identifier, and a random secret that proves the ID is yours. The server keeps the ID, a hash of the secret and the date it was created. The app keeps both in your iCloud Keychain, so the same ID follows you across your own devices and across Midgar's other apps. When the app creates or joins the ID it may ask Apple's App Attest service to confirm that the request comes from a genuine copy of the app; we keep the identifier of the attested key with the ID and receive nothing else about you. The ID is sent with the requests to the credit service as a sign-in token, so that our server can link it to your anonymous account, and on the More Apps screen it shows which Midgar apps you already use. It is not removed by Delete Account in Living Dex, because your other Midgar apps share it. To have it deleted, email support@midgarcorp.cc.

If you choose to link Sign in with Apple, we additionally store Apple's user identifier and the email address Apple provides, which may be Apple's private relay address. We never receive your Apple password.

Credits and purchases

We keep a ledger for your account: credits granted, credits used by each identification or field entry (with the time), and credit packs bought. Living Dex Pro (monthly or annual) and credit packs are sold through Apple In-App Purchase. Each purchase carries your anonymous Midgar ID as Apple's app account token. The app sends the signed transaction record Apple issues (which product, the price, the dates and Apple's transaction identifiers) to Midgar's purchase ledger at api.midgarcorp.cc, which keeps it linked to your Midgar ID so that Living Dex Pro is recognised on all your devices and your purchases can be restored in your other Midgar apps, and Apple's own server notifications about your purchases reach the same ledger. Our server checks the signed transaction of a credit pack before it credits your wallet. From version 1.1, neither the app nor our servers send anything about your purchases to RevenueCat; earlier versions have RevenueCat validate purchases, and it receives your Apple transaction data and your anonymous account ID, so that it can tell us whether you have Pro. We never receive your payment-card details.

More Apps

Settings has a Midgar universe card that opens a view of Midgar's other apps. It fetches the app list from midgar-catalog.guitaripod.workers.dev and asks Apple's public iTunes lookup service for current icons, prices and ratings; your App Store country code is sent so prices are correct for your region. It reports which app tiles were displayed and which were tapped to api.midgarcorp.cc. That report contains no identifier of any kind and not your Midgar ID: only the event, the promoted app's App Store id, your App Store country code, where in the app the screen was opened, and the app's name, version and platform. Our server stores a running total per day, event, app and platform, so there is no per-person or per-device record. This is product-interaction data, used only to decide which of our apps to promote, never for advertising or tracking. The Midgar ID is sent as a sign-in token only with the separate request that lists which Midgar apps you already use.

The app also sends two more kinds of anonymous count to Midgar's servers in the same way: one "active" count the first time you use the app on each day, in each week and in each month, which tells us how many people use the app, and one count for each purchase that names only the product bought. Like the More Apps report, they carry no identifier and are stored only as running totals per day, event, app and platform. They are used only to understand how the app is used, never for advertising or tracking.

Midgar may publish aggregate statistics built from anonymous counts, such as weekly active installs, which never identify a person.

Game Center

If you are signed in to Game Center, the app reports your number of unique species and achievement progress to Apple's Game Center, which handles them under Apple's privacy policy. Nothing else is shared with it.

On-device data

Content you create in the app, such as your species collection (your Dex), your sightings with their locations, your saved photos, and your progress, is stored on your device and is not uploaded to us for storage. A diagnostic log is written there too, recording errors and events such as the species name of a catch, never your photos, your coordinates or any token. It is not uploaded to us unless you export it yourself from Settings.

How long we keep data

Deleting your account and data

In the app, open Profile, then Settings, then Delete Account. This permanently deletes your anonymous account, your credit wallet and ledger, and any images stored for it on our servers, and clears all data on your device (your collection, photos, and progress). It cannot be undone, and it does not cancel an App Store subscription: manage or cancel that in iOS Settings under your Apple Account, then Subscriptions. Records held by Apple (purchases, Game Center) are kept under Apple's own policies. RevenueCat still holds the purchase records it received from earlier versions of the app, under its own policy; contact us if you want us to ask RevenueCat to erase yours. Delete Account does not remove the Midgar ID, which Midgar's other apps share; to have it deleted, email support@midgarcorp.cc. Deleting the app alone removes the on-device data but not the server-side account.

What we don't do

We do not sell your data, show advertising inside the app, or use third-party tracking or advertising identifiers. The app does not ask for tracking permission and does not measure ad campaigns.

Contact

For any questions, contact support@midgarcorp.cc.