CastOutlook Privacy Policy

The short version

CastOutlook needs a ZIP code to build a fishing forecast — that's the heart of what leaves your phone. There is no account, no advertising, and no tracking. Your saved waters, recent searches, and cached forecasts stay on your device.

Location and ZIP codes

• Location is optional — you can always type a ZIP code or city instead.
• If you tap Use Current Location, your coordinates are converted to a ZIP code on your device using Apple's on-device location services. CastOutlook uses no third-party geocoder.
• From that flow, only the resulting ZIP code is sent to the CastOutlook servers to build your forecast — the conversion never leaves your device.
• Location is requested only when you tap the button — never in the background and never at launch.
• Separately, browsing the Find Water map sends the coordinates of the visible map area (the rectangle you are looking at, rounded to roughly 100 m) so the app can show the waters inside it. That rectangle describes wherever you have panned the map — often not where you are — but we treat it as location data: it is sent over HTTPS, excluded from our retained request logs, and never linked to any identity.

What our servers receive

When you request a forecast, the app sends the ZIP code and any water or species you selected to the CastOutlook API over HTTPS. When you search for a water by name, the text you typed is sent to return matches; when you browse the map, the visible map area is sent as described above. Like nearly every internet service, our servers see standard connection metadata (such as an IP address) while handling a request; our forecast and water-search request logs are written to exclude query contents, and we do not build profiles of you or link requests to an identity. There are no accounts, so nothing you do is tied to a persistent user identity.

What stays on your device

• Saved waters and recent searches — stored locally so you can re-run them; never synced to a server.
• Cached forecasts — your most recent results are kept locally (up to 24 hours) so a recent forecast can be shown when the network is unavailable, clearly labeled as cached.
• Settings and dismissed announcements — local preferences only.

Deletion: you can clear saved waters, recent searches, and cached forecasts any time in the app's Settings. Uninstalling the app removes all of it. There is no server-side account or data to delete.

Analytics and tracking

CastOutlook contains no third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking software, shows no ads, and does not track you across apps or websites.

Data sources and external links

Forecasts are built from public environmental data (Open-Meteo weather models, USGS water observations, NOAA tides and marine data, EPA/USGS water-quality samples, and curated Florida agency data). Those providers receive requests from our servers, not from your phone. If you open an external link — Apple Maps directions, an official agency page, or an image-credit source page — that service's own privacy policy applies.

Species images shown in the app are bundled with the app under verified public-domain or CC0 licenses (credits in the app under About > Licenses & Image Credits) — no images are fetched from the network.

Changes to this policy

If our practices change, we will update this page, adjust the effective date above, and summarize meaningful changes here before they take effect. The in-app privacy summary is kept consistent with this policy.

August 11, 2026 — clarified, to match our App Store privacy disclosures, that browsing the Find Water map sends the visible map area's rounded coordinates and that typed water-search text is sent to return results. Nothing changed in what we store: still no accounts, no tracking, and no identity linking.

Contact

Questions about privacy: support@castoutlook.com.