BeachPulse — Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 4, 2026 • Last Updated: October 7, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how The Penelope Group LLC ("we," "us," or "our") handles information in BeachPulse ("the App"). BeachPulse recommends which Florida beach to visit, given when you are free, how far you will drive, and what you care about.

The short version. BeachPulse has no accounts. We do not know who you are, we cannot identify you, and we keep no record of your use of the App. The only personal information the App ever transmits is your starting point, rounded to about 100 meters and sent with nothing that identifies you to our routing service, which asks TomTom for driving times and keeps that rounded point for at most an hour — and only if you choose to share it. Separately, our purchase provider, RevenueCat, receives a random, anonymous ID and your device's app identifier so the App can tell whether you have bought Pro; neither is linked to your name or email.

1. Information We Collect

We collect nothing about who you are. We operate no account system and no database. The one service we run, for driving times, receives a rounded starting point and nothing else about you (Section 3). There is no sign-up, no email address, no username and no password. We have no way to contact you and no profile of you to build, sell or lose. The one exception is a purchase record: so the App can recognize BeachPulse Pro, our purchase provider receives an anonymous ID and your device's app identifier (Section 3).

The App does handle two kinds of information locally on your device, described below. What reaches our routing service is a rounded starting point, only to compute driving times.

2. Location

Location is optional. The App works fully without it: instead of using your device's position you can type a town name or ZIP code, and every feature behaves the same way.

If you do grant location permission:

Foreground only. The App requests "While Using the App" permission. It does not request, and cannot obtain, background location.
One fix, on request. A single position reading is taken at the moment you ask for a recommendation. The App does not follow your position, does not use geofencing, and does not run when it is closed.
Rounded before it leaves. The position is rounded to about 100 meters and sent to our routing service, with nothing that identifies you or your device. The service rounds it again on arrival and asks TomTom for the routes.
No history. The routing service keeps the rounded point for at most an hour, so the next search from the same spot is quick, and then discards it. No trail of where you have been is kept, on the device or anywhere else.

Your position is used for one purpose: working out how long each beach would actually take to reach, so that a nearer beach in heavy traffic can lose to a further one on a clear road.

3. What Leaves Your Device, and Where It Goes

The App talks to our routing service, to several public data services and to our purchase provider. Only the routing service ever receives your location, and the distinction is deliberate rather than incidental:

Service	Operated by	What it receives
BeachPulse routing service, which passes the request to TomTom (routing and place lookup)	The Penelope Group LLC, hosted by Cloudflare, Inc.; routes by TomTom International B.V.	Your starting point, rounded to about 100 meters, or the place name / ZIP code you typed, plus the coordinates of the beaches being ranked. Nothing that identifies you or your device. The rounded point is cached for at most an hour. TomTom receives the request from our service, not from your device.
Open-Meteo (weather)	Open-Meteo	Only the fixed coordinates of the beaches, which are built into the App
NOAA CO-OPS and NDBC (tide, water temperature, waves)	U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration	Only fixed monitoring-station identifiers, which are built into the App
National Weather Service (hazard alerts)	U.S. National Weather Service	Only the fixed coordinates of the beaches, which are built into the App
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (red tide sampling)	FWC, hosted on Esri ArcGIS	Only the fixed coordinates of the beaches, which are built into the App
NOAA AOML (sargassum satellite data)	U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration	Only the fixed coordinates of the beach you are viewing, which are built into the App
Iowa Environmental Mesonet (weather radar images)	Iowa State University	Only the fixed coordinates of the beach you are viewing, which are built into the App
RevenueCat (BeachPulse Pro purchase records)	RevenueCat, Inc.	A random, anonymous ID created by the App, your device's identifier for our apps (Apple's Identifier for Vendor, IDFV), your BeachPulse purchase history from Apple, and basic device details (such as iOS version, App version and storefront country). Sent each time the App opens, whether or not you buy Pro. Never your name, email, location or payment details. Used only to know whether Pro is unlocked.

In other words, the weather, tide, water, radar and hazard services are asked about the beaches, never about you. They cannot learn your location from the App because the App never tells them. Only the routing service needs a starting point, because a drive time cannot be computed without one.

These services receive your device's IP address as an unavoidable consequence of your device making a network request, exactly as any website you visit would. We do not control what they do with it; their own privacy policies apply: TomTom, Cloudflare, Open-Meteo, NOAA, National Weather Service, FWC, Esri, Iowa State University, RevenueCat.

Payments. If you buy BeachPulse Pro, Apple processes the payment under your Apple ID and Apple's privacy policy. We never see your card or payment details, and we cannot connect a purchase to your name or email.

If you tap a button to open directions, your device hands the destination to Apple Maps or Google Maps. From that point their terms and privacy policies govern, not ours.

4. What Is Stored on Your Device

The App saves a small amount of data in its own private storage on your phone:

Your appearance setting (light, dark or system) and your units preference.
A flag recording that you have seen the introduction, so it is not shown twice.
A short-lived cache of previously calculated driving times, so that asking the same question twice does not repeat the same request. The coordinates in this cache are rounded to roughly 100 meters, so no precise position is written to storage.
The anonymous purchase ID and a cached copy of whether Pro is unlocked, kept by our purchase provider's library.

Apart from the purchase ID described in Section 3, none of this is transmitted anywhere. It is readable only by the App, it is included in an encrypted device backup if you make one, and deleting the App deletes all of it. That is the complete data deletion procedure; there is nothing on our side to request the deletion of.

5. What We Do Not Do

No advertising. The App contains no ads and no advertising SDK.
No analytics. There is no analytics or attribution SDK of any kind, from us or anyone else.
No tracking. We do not collect the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and do not track you across other companies' apps or websites. No App Tracking Transparency prompt appears because there is nothing to ask you to permit.
No crash or usage reporting. Nothing reports back to us when the App is used or fails.
No sale or sharing of personal information. The only things held about you are a rounded, unidentified starting point for at most an hour, used only to compute your drive, and an anonymous purchase record used only to unlock Pro. Neither is ever sold or shared for any other purpose.
No profiling and no automated decisions about you. The App ranks beaches, not people.

6. Children's Privacy

BeachPulse is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone. Because the App has no accounts and collects nothing that identifies a person, there is no children's data for us to hold or delete. A parent with questions is welcome to contact us at the address below.

7. Your Rights

Privacy laws including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) give you rights to access, correct, delete and port the personal information a company holds about you, and to object to its processing.

We hold no personal information that can be tied to you. The routing service's cache holds rounded starting points with no identifier for at most an hour, so there is nothing we could find, produce, correct, export or erase for a particular person. A Pro purchase record is tied only to a random ID we cannot connect to you; if you want it removed, email us and we will ask you for the details needed to find it. Everything the App keeps is on your own device and under your own control, and uninstalling the App removes it. If you believe we hold information about you, write to us and we will tell you plainly what we find.

8. Security

All network requests the App makes use encrypted HTTPS connections. We keep no store of user data: the only thing our routing service holds is an hour-long cache of rounded, unidentified starting points, and the TomTom key it uses is kept as a server secret, never in the App.

9. Changes to This Policy

If the App gains a feature that changes any of the above — an account system, a purchase, or anything that sends information to a server of ours — this policy will be updated before that version ships, the "Last Updated" date will change, and the change will be described here rather than silently absorbed.

October 7, 2026: BeachPulse Pro is now available as a purchase, so Sections 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7 now describe our purchase provider, RevenueCat, and what it receives. This section previously promised an update before any purchase shipped; this is that update. The table in Section 3 also now lists every public data service the App asks about beaches (red tide, sargassum and radar were missing). None of them receives anything about you.

September 24, 2026: driving times now pass through a routing service we run (hosted by Cloudflare) instead of the App contacting TomTom directly, so that no TomTom key ships inside the App. This policy previously said we ran no servers; Sections 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 now describe that service. What it receives is unchanged in kind: a starting point, now rounded before it leaves your device.

10. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or about privacy in BeachPulse:
TPGLLC.Support@gmail.com
The Penelope Group LLC

See also our Terms of Use and Support page. BeachPulse is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NOAA, the National Weather Service, the National Park Service, or any county, municipality or beach operator.