TailFinder

Privacy policy

Effective 12 October 2026. TailFinder is made by Sharveen Kumar ("we").

Your location

TailFinder uses your location to find the planes above you. Before it leaves your phone, your position is rounded to about 1 km. That rounded position is sent to adsb.lol, a community flight-tracking service, to get the list of nearby planes. Exact distances and directions are then worked out on your phone. Apple's location services turn your position into a place name (like "Changi").

If you allow location "Always", TailFinder keeps checking in the background so your Lock Screen card stays current. You can change this any time in iOS Settings › TailFinder › Location.

Looking up planes

To show a plane's route, photos and history, TailFinder sends that aircraft's public identifiers (its registration, transponder code or flight number) to these services: adsbdb.com, hexdb.io, the US FAA aircraft registry, Wikidata, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Planespotters.net. Airline logos not built into the app are loaded from kiwi.com using only the airline code. These requests don't include anything about you, though like any website these services can see your device's IP address. Their own privacy policies apply.

What stays on your phone

• Your Sky Log (the planes you've seen, when and where)
• Photos you take with Snap it. They're saved to your Photos library only when you choose.
• Your answers in onboarding (interests and age group) and your settings

None of this is uploaded. Delete it any time in Settings › Privacy › Delete my Sky Log, or by deleting the app.

Notifications and sharing

Plane alerts are created on your phone; we don't use push servers. When you share a plane, you choose the app and the recipient; we don't see what you share.

Children

TailFinder doesn't collect personal data from anyone, including children.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date above. Questions: sharveenkumar@gmail.com.