Privacy Policy

Avery Scavenger Hunt · Effective September 22, 2026

Avery Scavenger Hunt is a companion app for a one-day student scavenger hunt event run by Avery House at Caltech. It is operated by the event's student organizers, not by any company, and it exists for exactly one purpose: running the event. This policy describes everything the app collects and how it is used.

What we collect

• Name and Caltech email address — provided to us by the event organizers when you register for the event (you never type them into the app). They identify you on your team's roster and on your uploads.
• Photos and videos you post — the proof shots you submit to complete checklist items, whether taken in the app or chosen from your phone's photo library, along with the checklist item and team they belong to, the time of upload, and the time the media was taken. For a photo chosen from your library, that time is read from the photo's own metadata and is used only to check that it was taken during the hunt.
• Captions and reactions — the optional one-line caption you write on a post, and the emoji reactions you leave on posts. Both are shown with the post.
• An account identifier — a random ID created by our sign-in system (Firebase Authentication). The app uses organizer-issued access codes; there are no passwords.

That's the whole list. The app has no advertising, no analytics or tracking SDKs, and never asks for or uses your location or contacts. Choosing from your photo library goes through the phone's own photo picker, which hands the app only the photo or video you select; the app never browses, scans, or stores anything else from your library.

How it's used and who can see it

Posts — photos, videos, captions, and reactions — appear in a shared feed and scoreboard visible only to signed-in event participants and organizers. Organizers can remove any post. Nothing is public, nothing is sold, and nothing is shared with third parties — data is processed and stored using Google Firebase (Firestore and Cloud Storage), which acts solely as our hosting provider and processes it under Google's data-processing terms, which protect it to at least the standard described in this policy.

Retention and deletion

All event data — accounts, rosters, scores, and every photo, video, caption, and reaction — is deleted within 30 days of the event's conclusion. You can delete any of your own posts at any time from its menu in the feed: the photo or video, its caption, and its reactions are removed and the points it earned are reversed. You can also delete your account yourself at any time from the app's Team tab (\"Delete my account\"): your access code and sign-in are revoked immediately and the organizers erase your name, email, and uploads within 24 hours. To have your content removed sooner (or to ask anything about your data), contact the organizers at jzhou2@caltech.edu and we'll take care of it promptly.

Permissions

The app requests camera and microphone access solely to capture your proof photos and videos inside the app. Denying these permissions disables in-app capture but nothing else. Choosing a photo or video from your library uses the system photo picker, which needs no permission of its own.

Children

The event and app are intended for university students and are not directed at children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes, the update will be posted at this address with a new effective date.