CrimeEye Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 10, 2026

CrimeEye is a community-powered platform for informational, educational, discussion, and investigative-collaboration purposes around public crime cases and local reports. This page explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your choices.

Information we collect

• Account information. If you create an account: your email address, handle (username), and a securely hashed password. Optional profile fields (bio, avatar photo) are shown publicly next to your handle only if you add them.
• Content you submit. Comments, tips, incident reports, and any photos or videos you attach. You choose whether to post under your account handle or anonymously. Tips can include free text you write, so please don't include personal details about yourself or others unless they matter to the case.
• Community reports. If you submit a report through the Report screen (available on CrimeEye Live, our website, to signed-in subscribers): the type of report, the street or place (private), the zip code and optional neighborhood, the date, your description, whether you've already filed it with the police, any photos or video you attach, and an optional private phone number. Reports are private by default — they go into a review queue that only CrimeEye moderators can see. If a moderator approves a report, its type, zip code, neighborhood, date and description (which the moderator may edit to remove identifying details) are shown to other CrimeEye subscribers looking at that area, for 90 days after the incident date; your name, handle, phone number, the street or place and any files are never shown to them. You confirm you understand this before you submit. A moderator can remove a report from view at any time. Other subscribers can comment on an approved report; a comment is shown to other subscribers with your handle, posts immediately, can be flagged by other subscribers or hidden or deleted by a moderator, and can be deleted by you at any time. "Keep my identity hidden from the public" hides your handle from everyone outside CrimeEye; CrimeEye moderators can still see which account submitted it, because reporting requires a signed-in subscriber account.
• Messages and workspace. If you use them, direct messages between users, and the cases, boards, and notes you save to your personal workspace.
• Optional contact info. A phone number you may add when submitting a tip or comment is private — never shown publicly, used only if a moderator needs to follow up with you. A display name you choose to attach to a tip is shown only as a label.
• Location. If you grant permission, we use your device's location to show nearby cases and local reports on the map. This is used in the moment you request it and is not continuously tracked.
• Payment information. If you subscribe to a paid plan, billing is handled entirely by Apple through In-App Purchase, or on our website by Stripe — we never see or store your card details. We keep only a status flag noting which of them manages your subscription and, for website subscriptions, your Stripe customer ID.
• Basic technical data. When you submit a tip or incident report, we store a one-way, salted hash of your IP address (not the raw address) to apply reasonable anti-abuse limits, including the free-tip allowance described in our Terms (counted over 30 days). We clear the hash on tips and community reports after 90 days; the hash on an incident report is kept for as long as the report exists, because it enforces the limit on free anonymous reports. Our hosting provider may also keep standard server logs.

How we use this information

To operate the app: display cases and reports, run the moderation queue, apply plan limits, process payments, and send account-related emails. When a tip is submitted, its text, case, type, and any display name you chose are also emailed to the CrimeEye team so it can be reviewed. Community reports are reviewed by CrimeEye moderators, who can approve, reject, or flag a report for possible referral; every moderator action is recorded in an audit log. We do not sell your personal information or share it for advertising.

Sharing with law enforcement

With your consent. If you check the box to share a tip with investigators, or you submit a tip in response to a verified agency's information request, we may forward that tip to the agency involved. We do not share your contact details unless you provided them and agreed to be contacted. Once a tip has been forwarded to an agency, we cannot recall it from that agency's records.

Community reports. A report is never sent to law enforcement automatically. Only if you tick the box allowing it, and a moderator decides it is warranted, may CrimeEye share it with an appropriate agency, either by sending it through an official channel or through the CrimeEye agency dashboard available to verified agency staff. An agency sees the report's content and any attached evidence; it never sees your name, handle, or phone number from CrimeEye. Submitting a report does not create an official police report, and CrimeEye is not an emergency service — in an emergency, call 911.

Otherwise. CrimeEye does not voluntarily provide user-submitted information to law enforcement for routine investigative purposes — including local and state police, federal agencies, or foreign law-enforcement or intelligence organizations — unless law enforcement determines that specific posts are extremely valuable to an active investigation. We may be legally required to disclose information about users of this application when presented with a valid court order, warrant, subpoena, or other requirement under applicable law.

Service providers

We use a small number of third-party providers to operate CrimeEye, who process data on our behalf under their own privacy and security commitments: Apple (in-app purchases), Stripe (website subscription payments), RevenueCat (subscription status verification), GNews and Zippopotam.us (the local-news tab on CrimeEye Live looks up the city for a zip code you type and fetches headlines for that city; only the city and state are sent, not your account details), Resend (transactional email, including tip notifications to our team), and Render (hosting, database, and uploaded files). Your information is stored on servers in the United States.

Your choices

• Blocking and reporting. You can block another user (hiding their comments from your own view and preventing messaging between you) and report individual comments for moderator review, from within the app.
• Account deletion. You can permanently delete your account at any time from Edit Profile → Delete Account. This removes your personal information and private data, including any private phone number or display name attached to tips, comments, or reports you made while signed in, and deletes any comments you wrote on community reports. The text of your past comments and tips stays but is shown as "Anonymous," so deleting your account doesn't erase other people's discussions. To have specific tips, comments, or community reports removed as well, email us.
• Access, correction, and deletion requests. Whether or not you have an account, you can email us to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to have it deleted — including an anonymous tip (include the submission ID or status code from the app if you saved it, so we can find it). We'll respond within 30 days. We may keep what we must for legal reasons, and we can't retrieve a tip already forwarded to an agency with your consent. We don't treat people differently for making these requests.

How long we keep information

• IP hashes: cleared after 90 days on tips and community reports; kept with the report on incident reports (used to enforce the free anonymous-report limit).
• Community reports and their evidence: deleted 12 months after a moderator's decision. Reports that were shared with an agency are kept for 36 months, as a record of what was shared. Files uploaded but never attached to a submitted report are deleted after 2 days. A report's moderation audit trail is deleted with it.
• Tips, comments, reports, and attached files: kept for as long as they remain relevant to the case they were submitted on, or until you ask us to delete them or the account they were made under is deleted (see above).
• Account information: kept until you delete your account.
• Session sign-ins: expire after 30 days.

Security

We protect information with measures such as hashed passwords, encrypted connections, access limits on moderation tools, and rate limits to prevent abuse. No online service can guarantee perfect security.

Children's privacy

CrimeEye discusses real, sometimes violent crime and is intended for people 17 and older. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 17. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we'll delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. Material changes will be reflected here with an updated date above.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data can be sent to contact@thecrimeeye.com.