Privacy policy

Effective September 26, 2026

RabbitCam has no accounts, no analytics, and no company server. The app talks to one small computer in Mark Shervey's home, over a private network, and that is where everything stays. The only things that leave the house are push alerts, which go through Apple, and the small amount of coordination data Tailscale needs to connect your phone.

Who runs this

RabbitCam is a personal, non-commercial project by Mark Shervey. There is no company behind it and nothing is sold, shared, or used for advertising. The app is distributed to family and friends through Apple's TestFlight.

What the app collects about you

Nothing. The app contains no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party services. It has no sign-in and creates no account. The two things you type into Settings, the server address and the access token, are stored in your phone's Keychain and sent only to the camera computer.

What the camera computer stores

A Raspberry Pi in Mark's home runs the camera software. It keeps:

• Video clips and thumbnails of the view out of one window, recorded when something moves. They are deleted automatically after about two days.
• A list of visitors: the kind of animal the software thinks it saw, and when.
• Push tokens for phones that have opened the app. A push token is an identifier Apple issues to your phone for this one app. It isn't your name, number, or email, and it is used only to send alerts.
• Ordinary request logs, which include the private-network address of the phone that connected and what it asked for.

Nobody outside the household has access to the computer.

The gallery

Clips of animal visits are also copied from the camera computer to this website's storage at Amazon Web Services, and shown on the password-protected Gallery page and its RSS feed, a minute or two after each visit. Only visits the camera labels as animals are published. Visits it labels as people or vehicles never leave the house. Published clips stay on the website until Mark removes them. The camera computer uploads them using a key that can write only the gallery; nothing connects in to it.

The camera

The camera is a TP-Link Tapo camera pointed at the garden from inside the house. RabbitCam reads its video over the home network only, using the camera's local video feed. The camera is also paired with TP-Link's own Tapo app on Mark's account, for setup and firmware updates; that relationship is covered by TP-Link's privacy policy. RabbitCam does not use TP-Link's cloud and sends nothing to it.

Push notifications

Bunny alerts are delivered by Apple's push notification service, which is the only way to notify an iPhone. Apple receives your phone's push token and the text of each alert, for example "Bunny alert, visitor at 3:42 PM". No image or video is ever included in a notification. Apple's handling of push traffic is described in Apple's privacy policy.

Tailscale

Your phone reaches the camera computer over Tailscale, a private-network service with its own privacy policy. The one-line version: Tailscale can see that your devices are connected, but never what they say to each other.

To connect devices, Tailscale collects your account identity from the sign-in provider you chose (such as a Google or Apple email), each device's name, operating system, and Tailscale version, its keys' public halves and network addresses, and when devices connect. Tailscale's apps also send diagnostic logs to Tailscale.

Tailscale does not see the video, the list of visitors, or your access token. Everything between your phone and the camera computer is encrypted end to end with WireGuard, and the private keys never leave the two devices. When a direct connection isn't possible and packets pass through Tailscale's relay servers, the relays carry data they cannot decrypt. See Tailscale's logging overview for the details.

TestFlight

Because the app is installed through TestFlight, Apple may collect crash reports and basic usage statistics from your phone and share them with Mark as the developer, under Apple's TestFlight terms. That data is about the app, not about the camera or what it recorded.

This website

These pages are static files served from Amazon Web Services. Like any website, serving a page means standard request details (your IP address and browser type) reach the hosting provider. This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and makes no requests to any third party; even the typeface is served from here.

Children

RabbitCam was made for a young child to use together with a family member. The app collects no personal information from anyone, child or adult, and the camera points at a garden, not at people.

Your choices

You can stop at any time by deleting the app and leaving the Tailscale share. If you'd like your phone's push token removed from the camera computer and your network access revoked, email Mark and it will be done the same day.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is posted here with a new effective date at the top. Testers are told directly.

Contact

Questions about privacy go to markshervey@gmail.com.