Privacy

Your photos and visits

KYTE is part of the Aotearoa Long-term Tree Observatory (ALTO). Questions, or a request to remove something you sent: t.welch@auckland.ac.nz.

What leaves your phone

A visit you send to ALTO (the default) goes to the KYTE server with its photos and the tree’s position. Untick “Send this visit to ALTO” to keep a visit only on this phone.

Visits you do not send, your drafts and your photos stay in this browser on this device. Nearby tree records are downloaded as you use the map. Export your visits to keep a separate copy; clearing browser storage removes the local collection.

Signing in with Google

Google verifies your sign-in. KYTE stores an account identifier and the profile information Google provides, including your name and verified email when available. Your Google password is never sent to KYTE. Signed-in visits and their original photos are backed up on the KYTE host so you can open them on another device.

Guest visits stay separate until you choose to bring them into your account. If this phone has been sending visits without an account, signing in brings those visits into your account, and the phone’s key for them is no longer needed. Signing out returns to this device’s guest collection; the last signed-in account’s collection stays available on the device while it is offline.

Sharing a visit is your choice, and it is on by default. Shared visits give ALTO reviewers your original photos, the tree’s position, your notes, measurements and the photos’ capture details. Reviewers see the original photo with its camera details (time, place, direction, phone model); ALTO publishes copies without them. If you are signed in and type a name on a visit, the reviewer sees it; your account email is not shown in the research inbox. Visits sent without an account carry no name at all.

ALTO uses the visits people send to check whether its estimates of each tree’s species, size and health match what is really there, and to improve them. Nothing changes in ALTO until a reviewer accepts a visit. Once accepted, its photographs (re-encoded, with every camera detail removed) and your notes appear on that tree’s page in ALTO; no name or account is ever shown. Stopping sharing takes them down within minutes.

The photos of the tree in a shared visit (the whole tree, another angle, and close-ups of leaves, flowers and fruit; never the surroundings or position photos) are also sent to Pl@ntNet, a plant identification service run by a French research consortium, to suggest a species. You see the suggestion as soon as the visit is saved, and so does the reviewer. A photo of the whole tree can show a house or a person, so keep people out of the picture. Pl@ntNet receives the same re-encoded copies without camera details, and nothing else from the visit; its terms of use say it holds a photo only in memory while identifying it and does not store it, and keeps a log of each request (its date, time and the photo’s address). French law applies to the service. A suggestion is only a lead for the reviewer.

You can stop sharing a visit from its tree page. This removes access through the research inbox once your phone syncs. It cannot recall copies a reviewer has already exported. Offline changes take effect when a connection returns.

Know this tree?

ALTO’s tree pages ask a few questions: the species, when the tree was planted, whether the tree has gone, whether its outline is right, and what else is wrong with the record (“Report a problem with this record”). Your answer and note are sent to ALTO the same way as a shared visit, without your name, and wait for a reviewer. They are never published: an accepted answer goes into ALTO’s list of corrections for its next release. Your answers are listed under My trees, with what became of each, and travel with your exported visits. If you add a photo to an answer, it is sent as a visit too: if a reviewer accepts it, the photo appears on the tree’s ALTO page.

Keeping or removing your data

You can download original photos or export visits from My trees. Deleting your account removes the server’s copy of your account, photographs, visits, answers and review records at once, and this account’s copy on the device used to delete it; the daily copies of KYTE’s database kept in case the server fails are replaced within 14 days. Other devices may keep offline copies; clear those separately. Exported copies and the guest collection stay with whoever holds them.

If a photograph shows a person, a private place, or anything that should not be there, write to us: ALTO’s reviewers can remove a visit’s photographs from the server and from ALTO for good.

Sharing without an account

If you send a visit to ALTO without signing in, KYTE gives this device an account with nobody attached to it. We do not ask for your name, your email or any sign-in, and none of those are stored. What is sent is the photographs, your notes, and where the tree is.

Be aware of what the location means. A photograph of a tree in a private garden points at that garden, so photograph the tree and keep people out of the picture, and think before sending a visit from somewhere you would not want identified. We call this anonymous because we never learn who you are. A photograph with a location in it still says where it was taken.

Your device keeps a key so you can come back and remove everything you have sent: open My account and choose Remove everything I have sent. Your trees stay on the phone, marked as not shared. Clearing this browser’s site data loses that key and with it the ability to take the photographs down yourself, so write to t.welch@auckland.ac.nz if that happens and we will find them another way.

Nothing from a shared visit is published without a person reviewing it first.

Children

KYTE never asks anyone’s name or age, and visits sent without signing in carry no name. If a child is using KYTE, a parent or carer should decide whether their visits are sent to ALTO, and can remove everything the phone has sent from My account.

Missions near you

When you tap “Find a mission near me”, KYTE asks your phone for its location and keeps it on the phone. KYTE does not send your location to ALTO. The aerial map tiles for your area come from Esri, which sees which tiles are loaded. KYTE downloads the mission list for your part of Auckland, a square about a kilometre across, and picks the trees near you itself. Like any web page, our server can see which of those area files was downloaded, but never your position within it, and KYTE does not store your location for missions. The girth list’s “Nearest first” works the same way, on the phone. Missions are trees on streets and in parks; we leave out private land and kauri. Stay on footpaths and tracks.

When a photo has no position, the map opens on the last area you searched (rounded to about 100 m and kept on this phone only), or on all of Auckland. “Find a street” looks the street up in ALTO’s own address index on this phone: the server sees which part of the index was downloaded, not what you typed.

Finding a tree

“Find a tree”, the walking arrow and the camera labels all work on this phone. KYTE uses your location and the phone’s compass to sort the trees, point the way and place the labels, and sends neither anywhere. What it downloads is the species lists and the tree records for your area, the same files for everyone, from ALTO. The camera picture stays on the phone unless you take a photo and save a visit.

Points and ranks

Points are counted on your phone from your own visits, and only once an ALTO reviewer has accepted a visit you sent. There is no leaderboard and no one else sees your points or rank. If you use KYTE without signing in, your points live on this phone only.

Offering photos to the NZ Tree Register

Some mission trees are on the New Zealand Tree Register, which the NZ Notable Trees Trust runs separately from ALTO. Each of those missions names the tree’s register record and links to it. For those, you can tick “Also offer my photos to the NZ Tree Register”. It is off unless you tick it. If you do, and a reviewer accepts the visit, ALTO may pass those photos to the Trust for that tree’s record, re-encoded without camera details and credited as “KYTE contributor”, never with your name, account or notes. Nothing is sent automatically, and nothing is sent until the Trust has agreed how it will use and credit the photos. If you stop sharing the visit before then, nothing is sent.

Other services

Aerial imagery is provided by Esri (terms of use). Google’s sign-in button loads when you open My account (Google terms, Google privacy policy). Pl@ntNet suggests species from the photos of the tree, as described above (terms of use). Those services receive the connection requests needed to provide their features. The trees on KYTE’s maps are ALTO’s records, from Auckland Council, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) and LINZ LiDAR; every source is on ALTO’s Sources and credits.

Research-sharing version: kyte-research-v1 · September 2026. Missions, points and the register offer (kyte-nztr-offer-v1): October 2026. Pl@ntNet, Know this tree?, removal and backups: 11 October 2026. Credits and links to other services’ terms: 13 October 2026. What leaves the phone, the problem report, and the map’s last area: 14 October 2026 (KYTE v20).