Bugout Bot — Privacy Policy

Last updated October 11, 2026. Every sentence below describes what the app actually does.

The short version: Bugout Bot runs on your phone. Your plan, your people, your places, your gear, your chats and your photos stay on your phone. We have no account for you and no server that holds any of it, so we cannot see it and could not hand it to anyone if asked.

What stays on your phone

Everything you put into the app:

• Your chats with Bugout Bot, and the answers.
• Photos you identify (plants, animals, injuries).
• Your crew: the people and pets you would shelter or leave with, their ages, health notes and medications.
• Your places: home, a cabin, a relative's house, with addresses and map pins if you add them.
• Your inventory and bug-out bag.
• Your plans, routes, readiness score and mission state.
• What you say to the app by voice. Speech is turned into text on the phone.

All of it is kept in the app's own storage on the device. The AI model that answers you also runs on the device. Nothing above is ever transmitted.

Erase it: Settings → Erase my plan data deletes your crew, places, inventory, plans and what you told the app. Deleting the app deletes everything.

What leaves your phone, and why

The app goes online for a small number of things, and none of them carry anything about you:

1. First-launch downloads. The AI model, the search model, the manuals, the photo identifier, the species index and the manuals' figures (about 3.5 GB in all) are downloaded once from our Cloudflare storage and from GitHub Releases (the two AI model files fall back to Hugging Face if our storage is unreachable). Those services see an ordinary download request — your IP address and the file name — as any website does.
2. Map squares. When you choose to download a map area, it comes from Cloudflare R2. Cloudflare sees the request for that file. The app never sends your position; it asks for a whole map square by its name.
3. Live safety updates (Operator, can be turned off in Settings). With signal, the app fetches public safety information for the map areas you have downloaded: National Weather Service warnings, the National Hurricane Center forecast, wildfire outlines and FEMA open shelters. It asks for each area as a whole, never your exact position, and sends nothing else.
4. Purchases. Buying Survivor or Operator goes through Apple's App Store and RevenueCat, which handles receipts. RevenueCat receives an anonymous ID the app makes up for your install, your Apple purchase receipt, the app version, the device type and your country. It does not receive your name, your chats, your plan or your location. We do not attach any usage information to that record.

There is no analytics software and no crash reporter in the app. We do not know how many questions you ask, what you ask, or where you are.

What we would tell a court

Nothing, because there is nothing to produce. The app has no account and no server that stores user content.

Honesty about limits

Your data is protected by your phone's own encryption and by Apple's app sandbox. Like anything on your phone, it is only as secure as your passcode. If someone has your unlocked phone, they can open the app.

Backups. Your plan, chats and photos are kept out of iCloud and device backups on purpose, so they exist on this phone only. That means a lost or broken phone loses them. To keep a copy, Settings → Save an encrypted copy of my plan writes one file, locked with a passphrase you choose, that you store wherever you like (Files, a computer, a drive) and can restore on any phone with Restore my plan from a file. We never see the file or the passphrase, and we cannot recover a forgotten passphrase.

While locked. Your plan, chats and photos are stored with iOS file protection so they are unreadable while the phone is locked. The screen is covered when you switch apps, so the app switcher does not show your plan.

Erasing. Settings → Erase everything I have put in deletes your plan, chats, photos and your own documents from the phone in one step. The manuals, maps and models stay.

Bugout Bot is not medical advice

The app quotes military and civilian emergency manuals and adapts them to what you tell it. It is not a doctor, not a substitute for emergency services, and it can be wrong. When you can reach emergency services, call 911.

This website

bugoutbot.ai, the website, uses Google Tag Manager, PostHog and advertising measurement tags to see how people find the site and which pages they read. That is the website only. The app contains none of this: no analytics, no crash reporting, no measurement of any kind.

Children

The app is not directed at children under 13 and collects no information from anyone.

Changes

If the app ever starts sending anything new off the phone, this policy will say so before the update ships, in plain words.

Contact

info@bugoutbot.ai