Privacy Policy

BlackCow is a farm management tool built and operated by Taz Snell for a small number of farm owners and the people they invite to work on their farms. This page describes what information BlackCow collects, why, and what happens to it. If anything here is unclear, email tazsnell@gmail.com — a direct question will get a direct answer faster than most privacy policies can.

What we collect

Depending on how you use BlackCow, this can include:

• Account information — your name, email address, and a securely hashed password (we never store or can see your actual password).
• Farm and livestock records you or someone on your farm enters — paddock and mob details, calving/treatment/marking records, rainfall readings, and similar operational data.
• Financial records you choose to enter — cattle sale and purchase details including prices.
• Photos you upload of paddocks, cattle, or farm infrastructure.
• Farm location (approximate, for weather lookups) and relative paddock positions on a map you upload — not precise personal GPS tracking.
• Voice notes and invoice photos, if you use the voice-logging or invoice-scanning features (see "AI-assisted features" below).
• Basic technical information — login times, IP address, and app version, used for security and troubleshooting.

Why we collect it

Solely to run the service: to let you record and retrieve your farm's data, to let farm owners share access with workers they choose to invite, to keep the app secure (audit logs of admin actions, login attempts), and to troubleshoot problems when something breaks. We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising — there is no advertising in BlackCow.

Who can see your data

Within BlackCow: you, and anyone you (or a farm owner) explicitly grant access to a specific farm, with the access level you choose (worker or viewer). Workers and viewers never see sale/purchase financial records — that's enforced by the app itself, not just hidden in the interface. BlackCow's administrator can access account data to provide support or respond to a request from you, and this access is logged.

AI-assisted features

Two optional features send data to Anthropic (the company behind Claude), a service provider based in the United States:

• Invoice scanning — a photo of a saleyard invoice you choose to upload is sent to Anthropic to extract the price, weight, and other details automatically. The image is not stored by Anthropic beyond processing the request, and BlackCow does not keep a copy of the raw image after extraction.
• Voice logging — if you use the voice-note feature (e.g. via an iOS Shortcut), your farm's paddock and mob names plus the text of what you said are sent to Anthropic to turn it into a structured draft record. Nothing is saved to your farm records until you explicitly confirm the draft.

Both features are optional — you never have to use them, and using BlackCow without them means this data never leaves Australia via these paths. Anthropic processes this data under its own API terms and does not use it to train its models.

Other service providers

BlackCow also uses:

• Supabase (database hosting for our development environment only — production data is hosted on infrastructure we directly control in Australia), believed to be hosted in the Sydney region.
• The Australian Bureau of Meteorology and Meat & Livestock Australia — for public weather and saleyard price data. We send only a station or saleyard identifier to these services, never your personal or farm-identifying information.
• Weather Underground — for supplementary weather data, using your farm's approximate location.

How we protect your data

Passwords are hashed, not stored in reversible form. Access to farm data requires a valid login and is scoped to what you own or have been granted. Admin actions that affect accounts are logged. Like any software project, BlackCow is under active development and security improvements are ongoing — if you become aware of a security issue, please email us directly rather than disclosing it publicly.

How long we keep your data

We keep your farm records for as long as your account is active, so you retain access to your own operational history. Some technical logs (e.g. security audit logs) are kept for a limited period and then automatically removed.

Your rights

You can ask to see a copy of your data, correct anything that's wrong, or have your account and data deleted, at any time — email tazsnell@gmail.com and we'll action it directly. BlackCow currently has a very small, known user base, so requests like this are handled personally rather than through an automated self-service flow.

Children

BlackCow is a farm management tool intended for adults operating or working on a farm. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

If how we handle your data changes materially, we'll update this page and, where practical, let existing users know directly.

Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns about your data: tazsnell@gmail.com.