Privacy Policy

Effective 26 August 2026. Shipdeck is made by Maritime Master Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. For the purposes of UK data protection law, Maritime Master Limited is the data controller for the personal data described here, and our contact details are at the end of this policy.

The short version

Shipdeck works without an account. If you sign in, we keep the minimum needed to run your account: an anonymous account identifier, your saved fleet, and usage counters for the AI assistant. The free tiers show adverts. Those adverts are personalised only where you have allowed it, we do not sell your data, and you can change that permission at any time. Pro and Captain remove adverts entirely.

What we collect

  • Nothing, for browsing. Searching ships, viewing the map and reading ship pages need no account. Standard server logs (IP address, request path, timestamp) are kept briefly for security and abuse prevention.
  • Account data, if you sign in. We store an anonymous identifier your sign-in provider gives us. Your email address is used only to check whether you have already claimed a one-time offer, and we keep a one-way code rather than the address itself. We never see your password.
  • Your fleet. Ships you follow are stored with your account so widgets and syncing work.
  • Subscription status. Apple and Google process all payments. We store only which tier is active and until when. We never see payment details.
  • Fathom conversations. Messages you send to Fathom are processed to answer you and are not used to train AI models. We store usage counters (message counts and token totals), not conversation history.
  • Location, only if you allow it. Used to centre the map on you. Fetching the ships around you sends that map position to our server, and while you are signed in it arrives alongside your account. We never use it to profile you and we never pass it to anyone else.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

UK data protection law requires us to name a lawful basis for every use of your personal data. Ours are:

  • Running your account, your fleet and your subscription. Basis: performance of our contract with you. Without this there is no account to run.
  • Answering your messages to Fathom and metering your usage against your allowance. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
  • Keeping the service up, secure and free from abuse. This covers server logs, rate limiting and fraud prevention. Basis: our legitimate interests in protecting the service and the people using it. We keep these logs briefly and do not use them to build a profile of you.
  • Your device location. Basis: your consent, given through your device's location prompt. You can withdraw it at any time in your device settings. The app carries on working, it just stops centring the map on you.
  • Handling a request about a vessel, or a request about your own data. Basis: our legal obligation, together with our legitimate interest in dealing with you fairly.
  • Answering your support emails. Basis: our legitimate interests in supporting the people who use Shipdeck.

We do not use your personal data for automated decision making that produces a legal or similarly significant effect on you. Advertising profiling happens only where you have allowed it, and never for anyone we know to be under 18 in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area. We learn that only from an age range your device may share with us, never by asking you.

Where the data comes from

Ship positions and port information come from licensed official maritime data providers and public maritime sources. Tide predictions are computed on your device.

Vessel positions and privacy

Shipdeck displays AIS broadcasts. AIS is a public safety transmission: every fitted vessel broadcasts her identity and position in the clear under the IMO SOLAS convention, and anyone within range of a receiver can hear it. We show that broadcast, we do not add to it, and we do not link a vessel to a named owner.

Even so, for a small private vessel a track can say something about the people aboard her. If you own or operate a vessel and you would rather she were not shown, you can ask us to remove her.

Requesting removal of a vessel

If you are the owner, operator or master of a vessel and you do not want her shown in Shipdeck, ask us and we will remove her.

Write to us using the contact details on our support page: https://www.getshipdeck.com/support/#vessel-removal

Tell us:

  • the vessel's name and MMSI, and her IMO number if she has one;
  • that you are her owner, operator or master;
  • something that shows it, such as a registration document or a page of the ship's papers.

We ask for proof only so that a request to hide a vessel comes from someone entitled to make it, and we delete that proof once the request is settled. We aim to reply within five working days and to act within one month.

Removing a vessel hides her from Shipdeck's map, search and Fathom. It cannot stop her transponder transmitting, and it has no effect on any other service receiving the same broadcast.

AI processing

Fathom answers are AI generated with the help of a third party AI provider under a commercial agreement, and may be inaccurate or out of date. Your messages and relevant ship data are sent to that provider to produce a reply and are not used for AI training.

Advertising

The free tiers of Shipdeck show adverts. Pro and Captain show none at all.

The adverts are supplied by Google AdMob. Where you allow it, they are personalised, which means Google may use your device's advertising identifier to choose an advert from what you have done in other apps and websites as well as in this one. Where you do not allow it, they are non personalised and are chosen from the app you are in and your coarse location alone. Either way we do not sell your data and we do not share it with data brokers.

You are asked before any of this happens, and every answer is yours to change. On iPhone and iPad, Apple's tracking permission decides whether an advertising identifier exists at all, and you can change it whenever you like in Settings, under Privacy and Security, then Tracking. Where the law also requires a consent choice, Google's own consent tool asks for it and you can change that at any time under Ads in Settings. In the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area your device may also share a declared age range with Shipdeck, so we never need to ask your age, and anyone known to be under 18 is never shown a personalised advert whatever the other answers say. You control that sharing in your device's own settings.

Signed out, you can choose to watch a video advert to open one ship's page for a day. That is always your choice and nothing is withheld from you for declining it. To make it work, our server issues a one-time ticket for that one ship, Google tells our server that the video was watched, and your device keeps a receipt that expires within a day. The ticket and the receipt identify a ship and a moment, not you or your device.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in funding a service that is free to use, and your consent where the law requires it for storage on your device.

Sharing

We share data only with the service providers needed to run Shipdeck (hosting, AI processing, advertising), under contract, and only what each needs. Our advertising provider is Google, and what reaches them is what is needed to fill an advert: where you have allowed personalised adverts that includes your device's advertising identifier, and where you have not it is only what a non personalised advert needs. We do not sell personal data. We disclose data if the law requires it.

Where your data is processed

Our servers are in the European Union. The EU is covered by the UK's adequacy regulations, so personal data moving there from the UK carries the same protection with it.

Our AI provider may process Fathom messages outside the UK and the EU, including in the United States. Where that happens we rely on the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. Apple and Google handle all payments under their own privacy policies.

Retention and deletion

Account data is kept while your account exists. Delete your account any time in Settings, or ask us to delete it from the account deletion page on our website. This removes your account, fleet and usage records from our servers. We keep anonymous purchase identifiers so a refunded purchase cannot be redeemed twice; these carry no name, no email and no account. Server logs rotate automatically. Proof you send us with a vessel removal request is deleted once that request is settled.

Your rights

Under UK and EU data protection law you have the right to:

  • know what we hold about you, and receive a copy of it;
  • correct anything that is wrong;
  • delete it. You can do this yourself at any time in Settings;
  • restrict or object to how we use it, where we rely on legitimate interests;
  • take it with you in a portable form;
  • withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis. Withdrawing does not undo anything we did lawfully beforehand.

Write to us and we will respond within one month. We do not charge for this.

Complaints

If you think we have handled your data badly, tell us first and we will try to put it right. You can also complain to a data protection regulator at any time, and you do not have to come to us first.

In the United Kingdom that is the Information Commissioner's Office: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF, helpline 0303 123 1113, ico.org.uk

If you live in the EU or the EEA, you may complain to the supervisory authority for your own country instead.

Children

Shipdeck is not directed at children under 13. It is rated 13+ on the App Store and offered to ages 13 and over on Google Play, and those two answers deliberately match. In the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area anyone we know to be under 18 is shown non personalised adverts only, with no profile built for advertising. We learn an age only as a range your device may share with us, never from a question in the app and never as a date of birth.

Changes

We will post any changes here and update the effective date.

Contact

Maritime Master Limited. Email: hello@themaritimemaster.com