Privacy policy
1. Who we are
Aotomatic is a farm record and assistant app for shrimp farmers. It is run by Forte Biotech Pte Ltd, a company in Singapore ("Forte Biotech", "we", "us"). We decide why and how your personal data is used, so we are the controller of your data.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Company | Forte Biotech Pte Ltd, Singapore |
| Registered address | 219 Henderson Road, #09-04, Singapore 159556 |
| Privacy contact | hello@fortebio.tech |
| Effective date | 26 October 2026 |
2. What we collect
| What | Details | When |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Mobile phone number and country code. Optional: your name, email address and profile photo | When you sign up or edit your profile |
| Farm and pond records | Farm name, address and map position, pond details, water quality, feeding, medicine, disease test results, crops, harvests, costs, prices and revenue | When you enter them |
| Photos | Photos you add to records or send in the chat | When you add them |
| Chat | Text messages and voice messages you send to the assistant, and the assistant's answers | When you use the chat |
| Location | The precise location of your phone, read once, only while the app is open, when you choose "use my location" while adding a farm. You can pick a point on the map or leave it empty instead. You can also mark where a pond is, and its outline, on a satellite map: that is a place you choose, not your phone's location. The app does not track your location in the background | Only if you choose it |
| Technical | A random install number made the first time the app runs (not linked to your phone, advertising identity or account), used to limit repeated login attempts. Your IP address when your phone contacts our server, used for the same purpose and for security | Every request |
The app does not use advertising identifiers or analytics services. It sends crash reports (crash logs and device diagnostics, with no name, phone number or farm data) to Google Firebase Crashlytics so that we can fix faults: the iPhone app, and the Android app from version 1.5.
3. Why we use it
| Purpose | Data used |
|---|---|
| Create your account and let you log in | Phone number, login code |
| Keep your farm records and show charts and totals | Farm, pond and daily records, photos |
| Answer your questions in the chat, read photos and understand voice notes | Chat text, voice notes, photos, the farm and pond records needed to answer |
| Show the farm map and suggest addresses | Map and place search requests, farm location |
| Farm weather and weather alerts, when switched on | Farm latitude and longitude |
| Keep the service secure and stop abuse | Install number, IP address |
| Help farmers with disease cases and improve how we support them | Disease case records and photos, kept as described in section 7 |
| Develop and improve our own models, such as the farm assistant and disease detection (see section 5) | Farm records, readings, test results, chat messages, voice note transcripts and photos, without your name and phone number |
4. Who receives your data
We use the companies below to run the service. They receive only what is needed for the purpose shown. We do not sell your data and we do not use it for advertising.
| Company | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Firebase Authentication) | Your phone number; Google sends the SMS code and checks it | SMS login |
| Google (Firebase Crashlytics) | Crash logs and device diagnostics (device model, operating system version, app version, what the app was doing when it failed), with no name, phone number or farm data. iPhone app, and Android app from version 1.5 | Find and fix faults in the app |
| Google (Firebase App Check, Play Integrity) | A device integrity token | Check that requests come from the genuine app |
| Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging library) | A registration token made on your phone. The app does not send it to us today | Reserved for future alerts, which are off |
| Google (Maps and Places) | Map requests, place search text, and the location signals the Maps software uses | Show the farm map and suggest addresses |
| Meta Platforms (WhatsApp Business Cloud API) | Your phone number and the 6-digit login code | Send the login code by WhatsApp when you choose it |
| Zalo (Zalo Notification Service) | Your phone number and the login code | Send the login code by Zalo in Vietnam. Coming soon and switched off today |
| OpenAI | Your voice messages (to turn speech into text). Also, when OpenAI is the chat model: chat text, the text of voice messages, chat photos, and the farm and pond records needed to answer, with the last 10 messages of the chat, the pond name, your language and time zone | Turn speech into text; understand your question, read photos and write the answer |
| Anthropic | When Anthropic is the chat model: chat text, the text of voice messages, chat photos, and the farm and pond records needed to answer, with the last 10 messages of the chat, the pond name, your language and time zone | Understand your question, read photos and write the answer |
| Open-Meteo | Farm latitude and longitude | Daily weather for your farm. Off by default |
| Hostinger (hosting provider) | Everything stored on our server | Run the service |
If a Forte Biotech staff member links your Telegram, Zalo or WhatsApp chat account to your account at your request, we also store that chat's user id and display name, so you can talk to the assistant on that channel.
Some of these companies are outside Singapore and outside your country. By using the app you understand that your data is sent to them as shown above. Each handles the data under its own terms and privacy policy.
5. AI services: voice, photos and chat messages
The chat assistant uses artificial intelligence services run by other companies. The assistant is optional: you can use the rest of the app without sending any chat message.
- When you send a message, its text, the last few messages of that chat, the name of the pond you opened, your language and your time zone go to our assistant service. The assistant uses an AI model from OpenAI or Anthropic to understand your message and write the answer. We may switch between these two providers at any time, so either may receive your chat content. To answer questions about your farm, it can read your own farm and pond records and include the relevant ones in the request to the provider.
- Voice messages are uploaded to our server and sent to OpenAI to turn your speech into text. The text is then handled like a typed message and sent to the chat provider (OpenAI or Anthropic).
- Photos you send in the chat may be sent to OpenAI or Anthropic, whichever is the chat provider, so the assistant can look at them. Before we keep a chat photo for a disease case, we make it smaller and remove the camera and location data stored inside the picture.
We use these companies only to provide the assistant to you.
We have not allowed OpenAI or Anthropic to use the data we send them, or any feedback, to train their models.
Forte Biotech uses farm records, readings, test results, chat messages, voice note transcripts and photos to develop and improve its own models, such as the farm assistant and disease detection. Before we use them for this, we remove your name and phone number. If you do not want your records used this way, write to us at hello@fortebio.tech and we will exclude them.
Do not send information in the chat that you do not want these services to process.
6. Login codes
When you log in, you can receive a one-time code by WhatsApp or by SMS. If you choose WhatsApp, we send your phone number and the code to Meta, which delivers the code in a WhatsApp message from the Forte Biotech business account. If you choose SMS, or WhatsApp cannot be used, Google (Firebase Authentication) sends the SMS and checks the code. In Vietnam we may offer Zalo as a third choice once it is switched on. We store only a scrambled form of the WhatsApp code, and it stops working after five minutes or three wrong tries.
7. How long we keep data
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Account and farm records | Until you delete your account |
| Chat photos and voice notes kept for a disease case | At most 3 months after the assistant has read or transcribed them. The reading or transcript stays with your records |
| Photos that were rejected or never answered | 30 days |
| Photos of disease cases that are not turned into a reading | Up to 2 years |
| Records of which staff member opened a case | Up to 2 years |
| Weather records | About 13 months |
| Alert records | 12 months |
| Login attempt records (install number, IP address) | 90 days |
| Backups | 30 days |
8. Where your data is kept
Our server is hosted by Hostinger in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The companies in section 4 may process data in other countries. Data sent between the app and our server, and between our server and these companies, travels over encrypted HTTPS connections. We limit who can open the admin pages of the server. No system is perfectly secure. Photos you add to farm, pond and profile records may be reachable by anyone who has the exact file link, so do not add photos you want to keep secret.
9. Your rights and choices
You can ask us to:
- tell you what data we hold about you and give you a copy;
- correct data that is wrong (you can also edit most of it in the app);
- delete your data (see section 10);
- stop using your data for a purpose you object to, or withdraw consent you gave.
Write to hello@fortebio.tech. We will reply as soon as we can and within 30 days. You may also have rights under the laws that apply to you, for example Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act and Vietnam's Personal Data Protection Law, and the right to complain to the data protection authority in your country.
In your phone settings you can refuse location, camera, microphone and notification permissions and keep using the parts of the app that do not need them.
10. Deleting your account
| Way | How |
|---|---|
| In the app | Open the Profile tab, then "Your profile", then "Delete account", and confirm |
| Without the app | Use the request form at https://app.fortebio.tech/account-deletion . We confirm by SMS or WhatsApp within 7 days |
Deleting your account removes your profile, your farms and everything in them (ponds, entries, crops, harvests, costs, photos, alerts and chat history), the files you uploaded, your linked chat accounts and your Firebase sign-in record. People who joined your farm keep their own accounts but lose access to the farm you deleted. Names of feed, medicine, hatchery or shrimp types that you typed in may stay in the shared lists without your name on them. Information in disease cases that the assistant helped build is separated from your account instead of being kept under your name. Backups are overwritten after 30 days.
11. Children
Aotomatic is not directed to anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 16. If you think a child has given us data, write to us and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We may change this policy. When we do, we will change the effective date above and, for important changes, tell you in the app. The version in force is always the one at https://app.fortebio.tech/privacy .
13. Contact
Forte Biotech Pte Ltd, 219 Henderson Road, #09-04, Singapore 159556. Email: hello@fortebio.tech.