Privacy policy
The short version
- We collect what you type into Bucks and what you post, and we use it to run the app. Nothing else.
- No ads, no ad trackers, no analytics tools, and we never sell or rent your data.
- Your monthly figures are private until you choose to post them. The mirror only uses them inside groups of 20 people or more.
- Screenshots you read figures from are processed on your phone and never uploaded.
- Anonymous posts carry no author. The link back to you is kept in a locked table, only so you can manage your post and so we can act on abuse.
- Deleting your account in the app deletes everything, straight away.
1. Who we are
Bucks is an iPhone app and this website. Both are run by [[OWNER NAME AND ADDRESS]] ("we", "us"). We are the controller of your personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK GDPR.
Questions about privacy, or a request about your data: [[support@bluntly.app]].
2. What we collect, and why
| What | Why we need it | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account: your email address, your password (stored only as a secure hash), and records of when you sign in. | To create your account, sign you in and keep it secure. | Contract |
| Profile: your handle, display name, and optionally a photo and a short bio. Your country, year of birth, line of work and the currency you are paid in. | To show your profile to other members and to place you in the right comparison groups for the mirror. | Contract |
| Your months: for each month, what came in and what went out on housing, getting around, food and everything else, and whether each figure was typed, read from a screenshot or imported. | To show your statement and history, and to work out group comparisons. | Contract |
| Money tools: budget limits, the subscriptions you add (name, price, renewal date), the things you own and owe, and a monthly snapshot of your net worth. | To run the tools. Only you can see them. | Contract |
| What you post: posts (including the copy of a month's figures you chose to share), comments, questions, answers, goals, reactions, saved posts, your answers and comments on the question of the day, and the challenges you join and check in to. | To run the social side of Bucks. | Contract |
| Connections: who you follow and who follows you, and the people you block. | To build your feed and to keep blocked people away from you. | Contract |
| Messages: the direct messages you send and receive, and when a conversation was last seen. | To deliver your messages. | Contract |
| Safety records: reports you make or that are made about your content, and any suspension of your account. | To keep the community safe and to stop people abusing the report button. | Legitimate interests |
| Waitlist: the email address and country you give us on this website. | To email you once when Bucks launches. | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Website visits: our host keeps standard request logs (such as IP address and browser) for a short time. | To serve this website and protect it from attacks. | Legitimate interests |
What we do not collect
- We never connect to your bank, and never ask for bank logins, account numbers or card numbers.
- No location tracking, no access to your contacts, no advertising identifier.
- No analytics or advertising tools in the app, and no cookies on this website.
- We don't collect a push notification token. Reminders are scheduled on your phone.
What stays on your phone
- Reading a screenshot. When you read figures from a screenshot, or share an image or file into Bucks from another app, the text is recognised on your phone using Apple's built-in text recognition. The image or file is never uploaded, to us or to anyone. Only the figures you check and confirm are saved to your month.
- Importing a spreadsheet. A CSV file you import is read on your phone. Only the figures you confirm are saved.
- Some tools. The debt plan and the "can I afford this?" check are worked out on your phone.
- Settings of this phone, such as reminder times and vibration.
3. Who can see what
| What | Who can see it |
|---|---|
| Your months and your money tools | Only you. |
| A post with your name, shared with everyone | Anyone using Bucks. |
| A post shared with followers only | The people who follow you. |
| An anonymous post | Anyone using Bucks, without your name, handle or photo. The post itself has no author on it, and the time shown is blurred within the hour. |
| Your profile | Other members can see your handle, display name, photo, bio, line of work, country, age (from your year of birth), your counts of posts and followers, and the badges you have earned. |
| Your figures in the mirror | Nobody sees them. They only count towards statistics over groups of at least 20 people, and pay is only compared within the same currency. |
| Your answer to the question of the day | It is counted into the totals. It is not shown against your name. |
| Direct messages | You and the person you are talking to. |
| Who you block | Only you. The blocked person is not told. |
| A report you make | Us. The person you report is never told who reported them. |
The people who run Bucks can reach the database in order to operate the service, and look at reported content to moderate it. We do not browse your data otherwise. Messages are stored on our servers so they can be delivered, and are not end-to-end encrypted.
4. Who we share it with
We don't sell, rent or trade your data, and we don't share it for advertising. We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf, under contract:
- Supabase (Supabase, Inc.) hosts our database, sign-in and photo storage. Your data is stored on servers in London, United Kingdom.
- Vercel (Vercel Inc.) hosts this website.
- Apple distributes the app through the App Store. Anything you share with Apple when you download the app is covered by Apple's own privacy policy.
- [[EMAIL PROVIDER used to send sign-in and waitlist emails, if any]]
Supabase and Vercel are US companies. Where data is accessed from outside the UK or the European Economic Area, the transfer is covered by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum. The UK has an adequacy decision from the European Commission.
We may disclose data if the law requires it, for example to answer a valid court order.
5. How long we keep it
- Your account and everything in it: for as long as you keep your account.
- When you delete your account: your profile, months, money tools, posts (anonymous ones included), comments, reactions, messages, follows, blocks, the reports you made, your photos and the sign-in records about you are removed from our live systems at once. Conversations you were part of are removed for the other person too. Encrypted backups kept by our database provider roll off within [[BACKUP RETENTION, e.g. 7 days]].
- Waitlist: until we send the launch email, and deleted within three months of launch. Ask us and we delete it sooner.
- Website request logs: kept by our host for a short period, usually a few days.
6. Your rights
Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR you have the right to:
- access the data we hold about you;
- correct it (most of it you can edit yourself in the app);
- delete it (you can delete your account yourself, see how);
- take it with you: in the app, go to Account and tap Export your data for a spreadsheet file of your profile and every month;
- object to or restrict some uses of your data;
- withdraw consent where we rely on it, such as the waitlist.
To use any of these rights, email [[support@bluntly.app]]. We answer within one month. You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Portugal, the CNPD; in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office.
7. Age
Bucks is for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we delete it.
8. Security
Everything between the app and our servers travels encrypted. Passwords are stored only as secure hashes. Each table is locked so that a person can only reach their own rows, and everything that crosses from one person to another goes through checks on the server. No system is perfect: if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
9. This website
This website uses no cookies and no analytics. The waitlist form sends your email and country to our database at Supabase. The web preview is a demo with sample data: it saves nothing, and it loads fonts from Google Fonts and sample photos from randomuser.me, which means those services see your IP address when you open it.
10. Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If a change matters, we will tell you in the app before it applies.