Privacy Policy
Effective [EFFECTIVE DATE]
This policy explains what the Buddy iPhone app and this website (joinbuddy.cards) collect, why, who else handles it, how long it’s kept and how to delete it. It’s written to be read, so it names the actual services involved.
The short version
- You sign in with Apple or with a code sent to your email. We keep your email address, the name you give us and your account ID.
- The photos you take of your cards, and the seller photos in a listing you check, are uploaded to Buddy, stored privately in your account and sent to AI services (Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI) that read the card.
- There are no ads, no advertising or analytics SDKs, no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites, and we don’t sell or share your personal information for advertising.
- Apple handles all payments. We never see your card or bank details.
- You can delete a card, or your whole account and everything in it, from inside the app.
Who we are
Buddy is published by Bravang, [COMPANY ADDRESS] (“Buddy”, “we”, “us”). We are the “controller” of the personal information described here, meaning we decide why and how it is used. For anything about privacy, email privacy@joinbuddy.cards.
What we collect
Your account
- Sign in with Apple: Apple gives us an account identifier, and, if you choose to share them, your name and email address. If you pick “Hide My Email”, we get an Apple relay address instead of your real one.
- Email sign-in: your email address, which we use to send a one-time sign-in code.
- Profile: the name shown in the app (you can change it), the date you joined, your plan (Free or Buddy Pro), the date Pro started, and your scan credit balance.
Card photos and results
- Photos you take or pick: the front and back of a card, close-ups, and the extra frames taken with the torch for a surface check. Photos are cropped to the card on your phone where possible, but may still show part of your hand, a table or a reflection.
- Listing photos: when you check a listing before buying, the seller’s photos from that listing are uploaded so Buddy can grade them.
- What Buddy works out: the card it identified, its measurements, the condition notes the AI wrote, the grade estimate, prices and the fake-check result.
- What you tell us afterwards: if you log the grade a grading company actually gave the card and its certificate number, or record that you bought a card (price, currency, date, marketplace, listing link and expected arrival date).
Your collection
Cards you add to your collection: which card, its condition or grade, quantity, slab certificate number, the price you paid, and a photo if you add one.
Referrals
When you invite friends, your invite code (which includes your first name) and a record of who joined with it and when. A friend who uses your code sees your first name; you see their first name and last initial.
Purchases
Apple processes every payment. We receive confirmation of what you bought (the product, dates, whether a trial or subscription is active, and the country of your App Store account), not your payment details. We use RevenueCat to check and keep track of purchases; see “Who we share it with”.
Messages you send us
If you email support or privacy, we keep your email address and what you wrote so we can answer.
Technical data
When the app talks to our servers, those servers and our hosting providers see your IP address and basic request details (time, the address requested, app and system version). Sign-in events are logged with IP address and device type. Our own server logs record scan IDs, timings and card names to find errors; they don’t record your email.
Kept only on your phone
Some things never leave your device: grading orders you track (and the home-screen widgets that show them), your recent listing checks, the sets you said you collect, your region and currency (read from your iPhone’s Region setting, not from your location), reminders, and appearance settings. Reminders are local notifications scheduled on your phone; we don’t collect a push token.
What we don’t collect
We don’t collect your precise or approximate location, contacts, microphone audio, health data, or browsing history, and we don’t use the advertising identifier. The camera and photo library are used only when you scan or pick a photo.
How we use it
- To run Buddy: sign you in, read and grade your cards, check listings, price cards, keep your scans and collection, and apply your plan, free monthly allowance, credits and referral rewards.
- To improve the grading: we re-run stored readings and compare our estimates with the grades collectors report, so we can measure and calibrate how accurate Buddy is. We don’t use your photos for advertising, and we don’t sell them or give them to anyone to train their own AI models.
- To keep it working and safe: fix errors, prevent abuse of free scans and referral rewards, and protect accounts.
- To talk to you: send sign-in codes and answer messages. We don’t send marketing email.
- To meet legal obligations: for example tax records of purchases and responding to lawful requests.
Grade estimates, fake checks and prices are produced automatically. They’re information to help you decide; they don’t have legal or similarly significant effects on you, and you can ask us about any result.
Legal bases (EEA, UK and Switzerland)
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Account, scans, collection, purchases, referrals, support | Performing our contract with you |
| Improving and calibrating the grading, security, abuse prevention, error logs | Our legitimate interests in a working, accurate and safe service, balanced against yours |
| Camera, photo library and notification access | Your consent, given through the iOS permission prompt and withdrawable in iOS Settings |
| Tax and accounting records, lawful requests | Legal obligation |
Who we share it with
We share personal information only with the service providers below, who process it for us under contract and only to provide their service to Buddy, plus where the law requires it.
| Provider | What they receive | Why | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Account, email, profile, scans, photos, collection, referrals, sign-in logs | Database, private photo storage, sign-in and sign-in code emails | Ireland (EU) |
| Railway | Photos and requests passing through our server, IP address, server logs | Hosting Buddy’s server, which measures cards and runs the grading | EU |
| Vercel (AI Gateway) | Card and listing photos and the instructions sent with them | Routes requests to the AI models below | United States |
| Anthropic (Claude) | Card and listing photos | Reads condition, identifies cards, checks photos are usable | United States |
| OpenAI | Photos you use to add a card to your collection | Identifies the card or slab | United States |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, purchases, App Store review prompts | Sign-in, payments, subscriptions, refunds | United States and worldwide |
| RevenueCat | Your Buddy account ID, Apple purchase receipts and history, app version, device type, App Store country, IP address | Validating purchases and managing subscriptions and scan packs | United States |
| PSA (Collectors Universe) | Slab certificate numbers you enter | Looking up the grade and label of a slab | United States |
Some services receive no personal information from us but see your phone’s IP address because the app contacts them directly: the marketplace whose listing you check (the app opens the listing page from your phone), and Frankfurter, which provides currency exchange rates. Our price provider (PokeTrace) and card database (TCGdex) receive only card names and numbers, never anything about you.
Anthropic and OpenAI are used through their commercial APIs, whose terms don’t allow them to train their models on what we send. They may keep requests for a limited time for abuse monitoring under their own policies.
We may also disclose information if required by law or a valid legal request, to protect the rights or safety of users or others, or to a buyer or successor if Buddy is sold or merged, in which case this policy continues to apply to your information.
We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t “share” it for cross-context behavioral advertising as California law defines those terms. We haven’t done so in the past 12 months.
International transfers
Our database and server are in the EU. Some providers above, including the AI services, process data in the United States. Where personal information from the EEA, UK or Switzerland goes to a country without an adequacy decision, we rely on the provider’s certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (and its UK and Swiss extensions) or on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK Addendum). Ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards. If you’re in Canada or Australia, your information may be processed in the EU and the United States, where local law may give authorities access to it.
How long we keep it
| Data | Kept until |
|---|---|
| Account, email, name, plan | You delete your account |
| Scan photos, results and surface checks | You delete the card, or your account |
| The record that a scan happened (its type and date, no photos or results) | You delete your account. We keep it after you delete a card so the free monthly allowance can’t be reset by deleting scans. |
| Collection cards and their photos | You remove them, or delete your account |
| Referral records | You or the other person delete their account |
| PSA certificate lookups | Kept, because they’re public registry data about a slab. Once you delete your account they are no longer linked to you. |
| Server, hosting and sign-in logs | Up to 30 days |
| Database backups | Overwritten on a rolling basis, within 30 days |
| Support emails | Up to 2 years after the conversation ends |
| Purchase records | As long as tax and accounting law requires |
Deleting your account
In the app, open the Account tab, tap your name, then Delete account. This deletes your account and sign-in, profile, scans and their photos, grade estimates, surface checks, collection and referral records from our systems, and clears what Buddy stored on that phone. It can’t be undone.
Deleting your account doesn’t cancel a Buddy Pro subscription, because Apple bills it. Cancel in iOS Settings › your name › Subscriptions first. Deleted data may remain in backups and logs for up to 30 days before it’s overwritten. If you can’t use the app, email privacy@joinbuddy.cards from the address on your account and we’ll delete it for you.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy, in a portable format;
- correct information that’s wrong (you can change your name in the app yourself);
- delete your information (or do it yourself in the app);
- stop or limit a particular use, or object to it.
Email privacy@joinbuddy.cards. We’ll confirm the request comes from the account holder, usually by replying to the email address on the account, and answer within 30 days (or sooner where the law requires). It’s free. We won’t treat you differently for using any of these rights.
EEA, UK and Switzerland
You have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection under the GDPR and UK GDPR, and where we rely on consent you can withdraw it at any time (for example by turning off camera or photo access in iOS Settings). You can complain to your local data protection authority, or in the UK to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk), though we’d like the chance to fix it first.
California and other US states
Residents of California and of states with similar laws (such as Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas and Oregon) have the right to know what we collect and how we use and disclose it, to access, correct and delete it, to opt out of its sale or sharing for targeted advertising (we do neither), and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. You can use an authorized agent; we’ll ask them for proof of your permission and may ask you to confirm your identity. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer, and if you disagree with the appeal you can contact your state Attorney General.
In the past 12 months we have collected these categories, from you and your device, for the purposes above:
- Identifiers: name, email address, account ID, IP address. Disclosed to Supabase, Railway, Apple, RevenueCat.
- Commercial information: plan, purchases, scan credits, cards you record buying and prices you paid. Disclosed to Supabase, Apple, RevenueCat.
- Visual information: photos of cards and listings. Disclosed to Supabase, Railway, Vercel, Anthropic, OpenAI.
- Internet or network activity: request and sign-in logs. Disclosed to Supabase, Railway.
- Inferences: none about you as a person. Buddy draws conclusions about cards, not people.
We don’t collect sensitive personal information as defined by California law.
Canada
You can access and correct your personal information and withdraw consent to its use, subject to legal and contractual limits. Our privacy contact, who is accountable for how we handle it, is reachable at privacy@joinbuddy.cards. If you’re not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or your provincial commissioner.
Australia
We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles. You can ask to access or correct it. If you’re not satisfied with how we deal with a complaint, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
Security
Data travels encrypted (HTTPS/TLS) and is encrypted at rest by our database and storage provider. Photos are kept in private storage, and database rules let each account read only its own scans and collection. Keys that can reach other accounts’ data stay on our server, never in the app. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we’ll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Children
Buddy isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from them. If you’re under the age of digital consent where you live (16 in some EU countries), use Buddy only with a parent’s or guardian’s permission. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, email privacy@joinbuddy.cards and we’ll delete it.
This website
joinbuddy.cards is hosted by Vercel. It sets no cookies and runs no analytics or advertising scripts. Vercel processes visitors’ IP addresses and request details to serve the site and protect it from abuse, and keeps those logs for a short period.
The site’s only form is the Android waitlist. If you join, we store your email address and the country your browser’s language setting names, in our database hosted by Supabase. We use them only to send you one email when Buddy is on Google Play, and we delete them after that email is sent, or sooner if you ask at privacy@joinbuddy.cards.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we’ll update the effective date above. If a change is material, for example a new kind of data or a new use of it, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
Bravang
[COMPANY ADDRESS]
privacy@joinbuddy.cards
See also the Terms of Use and Support.