Privacy Policy

The short version

Hoozat has no accounts. We never ask for your name, your email address or anything else about you, and there is nothing in the app to sign in to.

When you scan, one still image leaves your device, is used to answer that one scan, and is then discarded. We do not store it, we do not log it and we do not use it for anything else.

There is no analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no third-party software in the app collecting anything about you.

Who we are

[PROVIDER] is responsible for the personal data described here — the data controller, in the language of UK data protection law. Write to [CONTACT_EMAIL] about anything in this policy.

What happens on your device and stays there

The camera preview is processed entirely on your iPhone. The app finds faces in it to draw the brackets you see and to decide which person a scan is about, using Apple's own on-device face detection. None of that leaves the device and none of it is recorded: it describes where a face is in the picture, not who it is.

The same is true of a photograph you choose from your library. The app reads your library to show you the grid and finds the faces in the picture you pick, all on the device. Only the photograph you confirm is ever sent anywhere, and only as described below.

The last ten people you have looked at are kept on your device so you can get back to them, together with the cropped picture of the face each scan was made from. That list and those pictures are stored in the app's own folder on your iPhone, are included in your device backup, and are never uploaded. A picture is deleted whenever its entry leaves the list, and deleting the app deletes all of it.

The image you scan

When you tap scan, the app encodes one still image — usually a crop around the face it is about rather than the whole frame — and sends it to our service over an encrypted connection. Our service passes it to Amazon Web Services' face recognition, which compares the face against a database of well-known people and answers with a name, and the image is then discarded. It is not written to storage and it is not written to any log, by us or on the way. The answer itself is never cached.

Comparing a face in order to work out whose it is means processing biometric data, and the law treats that as a special category needing particular care. We ask for your explicit consent to it by the act of scanning: nothing is sent until you tap the button, and if you would rather it were not sent, do not scan. That consent covers your use of the app; it does not and cannot cover the person in the picture, which is why the Terms of Use ask you not to use Hoozat on private individuals.

We keep no copy of the image, no copy of the face measurements taken from it, and no record linking a scan to you or to your device. There is nothing to retain, so our retention period for it is none.

The recognition is carried out by Amazon Web Services in its London region. Our own service runs on Cloudflare, whose network is worldwide, so the request may be received outside the United Kingdom.

Your network address

Like any internet service, ours sees the network (IP) address your request comes from. We use it for one thing: counting requests, so that no single address can run up the cost of the recognition service. That counting is why we have a lawful basis of legitimate interests here rather than consent — without it the service could not be kept running or affordable.

The counts are held only for as long as the limit they enforce covers, and they are not joined to anything else, not used to build a profile of you, and not used to identify you.

Pictures and profiles the app fetches

Once a scan has an answer, your device fetches that person's photograph and the pictures on their profile directly from the services that host them — TheTVDB and Wikimedia Commons. Those requests go from your iPhone, so those services see your network address in the same way any website you visit would, and their own privacy policies apply to what they do with it. Wikimedia's policy asks that an app identify itself, so the app sends its name and version and nothing about you.

Biographies come from Wikipedia, and the profile details and credits from TheTVDB, both by way of our service rather than from your device.

Permissions the app asks for

The camera, so it can show you a preview and take the still a scan is made from. Your photo library, so you can scan a photograph you already have — the app reads it only to show you the grid and to read the picture you choose, and it never writes to it. iOS asks for each of these the first time it is needed, and you can change your mind at any time in Settings.

Subscriptions

If the app offers a subscription and you buy one, Apple handles the purchase and we never see your payment details. To know whether to unlock the app, our service needs to be told that a valid subscription exists: it is shown a receipt signed by Apple, or — when there is no subscription — a token from Apple that lets one device be told apart from another without saying whose it is. Neither identifies you to us.

What we do not do

We do not sell or share your personal data. We do not advertise in the app or let anybody else advertise in it. There is no analytics and no crash reporting of our own, no advertising identifier is read, and there is no third-party software development kit in the app that collects anything — the one outside component the app uses draws animations and makes no network request at all.

We do not use anything you scan to train, test or improve any recognition system, ours or anybody else's.

If you download the app from the App Store, Apple may give us anonymous summary statistics about downloads and crashes. Those come from Apple, are not joined to anything in the app, and Apple's own privacy policy governs them.

Children

Hoozat is not directed at children and we do not knowingly process any child's personal data. If you believe a child has sent us something, write to [CONTACT_EMAIL] and we will look into it.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or erased, to object to or restrict how we use it, to have it given to you or to somebody else in a portable form, and to withdraw a consent you have given.

In practice we hold almost nothing to act on: the images are discarded, nothing is kept about who scanned what, and the history on your device is yours to clear. That is a feature of how the app is built rather than a refusal — write to [CONTACT_EMAIL] and we will answer. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when what the app does changes. The date at the top says when it was last changed, and a change that matters will be pointed out in the app rather than left to be noticed.