Owesum privacy policy
What Owesum collects, why, and what it never touches. Written against what the app actually does rather than what a template says an app might do.
The short version
- You can use Owesum without giving an email address, a name, or anything else.
- Receipt photographs never leave your phone. The text is read on the device and only the amount you confirm is saved.
- There are no ads, no analytics, no tracking, and no third-party advertising or measurement code in the app at all.
- Owesum never asks for bank details, card numbers, or payment credentials, and has no way to move money.
What the app stores
Owesum exists to record who paid for what, so most of what it stores is that record. In full:
- An account. Created automatically the first time you open the app, with no email and no sign-up. It is tied to that installation.
- An email address, only if you add one. Adding one is what makes the account recoverable on a new phone. It is verified with a one-time code. Without it, losing the phone loses the account.
- A display name and username, so other people can recognise you in a group and add you to one.
- Groups, expenses and settlements: amounts, dates, descriptions, who paid and who owes. For a sports club: sessions, who attended, and payments handed to the organiser.
- Names you type for other people. You can add someone to a group who does not use the app. Their name is stored, along with who added it. Nothing else about them is collected, and they are never contacted.
- Feedback you send from inside the app, and the app version it came from.
What it does not collect
- No location, no contacts, no photo library beyond the single image you pick.
- No advertising identifiers, device fingerprints, or usage analytics.
- No bank, card, or payment information. Owesum records that money changed hands; it never handles the money.
Receipts and your camera
Scanning a receipt uses the camera, and the text is recognised on your device — ML Kit on Android, Apple Vision on iOS. The photograph is not uploaded, not stored on our servers, and not sent anywhere.
This matters beyond the usual privacy argument: receipts routinely carry the last four digits of a card.
Who else can see it
The people in your groups. That is the point of a shared ledger: everyone in a group can see its expenses, its balances, and the names of its members. A sports club's members can see every member's balance, which is how a club's books are meant to work.
Our hosting provider. Owesum's database and accounts run on Supabase, which stores the data on our behalf.
Google or Apple, for distributing the app and, on Android, if you choose to sign in with Google — in which case Google tells us your name and email address.
Nobody else. Your data is not sold, rented, shared with advertisers, or used to train anything.
Deleting your account
Settings, then Delete account. Your profile is anonymised and your login is removed.
Your share of a group's expenses is not deleted, and this is deliberate: a group's record belongs to everyone in it, and removing one person's entries would silently change what everyone else is owed. Those records stay, with your name replaced. Because there is currently no way to delete a group, in practice they are kept indefinitely.
The full explanation, including how to delete your account after uninstalling, is on the account deletion page.
Children
Owesum is not directed at children and is not intended for use by anyone under 13.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who can see it, the date below changes and the new version appears here before the change ships in the app.
Contact
Questions, or a request about your data: sunnyday130826@gmail.com