Privacy Policy

What the app does

Prices Nearby reads product price tags and compares nearby price observations. Uploaded photos stay owner-only. When you confirm a scan, its validated product, price, conditions, observation time and public store location may be shared in other users’ comparisons. Your original photo and precise capture coordinates are not shown in those comparisons.

Information we process

We process your email and account identifier for sign-in, the photo you choose or take, capture time and time zone, photo GPS when present, and the phone location available when you capture or select the photo. Recognition, store matches, corrections and feedback are linked to the scan. Service identifiers, errors, processing times and model usage help operate and diagnose the app.

Providers and location

AWS supplies authentication, protected photo storage, service infrastructure and store search. OpenAI processes a resized, metadata-free copy of the photo for recognition; the app does not send raw GPS coordinates to the vision model. We request that OpenAI not store the analysis response. Provider processing and retention follow their own policies, including OpenAI API data controls. Processing may occur outside your country, including the United States. Location access is optional and used while the app is in use. The system photo picker accesses the selected photo rather than requesting the entire library.

Retention and local cache

Cloud photos are scheduled to expire after 90 days and scan/price metadata after 365 days. Lifecycle cleanup is asynchronous and may take additional time. Service logs are configured for approximately 30 days. Account information remains until removed. A protected, account-separated device cache has a 64 MiB limit, including metadata, with no time-based expiry. When full, it removes the least recently used photos. Local copies may outlive cloud-photo retention until capacity eviction, sign-out, uninstall or operating-system cache reclamation. Cache files and local scan history are excluded from device backups. Signing out or changing accounts clears the previous account’s photo cache; local history references remain account-separated. The app never saves signed download URLs, tokens in that cache, or photos into your Photos library.

Your choices and assistance

You may deny location access, select only photos you wish to upload, mark incorrect information and sign out. Taking or choosing a photo starts upload and recognition. Use only photos you have permission to share and avoid including people or unnecessary personal information. Contact support@ideaspike.com for access, correction, or account/cloud-data deletion assistance. This release does not provide an in-app account deletion control. Removing the app removes its local files but does not itself remove cloud records. Applicable privacy rights remain available.

Other services and updates

The app includes no advertising or cross-app tracking SDK. Apple’s App Store, TestFlight and device services have their own policies. Feedback you choose to send through TestFlight may be reviewed by the developer. Opening website links sends normal web request information to the destination; information you send to support is used to respond. We update this product-specific policy when processing changes.