Privacy Policy for FaceFlash

FaceFlash ("the App") is a name-and-face memory app developed and operated by VULANDER.NET PTE. LTD. ("we", "us", "our"). We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it. This Privacy Policy explains what information the App handles and where it stays.

No Accounts, No Ads

You do not need to create an account or log in to use the App. FaceFlash shows no advertisements, works with no advertising networks, and does not track you across other apps or websites. We run no server of our own that holds your data.

Your Contacts Stay on Your Phone

FaceFlash asks for read access to your Contacts once — that is how your flashcard deck gets built. Contact photos, names, notes and quiz progress remain strictly on your device. The App never uploads your address book to us or to any server of ours — we operate none. The only exceptions are the two you choose yourself, and both are described below: optional iCloud sync, which writes to your own private iCloud, and Share Group, which hands a file to whoever you send it to.

• On-device by default: all contact data and progress are stored locally on your device.
• Optional iCloud sync: if you turn on sync, your contact groups, card photos, notes and quiz progress are stored encrypted in your own private iCloud — accessible to you, not to us. It is off until you turn it on, and turning it off stops it.
• Sharing a group is your action, not ours: if you use Share Group, the App writes the chosen group’s cards — name, photo, and the company and job title if your contact card has them — into a single file on your device and hands it to the iOS share sheet. You choose where it goes: AirDrop, Messages, Mail, or Save to Files. The file is made on your iPhone and sent by you; it never passes through us, and we keep no copy of it. This is the same thing the system Contacts app does when you tap Share Contact.
• No sale or sharing by us: we do not sell your data, and we never transmit your contacts, contact photos or notes to any server of ours. The anonymous usage analytics described below carries none of them.

Finding Faces in Your Photos

A flashcard works better when the face fills it, so FaceFlash looks at each contact photo once and works out where the face sits in the frame. It uses Apple's own Vision framework, on your device, and it keeps only the answer: four numbers describing a rectangle, plus a checksum of the photo so a replaced picture gets measured again.

• It is face detection, not face recognition. The App asks Vision one question — where in this picture is a face — and stores the position. It does not create a face print, a face map, a template, an embedding or any other mathematical description of what a face looks like, and it cannot match one person's face to another photo, to another contact, or to anybody outside your own address book.
• It never leaves your device. The rectangle is stored in the App's local database and is excluded from iCloud sync, because it is cheaper to measure again than to send. It is not part of a shared group file, and it is never sent to us or to anyone else.
• No photo is uploaded to do it. The whole measurement happens on your iPhone. No contact photo is sent anywhere for analysis, by us or by Apple.

Anonymous Usage Analytics

To understand which parts of the App are used and where people get stuck, FaceFlash sends anonymous usage events to TelemetryDeck, an analytics provider operated by TelemetryDeck GmbH (Germany). Setting aside the two things you choose yourself — iCloud sync and sharing a group — this is the only data that leaves your device, and the only data that reaches anyone other than you.

• What is sent: the name of a screen or action — for example that a quiz was started, or that onboarding was completed — along with bucketed ranges rather than exact figures. Where a number is involved, it is reduced to a range before it is sent: "51–200 contacts" rather than a count, "75–99%" rather than a score.
• Technical context attached to every event: TelemetryDeck's SDK adds the same background information to each event and offers no way to remove it. It covers your app version and build number; your device model, architecture, operating system and version; your screen size, scale and orientation; your language, region, locale and time zone; whether you use light or dark mode and a left-to-right or right-to-left layout; the day and hour of use; whether the app came from the App Store or TestFlight; and your accessibility display settings, such as reduce motion, bold text, larger text sizes and invert colours. None of it identifies you. We have switched off the parts of the SDK that could be switched off — its per-install session-history counters and its automatic session event — so FaceFlash sends nothing except the events listed above.
• What is never sent: contact names, contact photos, your notes, your quiz answers, your group names, your email address, your IP address (TelemetryDeck discards it), or any identifier that names you. The device identifier used to tell one install from another is hashed before it leaves your device and cannot be reversed to identify you or your device.
• Your choice: FaceFlash asks before it sends anything. Analytics is introduced on the privacy screen during setup, with a switch to refuse it there, and it is sent only once you have passed that screen. You can change your mind at any time in Settings › Privacy › Share Anonymous Usage Data. Turning it off stops all analytics immediately.

How Long Things Are Kept, and How to Delete Them

• Everything on your device: your cards, photos, notes, groups and quiz history stay until you delete them. Deleting a card, a group, or the App itself removes them immediately and completely — the App keeps no archive and we hold no copy to restore.
• Anything you synced to iCloud: turning sync off stops the App writing anything further, but whatever it has already written stays in your own private iCloud, under your Apple Account, until you remove it — and it survives deleting the App. To clear it, go to Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Manage Account Storage on your device and delete FaceFlash's data. We cannot do this for you, because we have no access to your private iCloud; only you and Apple do.
• The anonymous usage events: these are held by TelemetryDeck under our analytics plan's retention window, after which they fall out of every report we are able to run; TelemetryDeck's own policy commits to deleting data once it is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected for. Because the events carry no name, email, account or reversible identifier — see "What is never sent" above — there is no way for us or for TelemetryDeck to pick out the ones that came from your device. That is the point of collecting them this way, and it is also the reason we cannot hand you a copy of "your" analytics or delete it selectively: there is nothing in it to match to you.
• How to stop it: switch off Settings › Privacy › Share Anonymous Usage Data and collection stops at once, with nothing further sent. Deleting the App ends it permanently.
• The public beta email: deleted once the TestFlight invitation has been sent, or sooner on request.

If you have a question about any of this, or want to make a request about your data, write to us at the address below and we will answer.

Public Beta Email

If you request access to the public beta, the email address you provide is used once — to send your TestFlight invitation. It is not added to a newsletter and is not shared. You can ask for its removal at any time via faceflash.vulander.net.

Contact Us

The data controller for FaceFlash is:

VULANDER.NET PTE. LTD.
22 Sin Ming Lane, #06-76 Midview City, Singapore 573969
Registered in Singapore, UEN 202639834K
Email: david@vulander.net

For questions, feedback or a data request, email the address above or use the support form. You can also post an idea on the feature board.