Privacy Policy
- No accounts, no ads, no tracking, and we never sell your data.
- Scans are read on your device first. A photo only leaves your device when the on-device read fails and AI identification is enabled — and then only to identify the item.
- The only things our server ever receives: that photo, a small text record of what was read, and an anonymous device ID used for rate limiting.
What the apps do
Each app photographs a maker’s mark (on cast iron, a pocket watch, a lighter, or glassware) and tells you what it is. Recognition runs on your device first, using Apple’s built-in text recognition (OCR). For most scans, nothing leaves your phone.
Camera and photo library
The apps ask for camera access so you can photograph an item’s markings, and (if you use it) photo library access so you can pick an existing photo instead. Photos are used only to identify the item in them. The apps never scan your library in the background and never access photos you didn’t explicitly take or pick.
When a photo leaves your device
If the on-device read is low-confidence and AI identification is enabled, the app sends that one photo over an encrypted connection to our identification server, which passes it to our AI provider (Anthropic) to work out the maker and markings. The result comes back to your phone and that’s the end of it — the photo is processed to answer your scan, not to build a profile of you. Anthropic processes the image under its commercial API terms.
Text telemetry on missed scans
When a scan needs the AI fallback, the app also sends our server a small text-only record: what the on-device OCR read (for example, “WAGNERWARE”), how confident it was, and what the AI concluded. No image and no personal information is included. We review these records to improve each app’s identification catalog, so the next person’s scan works without the fallback.
Anonymous device identifier
Requests to our server include Apple’s identifierForVendor — a random ID that is not your name, phone number, or Apple ID and that we cannot link to you. We use it for one thing: a daily fair-use cap on AI identifications, so one device can’t run up our costs. It resets if you delete all of our apps.
What we don’t do
- No accounts. You never sign in, and we don’t know who you are.
- No ads and no third-party advertising or analytics SDKs.
- No sale or sharing of data with data brokers or anyone else.
- No tracking as Apple defines it — we don’t link data about you across other companies’ apps or websites, so the apps never show Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt.
How long we keep things
Photos are processed to produce your identification and are not stored by us. The text-only miss records are kept only as long as they’re useful for improving the catalogs, then deleted. We keep no other data about you — your saved collection lives on your device, not our servers.
Purchases
All purchases (passes and subscriptions) are handled entirely by Apple through your Apple ID. We never see your payment details.
Children
The apps are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect any personal information from anyone, children included.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we’ll update this page and the effective date above.
Contact
Questions about privacy or anything else: support@kenicallabs.com. A human reads it.