App Store Privacy

Revisiting Privacy

At Bardun we’ve always considered Privacy of your data to be a core feature. Recently the Apple App store changed how privacy information from apps is showed to end users and we had to submit this information as well.

Bardun App privacy

Bardun app privacy was actually very simple. We do not collect any data about you!

The Privacy details page from Apple has information about what the types of data are what it means for data to be collected. Types of data include personal identifying information, contacts, tracking information and more. Data collection is-

“Collect” refers to transmitting data off the device in a way that allows you and/or your third-party partners to access it for a period longer than what is necessary to service the transmitted request in real time.

At Bardun,

• We do not require login or sign-up that identifies you for using the app.
• In Bardun most features happen on your device itself and no data is sent to our servers.
• We do not use third party trackers that analyze app usage.
• Import contacts from Google requires login to Google, but we do not store these login tokens on our end for the long term. We require you to re-login every time and generate a new login token per request or import.

Designing features with privacy in mind is more complex for us and more importantly does make some use-cases burdensome for you (like having to login to import every time). Not tracking users is also a loss because of valuable information we could understand from your data. However we are going to continue to favour privacy to the greatest degree possible - because that is what is right for you! There are many additional features that require additional server processing but we are going slow on those till we figure out proper mechanisms to implement those. We will continue to be transparent with you as we make that journey with you.

Why privacy?

Apple is giving Privacy the correct focus it needs. They go on to state that-

Privacy is a fundamental human right.

Other organizations have published good resources on why privacy matters. Read more on these topics from the Electronic Frontier Foundation or from Duck. In particular articles like the “nothing to hide” argument is flawed are some of our favorites.

Some more reasons why privacy matters more than ever-

• Contact and Note information is extremely private. It includes information about our loved ones, colleagues including birthdays, personal details and more. I would not want to share that data so that they can be targeted with ads or even worse, be victims of identity theft.
• A company can have well thought of plans, but even a single employee can read data from users. Large companies like facebook do fire employees that snoop on data but to their credit, facebook has built controls to monitor such activity. Most small companies and startups simply do not have the resources or priority to build these checks.
• Malicious attacks are always happening. Some popular incidents highlight that even large companies cannot sufficiently protect themselves. This happens much more often for smaller companies and startups, but is not as widely reported. Heck, there are thousands of exposed databases at all times with user data.
• Companies get bought and priorities change. Promises made about data can easily be changed.

At Bardun we want to build your trust in our products. We make a stronger promise about keeping your data safe… since we do not collect it.

As users we should expect apps to respect privacy by default and not the other way around.