Data Policy

1. Our Approach

Zcribbler is a social app, not a data company. Here are the deliberate choices we have made:

• No passwords to leak. We use Google Sign-In and Apple Sign-In as the only ways to log in. We never store a password.
• No ad networks or trackers. We have zero advertising SDKs in the app. No tracking pixels. No cookies. We use Firebase Analytics to understand how features are used, and you can turn it off in Settings.
• Photos are cleaned before upload. When you pick a photo from your library, the app strips GPS coordinates, camera details, and timestamps from the file metadata (EXIF) before uploading. The version on our server is clean.
• Invite matching is temporary. When someone clicks an invite link and later installs the app, we temporarily store limited device signals (IP address, screen dimensions, timezone, locale) to match the install to the invite. This data is automatically deleted within one hour.

2. What We Store

Here is everything we store, why, and who can see it.

Data you give us

What	Why	Who Sees It
Name, email	To create your account	Us only (email never shown to others)
Username	Your identity in the app	Your connections and people who find you
Date of birth	Age verification (required)	Us only (never shown to anyone)
Profile picture	Your avatar	Anyone who sees your profile
Tagline, bio	Tells people about you	Anyone who sees your profile
Zcribbles	The core of the app	Your audience (connections or a Space)
Replies, stamps	Reacting to content	Anyone who can see the zcribble
Blips	Ephemeral sharing	Your connections (auto-deletes)
Direct Messages	Private conversations	You and the other person only
Spaces membership	Private group participation	Space members
Poll votes	Participating in polls	Vote counts are public; individual votes are not
Location	Tagging events/memories (opt-in)	Anyone who sees the tagged zcribble
Reports, appeals	Safety and moderation	Us + moderation team
Settings	Your preferences	Us only

Data we collect automatically

What	Why	Who Sees It
Login IP address	Detect suspicious logins	Us only
Device info (OS, model, app version)	Fix crashes, manage sessions	Us only
Firebase Analytics events	Understand feature usage	Us + Google (anonymised)
Crash reports	Fix bugs	Us + Google (Crashlytics)
Push notification token	Send you notifications	Us + Google (FCM)
Invite device signals	Match invite links to installs	Us only (deleted after 1 hour)
Consent records	Legal audit trail	Us only

On-device processing: Some processing happens on your device before data reaches our servers. EXIF metadata is stripped from photos before upload. Videos and audio may be transcoded on your device to reduce file size. Sensor data (accelerometer) is used for visual effects and never leaves your device.

3. Third-Party Services

We use a small number of service providers to run Zcribbler. Here is what each one does.

4. What Happens When You Delete Your Account

Here is exactly what "delete" means, step by step:

• Day 0: You confirm deletion
  You type "DELETE" and re-authenticate with your sign-in provider (Google or Apple). Your account becomes immediately invisible. No one can see your profile, your zcribbles, your blips, or find you in search.
• Days 0 to 180: Grace period
  Your data sits in the database in a soft-deleted state. It is invisible to all users and the app. This window exists because Indian law (IT Intermediary Guidelines Rules, 2021) requires us to retain data for a period in case of legal requests. During this time, you can contact us to restore your account.
• Approximately Day 50: Media files are purged
  Your uploaded photos, videos, and audio files are moved to a deletion queue and automatically purged. After this point, your media is gone permanently.
• Day 180: Hard deletion
  Our deletion system permanently removes all your remaining data from the database: every zcribble, every reply, every stamp, every blip, every notification. This process is batched and irreversible.
• After Day 180: Nothing remains
  Your data is gone. The only traces that may remain: (1) Direct Messages you sent show "[Deleted User]" as the sender, with the message content preserved for the other participant; (2) Spaces you created are transferred to the next admin or oldest member; (3) child safety reports are preserved as required by law (POCSO Act); (4) consent audit records are anonymised (your user ID is removed) but preserved for legal compliance.

5. Content Labels

When you create a zcribble, our backend may generate descriptive labels to help with search and discovery (for example, categorising content by type or subject). These labels describe general content categories, not personal attributes. Your raw media is not sent to any third-party AI service, and your content is not used to train AI models.

6. Location

How location works in Zcribbler:

• We never access your location in the background.
• We never build a location history or movement profile.
• GPS is used only when you tap the locate button while creating an event or memory zcribble.
• When you tap it, we get your coordinates, reverse-geocode them to a place name, and show you the result.
• If you attach the location, it is stored with that zcribble and visible to whoever can see it.
• If you don't attach it, the coordinates are discarded immediately.

You can revoke location permission at any time through your device settings. The app works perfectly without it.

7. Security

How we keep your data safe:

• No passwords: We don't store passwords because we don't use them. Google Sign-In and Apple Sign-In handle authentication.
• Everything is encrypted: Data moving between your phone and our servers is encrypted (TLS 1.2+). Data stored in our database and media storage is encrypted at rest (AES-256).
• Login tokens are hashed: Session tokens are hashed with a cryptographic key stored in a separate secrets vault. Even if someone accessed our database, the tokens would be unusable.
• The database is locked down: Our production database has no public internet access. It sits in a private network. Only our app servers can reach it.
• Photos use signed URLs: Every photo and video is served through a time-limited, cryptographically signed URL. You cannot guess or forge a URL. The URLs expire after 7 days.
• Rate limiting everywhere: Per user (120 requests/minute), per authentication endpoint (30 requests/minute), and per IP at the CDN level (1,000 requests/minute).
• No secrets in our code: All API keys, credentials, and signing keys are stored in a dedicated secrets vault, never in source code.
• We don't log your data: Application logs contain request IDs and user IDs for debugging, never your name, email, message content, or photos.

8. Version History

Version	Date	Changes
1.0	April 3, 2026	Initial publication.
1.1	April 10, 2026	Comprehensive rewrite. Removed stale on-device AI references. Removed infrastructure provider names. Added Apple Sign-In, Spaces, Direct Messages, invite fingerprinting, and content labels coverage.

Have Questions?

If anything is unclear, email us at privacy@zcribbler.com.

For formal privacy requests or grievances, see our Privacy Policy.

For the full legal details, see our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.