RECaf and Your Data

At RECaf, we take data privacy very seriously. Our basic philosophy is that if we don’t absolutely need information from you in order to make your experience better using the app, we don’t record it in the first place.

We charge users for a subscription so we can avoid having to sell your data or do anything questionable to make money and stay in business. We may use some of your data responsibly to improve RECaf, but that’s as far as we will ever go.

Some more details about how we use your data:

Identifiable Data

All your recorded caffeine data stays local to your device and never hits our RECaf servers. The data is not even recorded inside RECaf, but rather goes directly to your private Apple HealthKit data storage. HealthKit data, too, is local to your device and is not sent directly to Apple or to us. It is stored in an encrypted, secure fashion on Apple’s servers in such a way that not even they can access it.

To learn more about how HealthKit data is stored and your privacy, visit Apple’s web site on privacy.

What specifically do we store, and how?

Your subscription status within RECaf is stored on our servers, in order to make all subscriptions work on any device on which you install RECaf. This is for convenience purposes only, so when you get a new phone or open RECaf on a second device, you can restore your existing subscription.

The subscription itself and all financial transactions involved go through Apple’s App Store, so we never see any information about your credit card, or even your name. We quite literally have no idea who you are, unless you contact us.

What we do with your uploaded data?

We act responsibly with it. Beyond what is needed to run RECaf we will not share your data with third parties. We will never, ever, sell your data. It wouldn’t just be a terrible thing to do to you, it would also be terrible for our business, which is to give you a great tool for recording your caffeine intake.

How is your data shared with third parties?

Signing up for our newsletter is completely optional. If you choose to give us your email address on our mailing list signup form, your email will be sent to our newsletter service provider so we can email you occasionally. The newsletter is for informational purposes only, and will not be used to sell third-party products or services. We may, however, occasionally inform you of offers for our own products. Again, this newsletter service is completely optional. RECaf will behave no differently if you never sign up for the newsletter.

If you email support to ask for assistance, your email address and our conversations are also then stored within our customer service help desk provider.

At your request, we will gladly delete your email and all historical conversations we have had during customer support transactions. We will never share any of those transactions with anyone else, unless you explicitly permit us to do so.

How is your data used inside RECaf?

If you email us with a problem, we may ask for access to your data, as needed to assist with the problem. This data will only be used to help you solve your issue. We will delete it as soon as your problem is resolved.

iCloud Data

In oder to keep your customizations within RECaf safe and backed up, a small amount of preferences data can optionally be sent to Apple’s iCloud servers. This data is stored by Apple in a secure location that we cannot access. Only your devices logged into your AppleID will ever have access to this data. Storing this information in iCloud is optional; RECaf’s iCloud backup can be switched off at any time in More > App Settings. Turning off iCloud sync will mean that any changes you make within RECaf, such as your notification preferences, your customized source list, your favorites, and so on, will not be synced with other devices. When you get a new phone, in other words, you will lose all those customizations. You will not, however, lose your caffeine log, as that is stored separately inside your HealthKit data storage.

To learn more about how Apple stores your iCloud data, visit their privacy web site.

Anonymous Data Captured in-app to Improve RECaf

Beyond what has been outlined above, there is some anonymous/pseudonymous usage data RECaf tracks in-app. None of this data can be directly linked to you, or reveal anything you record with RECaf in any identifiable way.

We may track pseudonymous usage data: for example “Someone recorded a Latte at 8am” or “Someone just used a Siri shortcut to log a coffee”. Our tracking doesn't get access to any of the caffeine data you recorded; only high level events about what is happening in the app. We do this so we can track popularity of features and prioritize improvements.

RECaf also uses a crash reporter to aggregate and track crashes. These reports include non-identifiable information such as what iPhone you have, where the crash occurred, some logs we create to help track down what happened, and an installation unique identifier to help correlate how many users experienced the crash vs repeat crashes for the same user.