PrivRead is made by Neil Charlton (“we”). This page explains what PrivRead does with your information.
The short version: We never receive your documents. The only things that can ever reach us are crash and performance reports from Apple, and only if you’ve chosen to share those with app developers.
What PrivRead stores, and where
Everything PrivRead stores stays on your iPhone.
Your documents and their original files
Stored only on your iPhone, encrypted, and left out of iCloud and computer backups.
Where you stopped
Your place in each document, and when you last opened it, which puts your library in order. Nothing from the document itself. Encrypted and left out of backups. You can turn this off in Settings › What PrivRead keeps › Where you stopped, which also forgets the places already saved.
Things you share to PrivRead
Things you share from another app wait, encrypted and left out of backups, until PrivRead adds them to your library when you next open it. Once your free imports are used up, they wait until you buy the one-off unlock. Sharing needs your iPhone to be unlocked.
The count of free imports used
Numbers only, one for each kind (files, scans, photos, paste and sharing), and nothing from your documents. Kept in your iPhone’s keychain, so it stays if you delete PrivRead and install it again. It’s kept for this iPhone only: it never moves to another iPhone and isn’t synced to iCloud Keychain.
Your settings
The voice, the reading speed, the switches in Settings, whether you’ve closed the tip about voices, and the result of the natural voice’s first-use check (your iPhone’s model, the app and iOS versions, and whether the check passed). These are ordinary app settings, so iPhone backups include them, as they do other apps’ settings. None of them holds anything from your documents.
You can see all of this in Settings › What PrivRead keeps. Delete everything, on that screen, deletes your documents, where you stopped and anything waiting to be added. Your settings and the count of free imports used stay, so deleting doesn’t give free imports back. Deleting PrivRead from your iPhone deletes everything it stored except that count.
What leaves your iPhone
PrivRead has no account, no advertising, no tracking and no analytics of its own.
- When you export. Export everything, in Settings › What PrivRead keeps, makes one .zip file of your documents and their original files, and hands it to the place you choose, such as Files, Mail or AirDrop. What happens to it then depends on that place.
- iPhone backups include your PrivRead settings (above), but not your documents, where you stopped or things waiting to be added. An encrypted backup can also hold the count of free imports, for restoring to the same iPhone.
- Crash and performance reports. If you’ve chosen to share analytics with app developers, Apple may send us a report when PrivRead crashes, and figures on how it performs, such as slow launches, hangs, battery use and disk writes. A crash report shows which part of the app’s code was running when it crashed, and PrivRead’s own code never puts document text into it. The reports aren’t linked to you: there’s no account, and the only identifier Apple gives us is an anonymous code for the device. That’s why PrivRead’s App Store privacy label lists Crash Data and Performance Data as “Data Not Linked to You”. We use them only to fix problems in PrivRead. You can turn this sharing off in your iPhone’s Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements.
Buying the unlock
PrivRead is free to try: you can add 2 documents each way (files, scans, photos, paste and sharing). If you buy the one-off unlock, or redeem a code, the App Store handles it, using your Apple Account. Apple tells PrivRead only that the unlock was bought, never who you are, and we never see your payment details. If you use Family Sharing, the people in your family group can use the unlock too; Apple handles that as well.
Things iOS does for you
Some things you do in PrivRead are handled by iOS itself, under your iPhone’s settings:
- When you add a document or a photo that’s kept in iCloud, iOS’s file and photo pickers may download it first.
- The camera is used only while you scan pages. Scanned pages and photos are read by iOS’s text recognition.
- PrivRead reads what you’ve copied only when you tap Paste. If you copied it on another device, iOS fetches it from that device.
- If you play to an AirPlay speaker or TV, iOS sends the sound to it over your network.
- If you download more Apple voices in your iPhone’s Settings, iOS downloads them from Apple.
Voices
PrivRead reads English documents, and its voices run on your iPhone. On iPhones that can run it, the natural voice is built into the app, so nothing is downloaded; Settings › Natural voice says whether yours can. Apple’s voices are part of iOS.
App switcher
The app switcher always shows a plain PrivRead screen, never your document.
Children
PrivRead has no account and asks nobody for personal details, children included.
Your rights
Because PrivRead has no account and nothing that reaches us is linked to you, we hold no information about you that we could find, show you or delete. If you have a question about your privacy, contact us below. In the UK you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk); in the EU, to your country’s data protection authority.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top and describe the change in the app’s release notes.
Contact
Neil Charlton