Privacy Policy

Last updated: 4 August 2026

What we collect

From the app: nothing. ADVCT has no account system, no user profile, no analytics SDK, and no crash reporting. Your recordings, transcripts, and summaries are created on your device and stay under your control. We do not receive them, and we could not read them if we wanted to.

The only personal information connected to ADVCT is what you give our payment provider when you buy the app, described in Buying ADVCT below. We never receive your payment details.

Where your data lives

iPhone and iPad

Audio recordings are saved in the app's protected storage on the device that recorded them and never leave it, encrypted at rest with iOS Data Protection. Transcripts and summaries are stored on your device and — so you can read them across your own devices — sync through your own private iCloud (CloudKit), tied to your Apple Account, where only you can reach them. Transcription and summarization run on-device using Apple's built-in Speech and Foundation Models frameworks.

Mac

The same, with recordings encrypted using a key held in the Mac's Keychain, on top of FileVault.

Android

Transcripts, summaries, and to-dos are stored in the app's private storage in an encrypted database (SQLCipher), with the key held in the Android Keystore — hardware-backed (StrongBox) where the device supports it. The audio files themselves sit alongside it in the app's private storage, protected by Android's own file-based encryption, which is tied to your screen lock. They are excluded from both cloud backup and phone-to-phone transfer, so a recording never leaves the device that made it unless you share it yourself. You can also turn on an app lock in Settings, which asks for your fingerprint, face, or screen lock before ADVCT will open.

Speech recognition runs on-device. Android does not use iCloud; nothing syncs anywhere unless you turn on family sharing and choose a destination yourself.

When you choose to share

Sharing is always something you start. On Apple devices, sharing a summary or transcript by Messages, Mail, or AirDrop travels through Apple's services under Apple's privacy policy and stays within your own account.

ADVCT's family sharing (the "Care Bundle") is end-to-end encrypted: the content is encrypted on your device before it leaves, and only the family members you invite hold the keys. You choose where the encrypted bundle rests — a folder on your own device, or your own Google Drive if you connect it. Every conversation, transcript, summary and to-do that travels is encrypted before it leaves your device, so the storage in the middle only ever sees ciphertext. Alongside them sits a small membership file — the name of the person the record is about, who is on the share, and each person's role — which is not encrypted, because it is what lets a new family member find and join the record. It is signed by the record's owner, so nobody who can reach that folder can quietly add themselves to the share. Audio is never shared; it stays on the device that recorded it.

When ADVCT connects to the internet

ADVCT works offline. These are the only times it reaches the network, and what each one involves:

• Checking for updates (copies bought directly from us only) — the app asks updates.advct.app whether a newer version exists, at most once a day, and you can turn this off in Settings. It is a plain request for a public file: no account, no device identifier, and nothing about you is sent.
• Downloading an update — only after you tap to install one. The download is verified against a checksum before anything is installed.
• Activating a license (direct purchases only) — a one-time request to license.advct.app containing your license key and a randomly generated label for the device. It carries no name, no email, no device or advertising identifier. After activation, ADVCT validates your license entirely offline, forever — it never phones home again to check.
• Downloading the speech model (Android) — only after you tap to download it in Settings. ADVCT transcribes on the device itself, so the speech model (about 250 MB) has to be fetched once from downloads.advct.app. Each file is verified against a checksum before it is kept. Nothing about you is sent; it is an ordinary file download, and after it finishes transcription never touches the network again.
• Family sharing, if you use it — publishing or fetching an encrypted bundle contacts the storage you chose (for example Google Drive, under your own account and Google's privacy policy). If you have a push app installed to receive notifications, ADVCT sends a content-free "wake" ping so other members know to fetch; the ping contains no record data.

As with any internet request, the servers involved necessarily see the IP address it came from. For requests to advct.app that means our hosting provider, Cloudflare, whose logs we do not use to build any profile of you. We do not log license keys, IP addresses, or request contents on our side.

Buying ADVCT

If you buy ADVCT from the App Store or Google Play, that store handles the purchase under its own privacy policy, and we receive only anonymous sales totals.

If you buy directly from advct.app, the checkout is operated by Lemon Squeezy, which acts as the merchant of record and handles payment, tax, and receipts under its own privacy policy. They hold your email address, billing details, and purchase record; they send you your license key. We never see or store your payment details.

Our own activation service keeps only what licensing requires: a record that a license key has been activated on some device, and an opaque identifier for that activation so you can deactivate it later. It is not linked to your name, your email, or anything about your device.

Permissions we request

• Microphone — to record conversations.
• Speech recognition (Apple devices) — to turn recordings into text, on-device.
• Notifications — to show the recording indicator and, if you use family sharing, to tell you when something new arrives.
• Install updates (Android, direct purchases only) — so the app can install an update you have chosen to download.
• Reminders (optional, Apple devices) — only if you send a to-do to your own Reminders. ADVCT only ever adds reminders; it never reads your existing ones.
• Camera (optional) — only to scan a family-sharing invite code.

Children and recording responsibly

ADVCT records audio and is intended for adults. It is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone — because we do not collect information at all.

Recording laws differ by place, and some require every person in the conversation to consent. Whatever your age or location, make sure everyone in the room knows they are being recorded, and follow the law where you are.

Your choices

• Delete any recording, transcript, or summary in the app at any time — open it and use Delete. Everything derived from it goes too.
• Delete everything at once: Settings → Your data → Delete all my data.
• Audio is deleted automatically 90 days after it was recorded, unless you change that in Settings → Your data, where you can choose 30 days, 90 days, a year, or to keep it. The transcript and summary are kept either way, so the record of what was said survives without the recording itself sitting on your phone forever.
• Uninstalling ADVCT removes its on-device data with it.
• Turn off automatic update checks in Settings (direct purchases).
• Deactivate a device's license in Settings to free it for another device.
• For purchase data held by Lemon Squeezy, use the link in your receipt, or contact us and we will help you reach them.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects what leaves your device, we will update the date at the top and describe the change in the release notes for the version that introduces it.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about purchase data held by our payment provider: use the contact form on advct.app.