Sift Privacy Policy

Your transactions, categories, subscriptions, loans, and receipt scans are saved only on your iPhone using SwiftData. We have no account system and no server that holds your financial data.

To understand where people get stuck — for example, which onboarding step someone leaves on — Sift sends a small amount of anonymous usage data to a private dashboard we run ourselves. This is how we find and fix confusing parts of the app.

What is sent:

• A random, anonymous IDcreated on your device. It is not your name, email, Apple ID, or account, it isn’t linked to any of them, and we can’t use it to identify you.
• Which step you reached — for example that an onboarding page appeared, that onboarding finished, that the subscription screen was shown or closed, or that a purchase completed — and when.
• Basic technical context — the app version and how many seconds a session lasted.

What is never sent:

• Your transactions, amounts, merchants, receipts, balances, or any of your financial data.
• Your name, email address, Apple ID, or payment details.
• Any advertising identifier — Sift contains no advertising or third-party tracking SDKs.

This data goes only to our own private dashboard, stored in a database hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt). It is never sold, never shared with advertisers, and never used to build a profile of you. We use no third-party analytics services such as Google Analytics or Facebook.

Legal basis (GDPR). We rely on our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) in understanding and improving the app, using data that is anonymous and kept to the minimum needed. You have the right to object to this at any time — just email us at support@iosvisual.com.

Receipt and Apple Pay screenshot scanning uses Apple’s on-device Vision framework. Photos and extracted totals never leave your device.

If you add your own DeepSeek API key in Settings, your coach questions and relevant spending figures are sent to DeepSeek to generate a response. This is entirely optional and off by default — all core insights are computed on-device regardless.

Your API key is stored securely in the iOS Keychain, never on our servers.

Data shown on your Home Screen widget and Lock Screen Live Activity is shared with the widget extension via a private app group container on your device only.

Sift is a general-audience app and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children — the only data the app sends is the anonymous usage data described above, which cannot identify anyone.