The short version
Noraneko collects nothing about you.
There is no server, no account, no analytics and no advertising. The app has no way to send your photographs or your cats anywhere, because there is nowhere for them to go.
- No account, no sign-in, no email address asked for
- No analytics, no tracking, no advertising identifiers
- No third-party code of any kind in the app
- Your photographs and cat records stay on your device
Two things do reach Apple, and only when you have allowed location. Both are described under Location, because a policy that said “nothing ever leaves” would be a tidier sentence than it is a true one.
What the app stores
All of it, in the app's own folder.
Everything Noraneko records is written to the app's private container on your device:
- The photographs you take in the app
- Each cat's record: name, coat, age, stance, and the dates and places you saw it
- The mathematical fingerprints used to tell one cat from another
- Your trainer name and id, which are printed on the cards you trade
- Cards other people have given you
It is included in your device backup if you back your device up, in the same way as any other app's data, and it is governed there by whatever you have chosen for that backup. Deleting the app deletes all of it.
Location
Optional, and the one thing that reaches outside.
If you allow it, the coordinate of a sighting is stored alongside it so you can find the cat again. You can refuse, and the app still works. A sighting is simply saved without a place.
When location is on, two things are handled by Apple rather than by this app:
- Turning a coordinate into a name you would recognise (“Plaka”) sends that coordinate to Apple's geocoding service.
- The map screens draw their tiles from Apple Maps, which involves telling Apple which area is being drawn.
Neither receives your photographs, your cats, or any identifier belonging to this app, and both are covered by Apple's own privacy policy rather than this one. With no connection, both fail quietly: sightings save without a place name and the map draws nothing. Nothing else in the app asks for a network at all.
Photographs
Taken by the camera, kept by the app.
Photographs you take are stored in the app's own container and are analysed entirely on your device, by models that ship inside the app. No photograph is uploaded for recognition, because recognition does not happen anywhere but here.
Noraneko can also save a copy of each cat to your own photo library, if you switch that on in Settings. That permission is add-only: the app can write copies and has never had the ability to read your library. There is no import from your photo library anywhere in the app, by design.
Trading
Phone to phone, with nothing in the middle.
Cards travel directly between two devices: over the local network, or over Bluetooth when there is no network. Nothing is relayed through a server, because there is no server to relay it through.
Scanning the other person's code agrees a key that only those two devices hold, and every message of the trade is encrypted with it. The key is made for one trade and discarded when it ends.
What crosses is what is on the card: the photograph, the cat's details, and the trainer name and id of whoever printed it. A card you give away carries your trainer name. That is what it is for, and you can change that name in Settings at any time.
What it never does
None of the usual machinery is here.
- accounts
- analytics
- tracking
- advertising
- crash reporting
- cloud sync
- third-party SDKs
Noraneko has no third-party dependencies of any kind. Nothing about your use of it is measured, profiled, sold or shared, and there is no mechanism in the app by which it could be.
Children
The same answer as for everybody.
Noraneko collects no personal information from anyone, of any age, and so collects none from children.
Changes
If this changes, the date changes.
Any revision to this policy moves the date at the top of the page. There is no version of it that is not the one published here.
Contact
Ask, and it will be answered.
Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does with what it records: noraneko@breakpointmobile.com