Privacy Policy — Rarebit

The short version

Rarebit has no account, no login and no server that stores your collection. Your photos, cards, grades and history live on your iPhone. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no attribution SDK and no tracking of any kind.

There are exactly two moments when information leaves your device, and both happen only because you asked for them: looking up which region a photo was taken in, and trading a card with somebody sitting next to you. Both are described in full below.

What stays on your device

Every photo you capture, along with the card it mints — its grade, mint number, rarity, foil, tier and the provenance checks behind it — is written to the app’s own container on your iPhone. So is your handle, your collection value history, your wantlist and your settings.

This data is included in your device backups if you have iCloud Backup or encrypted local backups turned on, in the same way as any other app’s data. Rarebit itself uploads none of it.

You can delete all of it at any time from Settings, either as cards only or as a complete reset. Deleting the app removes everything as well.

Camera

Rarebit can only mint a card from a photo taken with the camera inside the app. There is deliberately no way to import from your photo library, because a card’s whole meaning rests on the photo having been taken in front of the food. Rarebit never reads your photo library.

Each capture is analysed on your device to grade it and to check it came from a real camera rather than a screen. That analysis uses Apple’s on-device Vision framework and the phone’s own depth and motion sensors. The image is not sent anywhere to be graded.

Location

If you allow it, Rarebit records a coarse location with a capture so it can tell which region the dish was caught in, unlock regionally-locked dishes, and confirm you were at a venue running a drop. Rarebit requests reduced accuracy and never asks for precise location.

To turn coordinates into a region name, Rarebit asks Apple’s geocoding service. That request goes to Apple, not to us, and is covered by Apple’s Privacy Policy. We never receive it. The result stored on your card is a region code such as CA or JP, plus an optional place name.

Declining location is fine. Cards still mint; you simply cannot catch region-locked dishes or claim venue drops.

Trading with somebody nearby

Trading in Rarebit happens face to face. When you open the trade screen, your iPhone advertises itself on the local network so another phone running Rarebit in the same room can find it, using Apple’s MultipeerConnectivity framework over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The connection is encrypted and direct between the two devices. No server of ours is involved, and we never see any of it.

This is the one case where your data goes to another person, so it is worth being precise about what is sent. Once you and the other collector both accept a connection, each phone sends the other a list of the cards it has available to trade. That list includes each card’s dish name, grade, mint number, rarity, index value, region and a small thumbnail of the photo. Cards you have locked, and cards that are not verified, are never included.

Nothing is sent until you open the trade screen, nothing is sent until you accept the connection, and no card changes hands until both people accept the proposed trade. Leaving the screen ends the session.

Sharing a card

Sharing composes an image of your card and hands it to the iOS share sheet, or saves it to your photo library if you choose to. Where it goes after that is entirely your decision. Rarebit requests add-only access to your photo library, which is the narrowest permission that allows saving; it cannot read anything already in there.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Rarebit schedules them locally on your iPhone. They only ever concern real deadlines — a season closing on a dish you have not caught, a set you are one card from finishing, a venue drop opening. No push server is involved and no notification data leaves your device. Each category can be turned off individually in Settings.

Purchases

Rarebit Plus is sold through Apple’s In-App Purchase system. Apple processes the payment and tells the app whether a valid subscription exists. We never see your payment details, and Rarebit neither stores nor transmits them. See Apple’s Privacy Policy for how Apple handles the transaction. Your subscription status is held on your device so the app knows which features to unlock.

Widgets

The home screen and lock screen widgets read a small summary — your collection value, card count, nearest set and what closes soon — from a shared container on your device. That summary never leaves your iPhone.

What we do not collect

We do not collect your name, email address, contacts, precise location, photo library, device identifiers, advertising identifiers, crash reports or usage analytics. Rarebit links no third-party analytics, attribution or advertising SDKs. There is no account to create and nothing to log in to.

Children

Rarebit is rated 4+ and contains no objectionable material. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children, because we do not collect information at all.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at https://soxoa.com/rarebit/privacy with a new last-updated date. If Rarebit ever started collecting something it does not collect today, the app would ask for your consent first.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or anything else:

hello@soxoa.com

Soxoa LLC, Sacramento, California