Privacy Policy — SSAI Scanning

SSAI Scanning ("SSAI Scanning," "we," "us," or "our") helps people scan, catalog, value, and manage trading-card collections. This Privacy Policy explains what information the SSAI Scanning mobile app and its supporting services collect, how we use and share it, and the choices available to you.

Summary: The app works without an account. Your collection and scan photos are stored on your device by default. If you choose to create an account, the app can privately back up that information. Card photos are not placed in the crowd-recognition pool. We do not sell personal information or share your account, collection, or card-photo content with data brokers. Free iOS builds may show limited, non-personalized advertising.

1Information kept on your device

The following information is stored locally unless you use a feature that expressly sends it to a service:

Collection information: card records, quantities, condition, purchase and sale information, wishlists, collection profiles, notes, and related settings.
Scan photos: card images captured or selected for scanning.
Recognition data: locally generated text-recognition results, visual vectors, match history, corrections, and calibration data used to improve recognition on your device.
Preferences: theme, language, scanner, pricing, and other app settings.

Local information remains on the device until you delete it in the app, clear the app's data, or uninstall the app, subject to the behavior of your device backups.

2Camera and card images

With your permission, SSAI Scanning uses the camera to photograph trading cards. Camera access is used only when you initiate a scan. The app does not use facial recognition and does not access the camera in the background.

Text recognition, image fingerprinting, and visual matching for card scans run on the device. Your scan photos are not uploaded for crowd recognition and are not shared with other users. If you sign in and enable or use cloud backup, your card photos may be encrypted in transit and uploaded to private account storage so you can restore them. You can use the scanner and maintain a local collection without creating an account or uploading photos.

3Optional accounts and private cloud backup

If you create an account, we collect the information you provide, including:

your email address;
your first name, last name, and display name; and
a phone number, if you choose to provide one.

We use this information to create and secure your account, sign you in, communicate about account operations, and provide requested features. Account authentication is provided by Supabase. Passwords are handled by the authentication service and are not stored by us in readable form.

When cloud backup is active, we store private copies of collection records, profiles, wishlists, sales records, deletion markers, scanner-learning data, and card photos under your account. These records are used to synchronize and restore your collection. Access controls restrict private backup data to your account.

4Crowd-assisted card recognition

When crowd learning is enabled, signed-in users may contribute compact data that helps improve recognition for other users. The service may receive:

an OCR signature derived from a scan, which can contain a detected card name, collector number, set code, and language;
the matched catalog card identifier and whether the match was corrected; and
a mathematical visual fingerprint calculated from official catalog artwork, together with technical encoding information.

The crowd pool does not receive your card photo, collection contents, prices, name, email address, or phone number. Crowd requests require a valid signed-in session. Our server uses an internal account identifier to authenticate the request, apply daily limits, and prevent one account from submitting duplicate votes. Other app users receive only aggregated recognition records; they do not receive that account identifier.

You can turn contributions off at any time in Settings under Scanner ("Help improve scanning"); scanning keeps working on your device either way. Signing out also prevents authenticated crowd contributions. Crowd uploads may also be disabled globally without affecting local scanning. Because accepted contributions are combined into aggregate recognition records, an individual contribution may no longer be separable from the aggregate.

5Service requests, install identifiers, and abuse prevention

Requests to our protected services, including certain pricing and recognition services, may include or generate:

your internal account identifier, if you are signed in;
a randomly generated per-install identifier;
your IP address and user-agent information;
the service requested, request time, quota usage, and security event; and
the card or product search needed to fulfill your request.

The per-install identifier is created by the app, is not an advertising ID or hardware serial number, and normally resets if you uninstall and reinstall the app. We use these records only to provide the requested service, enforce fair usage limits, diagnose service failures, investigate abuse, and protect our users, vendors, and systems. They are not used for advertising or cross-app tracking.

If the app crashes or hits an unexpected error, it sends a diagnostic report to our own server so we can find and fix the problem. A report contains the error message and technical trace, the app version, your device model and operating-system version, the per-install identifier, and your internal account identifier if you are signed in. It does not include your card photos or the contents of your collection. Crash reports are not shared with a third-party analytics or crash-reporting service and are not used for advertising.

6Advertising in the free app

Free iOS builds may show non-personalized banner ads through Google AdMob. Paid-plan users do not see these ad placements. The app requests non-personalized ads and does not ask for App Tracking Transparency permission or use the iOS advertising identifier for personalized tracking.

Google's mobile ads SDK may still receive or derive information needed to load, measure, secure, and improve ads, such as IP address, device or app-scoped identifiers, diagnostic and performance data, ad interactions, and general app interaction signals. Google's use of that information is governed by its own policies. We do not send your SSAI account details, collection records, card photos, purchase prices, notes, or scan contents to Google for ad targeting.

7Information you choose to share or export

If you deliberately use a sharing or export feature, the app sends the information needed to complete your request:

Collection sharing: a shared collection can include your display name, selected card records, and public catalog artwork. Locally captured card photos are not included in public collection shares.
Marketplace file imports: when you import a marketplace export file (for example a TCGplayer inventory or pricing file), the listings are used to set up your inventory in the app. We also keep a de-identified record of each row's product, condition, quantity, market price, and listed price to build aggregate price statistics. That record does not contain your name, email address, or account identifier; it carries only a one-way scrambled reference so one contributor is not counted as many.
Exports: files you create are sent only to the destination you select through the device sharing interface.
Marketplace publishing: if enabled and initiated by you, selected listing information is sent to the marketplace needed to create or publish the listing.
Optional marketplace sales-email sync: if you enable this feature, you can forward marketplace seller notifications to a private account-specific address. Our email-processing provider receives the forwarded message so our server can extract order number, item, condition, quantity, price, and order-status facts. We do not intentionally retain the raw message body, buyer name, buyer email, or shipping address in our database. The email provider may temporarily retain the received message under its own retention and security practices. Normalized order and sale records remain linked to your account until you delete them or your account. Separately, we keep a de-identified record of each sale line (card name, condition, quantity, order total, and date) to build aggregate price statistics. That record does not contain your name, email address, account identifier, the order number, or any buyer or shipping detail; it carries only one-way scrambled references so the same sale is not counted twice and so statistics are not based on a single seller.

Information you share with another person or third-party service is also subject to that recipient's privacy practices.

8How we use information

We use information described in this policy to:

operate the scanner, collection, backup, sharing, pricing, export, and optional sales-sync features you request;
authenticate accounts and synchronize data;
improve card matching and maintain the shared recognition pool;
build aggregate, de-identified price statistics from marketplace sales and imported marketplace files;
measure and enforce service quotas;
secure the service, prevent fraud and abuse, and troubleshoot failures;
display and measure non-personalized ads in the free iOS app; and
comply with applicable legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service.

9Service providers and disclosure

We disclose information only as needed for the purposes described above:

Supabase provides authentication, database, file storage, and server functions.
Resend receives messages sent to an optional private sales-sync forwarding address and delivers authenticated event notifications to our server.
Google AdMob provides non-personalized banner ads in free iOS builds.
Apple processes payments for optional memberships purchased through the App Store. We do not receive your payment card details.
RevenueCat manages membership status. It receives your account identifier and App Store purchase records (product, purchase and expiration dates) so that a purchase can unlock the membership on your account.
Card catalog and market-data providers receive the card or product query needed to return catalog or pricing information.
Marketplace providers receive listing information only when you initiate an applicable marketplace feature.
Legal and safety disclosures may occur when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect rights or safety, investigate fraud, or respond to lawful process.

We require service providers that process personal information for us to use appropriate safeguards and to process it only for the services they provide. We do not sell personal information or share it with data brokers. We do not use your account, collection, card-photo, purchase-price, notes, or scan contents for advertising or cross-app tracking.

10Retention and deletion

Local data remains until you delete it, clear app data, or uninstall, subject to device backups.
Account and cloud-backup data remains while your account is active or until you delete the applicable records.
Sales-email sync data includes the private alias, delivery metadata, and normalized marketplace order facts. We do not intentionally store raw email bodies or buyer contact and shipping details in our database. The inbound-email provider may temporarily retain received messages according to its service practices.
Operational and security records are retained only as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, investigate incidents, enforce restrictions, resolve disputes, or meet legal obligations. Active security bans may be retained while needed to prevent repeated abuse.
De-identified sale and price records used for aggregate price statistics may remain after you turn off sales-email sync or delete your account, because they are not linked to your identity.
Aggregated crowd-recognition data may remain after account deletion because it is combined with other contributions and does not expose your name, email, phone number, collection, or photos. Limited internal deduplication records may also be retained to protect the integrity of the aggregate and prevent duplicate voting.

You can permanently delete your account from Profile → Account → Delete account. This removes your authentication record, private cloud collection and profile records, stored cloud images, and account-linked operational records from active systems. Cards and photos stored locally on your phone are not deleted by deleting the cloud account; you can delete them separately in the app or by removing the app. Service-provider backups may retain deleted data for a limited period before routine deletion, and we may retain narrowly limited information when required by law or necessary to protect the service from abuse.

11Your choices and requests

You can deny camera access and add cards manually.
You can use the core app without creating an account.
You can subscribe to a paid plan to remove ad placements where offered.
You can turn off crowd contributions in Settings, or sign out to stop cloud synchronization and authenticated crowd contributions from that device.
You can pause sales-email sync or rotate its private forwarding address in Settings. Rotating the address immediately invalidates the old destination.
You can edit account information in the app and delete your account in account settings.
You may contact us to request access, correction, or deletion of personal information, subject to applicable law.

12Security and international processing

We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards, including encrypted network connections and account-scoped access controls. No system is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. Our providers may process information in countries other than the one where you live, subject to applicable safeguards and law.

13Children

SSAI Scanning is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information, contact us so we can review and delete it as appropriate.

14Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes to the app or legal requirements. We will update the date above and provide additional notice when required.

15Contact

For privacy questions or requests, email israel@ssaiscanning.com.