Privacy
rn exists because the alternatives collect too much. This page is meant to be read, not survived.
Last updated 3 August 2026.
The short version
- Your exact location never leaves your phone, except once — see meeting up.
- There is no advertising, no advertising identifier, and no tracking of you across other apps or websites. We don't sell or share anything with anyone.
- We count how the app is used — that a photo was added, that setup reached a certain step. Never what was in it, and never who it was about. The full list is here.
- Only people you've accepted into your circle can see anything about you. There is no public profile and no way to look you up.
- A shared photo is deleted after 24 hours.
- Every signal is off until you switch it on, and can be switched back off.
What we hold, and why
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your phone number | It's how you sign in and how a friend's invitation finds you. It's also stored so a person already in your circle can text you from the app — nobody outside it can see it. | Until you delete your account |
| Your display name | So your card has a name on it. | Until you delete your account |
| Place words — “home in the Mission” | The whole point of a card. Computed on your phone from your location; only the words are sent. | Replaced as it changes |
| An approximate area code for weather, and a coarse cell used only to work out how far apart two people are | To show the weather where you are, and to draw “a walk away” or “a flight away”. The cell is never displayed and never stored as a history. | Replaced as it changes |
| A photo you've hearted or taken in the app | To put on your card, for your circle. | Deleted after 24 hours |
| Optional signals you turn on: whether you're moving, whether you worked out today, busy or free, what you're reading, what you're listening to, a short note | To make your card worth opening. | Until changed, or until you switch the signal off |
| Your step count | Off by default. If you switch it on, today's count appears on your card for your circle — shown against your own typical day, never a goal and never anyone else's number. | Today's count only |
| Your saved places and the nicknames you give people | So a new phone doesn't forget where home is. | Stored encrypted — see below |
Your places are encrypted, and we can't read them
When you mark somewhere as home or work, that's a precise location, and we treat it that way. The list is encrypted on your phone before it's stored, using a key kept in your iCloud Keychain that is never sent to us. We hold the encrypted result and cannot open it. It exists so that replacing your phone doesn't mean re-marking every place you've named.
Meeting up — the one exception
If you propose meeting someone, your exact location is shared with that one person so you can both see how far apart you are. It is deliberately narrow: one person, never your card and never the rest of your circle; a single snapshot rather than a live feed; deleted after one hour; and you cannot ask to see someone's location without showing yours in the same gesture.
What we never collect
- Your contacts. Choosing someone to invite happens inside Apple's own picker — we receive only the one person you pick.
- Your photo library. We only ever look at photos you've hearted, and screenshots are never shared.
- The contents of your calendar. Only whether you're busy right now — never event names, places or attendees.
- A location history, a movement trail, or any map of you.
- Advertising identifiers. rn is built against a version of Google Analytics that has no ability to read your device's advertising identifier — not a setting we've switched off, but code that isn't in the app.
- A behavioral profile, an interest profile, or anything sold or shared with a data broker. Nothing rn records is used to target you.
What we count
rn measures whether the app works — whether setup gets finished, whether a permission people agreed to actually got granted. It is a small, fixed list, and every item on it is a count of something happening rather than a record of what happened.
- How far setup got — which step you reached. Not what you entered at any of them.
- What iOS says you've granted — location, photos, calendar, notifications, motion: allowed, refused or not yet asked. This exists because we have shipped bugs where the app believed it had a permission it did not, and people were stuck with no way to tell.
- That one of six things happened: a card was opened, a reaction sent, a photo added, a place labeled, an invitation sent, a jam set. The fact only. Never whose card, which reaction, which photo, what the place is called, who was invited, or what the song was.
- Whether a notification was delivered to a phone, so that “I never got it” can be told apart from “it was never sent”. The record is the delivery, never the message — no title, no body, no sender.
None of it carries a name, a place, a photo, a message or the identity of anyone it was about. If a question like “where does this person go” or “who do they talk to most” could be answered from what we record, the record shouldn't exist — that is the test we hold it to.
Who else is involved
rn runs on Google Firebase (authentication, database, server functions, notifications, and the counting described above), which stores this data on our behalf. Text messages containing your sign-in code are sent through Firebase's provider. We use no other processors, no advertising services, and no third-party trackers.
Weather is fetched by your phone from Open-Meteo using an approximate area — never a precise position, and never with any identifier attached. If you tap through to Spotify or Apple Music, you leave rn and their privacy policies apply.
Your control
- Turn anything off. Settings → “What your card can show” lists every signal, what it gives away, and whether yours is on.
- Pause. For a day, until you're next home, or until you say otherwise. Your circle sees “paused” rather than a stale you.
- Remove someone. The connection is deleted for both of you and you stop appearing to each other.
- Delete your account, from inside the app: Settings → “Delete my account.” It goes immediately and completely — your card, your connections, your saved places and your phone number. There's no 30-day grace period and no archived copy, because keeping one would mean we hadn't really deleted anything.
Children
rn is not intended for anyone under 13, and we don't knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has an account, email us and we'll remove it.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, we'll say so in the app rather than only here.
Contact
weird little ideas, LLC — weirdlittleideas@gmail.com