Sift: Privacy Policy
Effective Date: September 30, 2026
Sift is a personal finance tracker made by Sift Studio. It is local-first: your financial data is stored on your device and is never sent to us or to anyone else.
To keep the app stable and to learn which screens help people, Sift sends two kinds of anonymous technical data to Google Firebase: crash reports and usage statistics. Neither ever contains an amount, a category, a note, or anything else you type. This policy explains exactly what is sent, why, and how to stop it.
1. Your financial data stays on your device
- What: your income, bills, expenses, categories, notes, recurring items and plans.
- Where: in a local database on your phone, protected by your device's built-in storage encryption. We run no server that stores it, and we cannot see it.
- Backups: backups you create are files you control, protected with a password you choose. We never receive them. If you forget the password, the backup cannot be opened. On Android 12 and later, Android’s phone-to-phone transfer can copy Sift’s data to your new phone; Google cloud backup stays off.
- No account: Sift does not ask for an email address, phone number, name or bank login.
2. Crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics)
- What is sent: if the app crashes, a technical report: the error, where in the code it happened, device model, operating-system version, app version, and a random installation identifier.
- What is never sent: your financial data or anything you have typed.
- Why: to find and fix bugs. Our legal basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the app working.
- Retention: crash reports are deleted automatically after 90 days.
3. Usage statistics (Firebase Analytics)
Sift records that certain steps happened, never what you entered. This tells us, for example, how many new users reach the dashboard or log a first expense, so we know which parts of the app to improve.
- Collected: app opens and sessions; which onboarding and setup steps were reached (for example "setup completed", "first expense logged", "a quick-add shortcut was used"); device model, operating-system version, app version, country and language; a random app-installation identifier.
- Never collected: amounts, balances, income, category names, notes, or any text you type; your name, email, phone number, contacts or precise location.
- Why: to improve the app. Our legal basis is our legitimate interest in understanding which parts of Sift work for people.
- Retention: detailed event data is deleted after 2 months. Data linked to your installation identifier is deleted 14 months after you last use the app.
- How to stop it: turn off Share anonymous usage statistics in Settings → Data & Privacy. It takes effect immediately. Crash reports are separate. To object to statistics already collected, you can email us, and we will help delete statistics linked to your installation where they can be identified. Sift works exactly the same either way.
4. No advertising
Sift shows no ads, does not track you across other apps or websites, and never sells or shares data with advertisers or data brokers.
5. Purchases (Google Play Billing)
Sift is free to use. Sift Pro is an optional one-time purchase handled entirely by Google Play. The app checks on your device whether the purchase is active. We never see your card or payment details. As the seller, we can see order records in Google Play Console (such as an order number, date, price and country), as every Play developer can. To manage your purchase history, use the Google Payments Center.
6. Who processes data for us
Crash reports and usage statistics are processed by Google (Firebase) on our behalf. Google may process this data outside your country, including in the United States, under the safeguards described in the Firebase Data Processing Terms. We use no other third-party services.
7. Your rights
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR in the EU/EEA and UK), you have the right to:
- Access: all your financial data is visible in the app.
- Portability: creating and restoring a password-protected backup file is free for everyone. Exporting your data to CSV is a Sift Pro feature.
- Erasure: in the app, go to Settings → Data & Privacy → Erase all my data. Uninstalling the app or clearing its storage in your device settings also works. Because we never hold your financial data, this deletes it completely. To ask us to delete crash reports or usage statistics, email us.
- Object: to usage statistics, as described in section 3, at any time.
- Complain: to your local data-protection authority.
8. Children
Sift is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.
9. Changes
If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top and, for significant changes, mention it in the app's release notes.