Legal
Privacy Policy
Your financial data stays on your phone. We have no accounts, no servers that store it, and no tracking. It only leaves your phone when you choose a feature that sends it somewhere — and this page tells you exactly where.
Summary
- Expense Hunt works without an account. Your transactions, budgets, goals and notes are stored in the app’s private storage on your phone.
- We (ThinkerCart) do not receive, store or sell your financial data. There is no Expense Hunt server for it.
- There are no ads, analytics, advertising IDs or crash-reporting uploads.
- Data leaves your phone only if you use: Google Drive backup (to your own Drive), the AI assistant (to the provider you choose, with your own key), or a Premium subscription (processed by Google Play and RevenueCat).
- You can erase everything in the app at any time. See Data deletion.
1. Who we are
Expense Hunt is made and operated by ThinkerCart (“we”, “us”). This policy covers the Expense Hunt mobile app and this website, expensehunt.thinkercart.com.
For the personal information we ourselves handle (subscription records and support messages, described in section 4), ThinkerCart is the data controller (called a “data fiduciary” under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023). For everything stored only on your phone, you are in control and we have no access.
Contact: support@thinkercart.com
2. Data stored on your phone
The app stores the following in its private storage on your device (a SQLite database protected by the Android app sandbox and your phone’s encryption):
- Transactions, accounts, payment methods, categories, budgets, savings goals, debts, recurring items, split bills, notes and net-worth assets and liabilities that you enter.
- Your optional name, currency and app preferences (theme, reminders, haptics).
- Receipt photos you pick or take are used to read the receipt; the app does not upload them anywhere except to the AI provider you chose (section 3).
Secrets — your AI provider key(s) and, if you choose to remember it, your backup passphrase — are kept in the phone’s secure keystore and are never included in backups or exports.
Android’s automatic cloud backup is switched off for this app, so your data is copied off the phone only when you ask (a backup file, an export, or Drive backup).
3. When data leaves your phone
The app works fully offline. Nothing in this table happens until you use that feature.
| Feature | What is sent | Who receives it | Your control |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Drive backup & sync (Premium); restore from Drive | A copy of your data, optionally end-to-end encrypted with your passphrase (XChaCha20-Poly1305, key derived with scrypt). | Your own Google Drive, in the hidden “app data” folder. Only this app can open it, via the drive.appdata permission. Google stores it under Google’s Privacy Policy. | Sign out to stop syncing. Use Backup & sync → Delete my data from Google Drive. Revoke access in your Google Account. |
| AI assistant (typing, voice, receipt scan) | The text, the voice transcript (as text) or the receipt photo you submit; today’s date; and the names of your categories and accounts so the entry can be matched. | The AI provider you select (e.g. Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Groq, OpenRouter, Mistral, DeepSeek, xAI), directly from your phone, using your API key. | Don’t use the assistant, or remove the key in Settings → AI assistant. The provider’s terms and privacy policy govern what happens next. |
| Voice entry | Audio captured by your phone’s speech recognition while you hold to speak. | Your phone’s speech service. Depending on your device and settings, Android may process speech on the device or through its speech provider (usually Google) under that provider’s privacy policy. Expense Hunt does not record or store audio and only uses the resulting text. | Deny the microphone permission or type instead. |
| Premium purchase | An anonymous random ID, store receipt/purchase token, product and subscription status. No financial data from the app. | RevenueCat (subscription management) and Google Play (billing). | Free use needs no purchase. See section 9 for deletion. |
| Exports, reports and backup files | Files you create (CSV, PDF, backup). | Wherever you share them (email, Drive, messaging app). | You choose each time. |
| Links | Opening this website, Google Play or a provider’s site. | Your browser and that site. | Optional. |
4. What we (ThinkerCart) actually receive
- Subscription information (only if you subscribe): through Google Play and RevenueCat we can see your anonymous purchase ID, order identifier, product, price, dates, renewal status and approximate country. We do not receive your card or UPI details — Google handles payment.
- Support messages (only if you email us): your email address and whatever you choose to write. Please do not send passwords, passphrases or API keys.
- Nothing else. We do not receive your transactions, balances, notes, AI conversations, API keys or backups.
5. What we never collect
No analytics, advertising IDs, behavioural tracking, third-party advertising SDKs, crash-report uploads or remote configuration. No contacts, SMS, call logs, location, or files outside what you pick. No sign-up, email address or phone number is required to use the app. We do not sell personal information and do not share it for advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.
The app’s releases are checked in our build process to block new tracking SDKs and network hosts.
6. App permissions (Android)
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Camera | Scan a receipt, only when you tap the scan option. |
| Microphone / speech recognition | Speak an expense, only while you use voice entry. |
| Biometrics / device credential | Unlock the app with your fingerprint, face or passcode (Premium app lock). The biometric data never reaches the app; Android only tells it “yes” or “no”. |
| Notifications | Local reminders and alerts scheduled by the app on your phone. There is no push server. |
| Run at startup | Re-schedule your reminders after the phone restarts. |
| Vibrate | Haptic feedback, which you can switch off. |
| Photos / files | No storage permission is requested. You pick receipt photos and backup files with Android’s system picker, which shares only the item you select. |
7. This website
This site is static. It has no accounts, forms, cookies, analytics, advertising or third-party fonts and scripts. It is delivered by Cloudflare, which, like any hosting and security provider, processes technical request data such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested to deliver the site and protect it against abuse. See Cloudflare’s Privacy Policy. We do not use this data to identify or profile visitors.
If you open a shared report link, only the date range and label in the link are passed to the app on your device; they are not stored by us.
8. Why we process data
Where the law requires a stated basis (for example the EU/UK GDPR), we rely on:
- Contract — to provide Premium and verify your subscription.
- Consent — for optional features you switch on yourself (Drive backup, AI assistant, notifications, microphone, camera). You can withdraw consent at any time by turning the feature off or revoking the permission; this does not affect what happened before.
- Legitimate interests — to answer support requests, keep the website secure and prevent fraud.
- Legal obligation — to keep tax and accounting records for paid subscriptions.
Under India’s DPDP Act, 2023 we process personal data only for the purposes above, with your consent or for the legitimate uses the Act permits.
9. Retention & deletion
- On your phone: until you erase it (Settings → Erase all data on this phone) or uninstall the app.
- Google Drive copy: until you delete it in the app or in Google Drive.
- Subscription records: kept by Google and RevenueCat as needed to provide the subscription, and by us for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
- Support emails: kept only as long as needed to resolve your request and keep a record of it.
Step-by-step instructions, including how to ask us to delete subscription-related records, are on the Data deletion page. We complete verified requests within 30 days.
10. Security
- Data on the phone sits in the app’s private sandbox, protected by Android and device encryption.
- App lock (Premium) uses your phone’s biometrics or passcode. The app also hides its content in the app switcher and can block screenshots on Android.
- Encrypted backups use XChaCha20-Poly1305 with a key derived from your passphrase using scrypt. If you forget the passphrase, nobody — including us — can recover that backup.
- Connections to Google, AI providers and RevenueCat use HTTPS.
No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. Keep your phone updated and locked, and keep a backup.
11. International transfers
Google, RevenueCat, Cloudflare and AI providers operate globally and may process data in countries other than yours, including India and the United States. Because we do not hold your financial data, such transfers happen only when you use the feature that involves that provider, under that provider’s safeguards.
12. Your rights
Depending on where you live (including under India’s DPDP Act, the EU/UK GDPR and the California CCPA/CPRA), you may have the right to access, correct, erase or port your personal data, to withdraw consent, to object to or restrict processing, to nominate someone to exercise rights on your behalf, and to complain to a regulator.
- For data on your phone you can exercise most rights yourself: view and edit it in the app, export it, or erase it.
- For the limited data we hold (section 4), email support@thinkercart.com from the address you used. We may ask for your Google Play order ID to find the right record, and will reply within 30 days.
- California: we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.
- You may also complain to the Data Protection Board of India, or to your local data-protection authority.
13. Children
Expense Hunt can be used by people of all ages (3 and over). We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children: there is no account, no advertising, no analytics, no tracking and no behavioural monitoring, and we never receive what a child records in the app.
We recommend that a parent or guardian supervise younger children, in particular for features run by other companies that have their own age rules: the AI assistant (AI providers often require users to be 13 or 18+, and need an API key from an adult), Google Drive backup (requires a Google Account that meets Google’s age rules) and Premium (purchases need an adult’s payment method in Google Play). If you believe a child’s personal information has reached us (for example in a support email), contact us and we will delete it. Parents and guardians may exercise a child’s rights under section 12 on the child’s behalf.
14. Google user data
If you turn on Google Drive backup, Expense Hunt asks for one permission only: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.appdata, which lets the app read and write its own hidden application-data folder in your Drive. It cannot see your other files.
The app’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data from Drive is used only to provide backup, sync and restore to you; it is not sent to us, not used for advertising, and not read by people.
15. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we will update the date and version above and the same text in the app. Earlier versions are available on request.
16. Contact & grievances
Questions, requests or complaints about privacy: support@thinkercart.com. Use the subject “Privacy”. This is also our point of contact for grievances under applicable Indian law; we acknowledge complaints promptly and aim to resolve them within 30 days.