Talking Scotsman privacy policy

Talking Scotsman has no accounts, no advertising, no analytics and no trackers. Most of the app runs on your phone and stays there. A handful of features use the internet, and this page says exactly what each of them sends.

What never leaves your phone

The sayings. What you open, play, star or search for is not recorded or sent anywhere. Favourites on the Soundboard are kept on your phone.

Phrase of the Day. If you switch it on, the notification is scheduled by your phone itself at the time you choose. No server is involved and we never see when or whether you open it.

Sharing a clip. When you press and hold to send a saying to a friend, it goes through Apple's share sheet to the app and person you pick. We are not involved.

The quizzes. Your answers and scores stay on your phone.

What leaves your phone

These features talk to our own server at aipple.net. Apart from the Apple location lookups described under the weather report, the app does not talk to anyone else directly.

Say Summit

The phrase you type is sent to our server, which passes it to Google's Gemini service to turn it into speech. The audio comes back to your phone. We do not store the phrase. The request also carries the random identifier described below.

Say It Like a Scot

The text you type, and the attitude and region you pick, are sent to our server, which asks Google's Gemini service for the Scottish version. We do not store the text. The request carries the random identifier.

The Scotsman's Verdict

The photo you take or choose, and the attitude you pick, are sent to our server, which asks Google's Gemini service for a verdict on it. The photo is not saved on our server. The request carries the random identifier.

Google processes what these three features send under its own terms, as part of answering the request. We use Google's paid service, under which Google does not use what is sent to improve its products.

Scottish Weather Report

With your permission, the app asks your phone for a rough location, accurate to about a kilometre, and Apple's geocoder turns it into a town name to show on screen. If you type a town instead, Apple's geocoder turns that into a location. Those lookups go to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy.

The location is then sent to our server, which rounds it to about a kilometre, fetches the forecast for that spot from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET Norway), and keeps a copy of the forecast for a while, filed under the rounded location, so the next request for the same area is quicker. No identifier is sent, and nothing links the location to you or your phone. The app never tracks you in the background.

User Gallery

What is sent. The photo you pick, and a place name if you choose to type one. The photo is re-saved on our server, which drops the hidden information a camera stores inside a picture file, such as GPS coordinates and the model of phone.

What happens next. Your photo goes to Keith by email. Nobody else can see it until he approves it. Approved photos appear in the gallery for everyone who uses the app, along with the place name if you typed one. Rejected photos are deleted. If you withdraw a photo before it has been looked at, it is never published.

Don't send photos of people who haven't agreed to be in them, or anything with a home address, car registration or other personal details in shot.

If you report a photo in the gallery, we receive which photo was reported and nothing about you.

The random identifier

The first time you use one of the features above that mention it, the app makes up a random code and keeps it on your phone. It is not your name, your email, your Apple Account or your device's own identifier, and no other app can see it.

The AI features cost us money every time they run, so each copy of the app gets a limited number of goes. The only way to count them is to tell one phone from another, which is all the code is for. For those features our server stores nothing but the code and the time of each request, and deletes each record once it no longer counts toward the limit.

Permissions the app asks for

Camera: to take a photo for the User Gallery or The Scotsman's Verdict.
Location, while using the app: for the Scottish Weather Report only. The app never tracks you in the background.
Add to Photos: to save a verdict to your photo library. This is add-only, so the app can't read anything already in your library.
Notifications: for Phrase of the Day, and to tell you when a gallery photo you sent has been approved.

When you choose a photo from your library, the app uses Apple's photo picker, which only hands over the one picture you choose.

Your choices

You can turn off camera, photo, location and notification access for Talking Scotsman at any time in your iPhone's Settings, under Talking Scotsman. The features that need them stop working; everything else carries on.

Deleting the app deletes everything it keeps on your phone, including its random identifier. A reinstall starts again with a new one that can't be linked to the old one.

If you'd like a photo you sent us taken down, or want to know what we hold for your copy of the app, email admin@aipple.net. Because there are no accounts, we may ask you to describe the photo or tell us roughly when you sent it so we can find it.

Children

Talking Scotsman has no accounts and asks nobody for a name, email address or age. Photos sent to the gallery are checked by hand before anyone else can see them.

Where our server is

Our server is aipple.net, hosted by GoDaddy in the United States. Like any web server, it keeps standard access logs, which include the internet address a request came from. We use them only to keep the server running and secure.

Changes

If the app starts collecting anything new, this page will be updated before that version is released, and the date at the top will change.

Contact

Aipple Media, admin@aipple.net, or use the contact page.