Privacy policy

What never leaves your device

• Your photographs. Pictures you add to the User Gallery are copied into the app's own private storage on your device. They are not uploaded anywhere, not backed up to us, and not visible to anyone else. Deleting the app deletes them.
• Your photo library. The app uses Apple's system photo picker, which runs outside the app. We only ever receive the individual pictures you choose. The app cannot read your library and never asks to.
• Saving a coat of arms. If you tap Save on a coat of arms, iOS asks you for add-only permission — the narrowest there is. It lets the app put that one picture into your library and still gives it no way to read anything already in there. Say no and the arms can still be shared.
• Your location, when you use Around Me. This screen sorts the places in the app by how far away they are. The app asks your device for a single rough fix — accurate to about a hundred metres, which is all a list of places miles apart needs — and works out the distances on your phone. The Scottish list itself involves no request to anybody. The fix is held in memory while the screen is open and is never written to storage. There is no background tracking of any kind: the app asks once, when you open the screen, and never follows you around.
• Around Me when you are not in Scotland. To know which list is worth showing you, the app asks Apple's geocoder what your fix is called. If the answer is somewhere other than Scotland, a list of Scottish places ordered by distance is no use to you — so the screen says so and offers to show what is near you instead. Only if you tap that does the app ask Apple Maps for museums, parks and the like around you. Both of those lookups go to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy rather than ours. We never see them, the results are thrown away when you close the screen, and tapping one simply opens Apple Maps.
• My Travels. The photographs on that screen are Keith's own, kept on our server and fetched when you open it. Your phone asks for pictures and nothing else: no identifier, no device information, nothing about you. We cannot tell one reader from another there, and we keep no record of who looked at what.
• Map pins. The pins on the maps come from coordinates built into the app, taken from public records held by Historic Environment Scotland and Canmore. They are facts about Scotland, not about you.
• Everything you read. The entries, quizzes and sayings are part of the app. We do not record what you open, how long you spend, or what you search for.

What does leave your device

Three features talk to our own server at aipple.net. None of them talks to anybody else directly, and the app holds no keys to anyone else's service.

Talking Scotsman — the "Say it" feature

When you type a phrase and ask the Scotsman to say it, two things are sent to our server:

• The phrase you typed. Our server passes it to Google's Gemini speech service, which returns the audio, and the audio is sent back to your phone. We do not store the phrase. It is not written to a database or kept in a log. Google processes it under its own terms as part of answering the request.
• A random identifier for your copy of the app. The first time you use the feature, the app generates a random code and keeps it on your device. It is not your name, your email, your Apple Account or your device's own identifier, and it is not shared with any other app — including our own Talking Scotsman app.

What the identifier is for

Every phrase costs us money to generate, so each copy of the app gets seven phrases in any rolling seven days. The only way to count them is to tell one phone from another. Our server stores nothing but a list of that random code and the time each phrase was requested. A record stops counting after seven days, and is deleted the next time that copy of the app makes a request.

If you delete and reinstall the app, a new random code is generated and the count starts again. We have no way to connect the old one to the new one, or either of them to you.

Translate It

When you type a sentence and ask for it in Scots, the sentence is sent to our server along with the same random identifier described above. Our server passes the sentence to Google's Gemini service, which returns the translation. We do not store the sentence. The identifier is used only to count translations — twenty per copy of the app in any rolling day — and our server keeps nothing but that random code and the time of each request. If you ask to hear a translation read aloud, that goes through the "Say it" feature above and counts against its allowance, not a second one.

Weather

This screen shows what the weather is doing where you are, with a line about it in Scots. Three things are worth being precise about.

• Your position is rounded before it is sent. It goes to our server at two decimal places — roughly a kilometre square — and no finer figure ever leaves your phone.
• Nothing identifies you. The request carries the rounded position and nothing else: no random identifier, no device information, nothing that could tie that square to your copy of the app.
• The place name comes from Apple, not from us. To put a town above the figures, the app asks Apple's geocoder what that position is called; if you type a town in yourself instead, it asks Apple where that town is. Those two lookups go to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy rather than ours. We never see them and nothing is kept, on your phone or anywhere else.

Our server asks the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET Norway) for a forecast for that square and keeps the answer briefly so that the next person asking about the same square does not cause a second request. The app credits MET Norway on screen, which is a condition of using their free service.

What we never do

• We do not sell, rent or share your information with anybody.
• We do not use advertising or advertising identifiers.
• We do not track you across other apps or websites.
• We do not build a profile of you.
• We do not ask you to create an account or give us an email address.
• We do not track your location. The app asks for a single fix when you open Around Me or Weather, and never in the background.
• We do not keep any record of where you have been.

Links to other places

Entries link out to the organisations that run the places described — Historic Environment Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland, distilleries, golf clubs and so on — and to sources for facts worth checking. One screen links to a different app on the App Store. Once you follow any of these you are on somebody else's site, under their privacy policy, not ours.

Children

Tour Scotland is rated 13+ and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age, beyond the random identifier and the rounded position described above.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. Any change that affects what leaves your device will also appear in the app's release notes.

Getting in touch

Questions about any of this, or about information held about your copy of the app, go to admin@aipple.net.