fin · privacy policy · effective 27 October 2026
fin — Privacy Policy
The short version: everything stays on your phone.
fin reads your bank SMS and banking-app notifications, turns them into a
personal spending ledger, and stores that ledger in a private database on
your device. There is no fin account, no fin server, no analytics, and no
crash reporting. fin goes online for one thing only, and only
if you choose it: downloading today's exchange rates. That request carries
nothing from your ledger.
Three ways to use fin — your choice
When you first open fin you choose how it works, and you can switch any time
in Settings › How fin works.
- Automatic — fin reads bank texts and, if you allow it,
banking-app notifications, as described below. It never goes online.
- Automatic + live rates — the same, plus fin downloads
today's exchange rates once a day, so charges in other currencies convert
at a current rate. This is the only thing fin ever goes online for.
- Manual — fin reads nothing and asks for no permissions.
You add transactions yourself (typed, or from a screenshot you choose).
fin never goes online.
Switching to Manual stops all reading at once and switches fin's
notification reader off; on Android 13 and later fin also hands its SMS
access back to Android when you leave the app. Live rates stop too.
Android grants the internet permission to an app as a whole, so fin holds it
in every mode; in Automatic and Manual, fin's code never uses it.
What fin reads in Automatic mode, and why
- SMS messages (READ_SMS / RECEIVE_SMS)
— fin scans messages to find transaction alerts from banks and financial
services (purchases, transfers, bills, balances). Messages that are not
financial are inspected on-device and ignored; nothing about them is stored.
- App notifications (optional; a separate opt-in you can
revoke any time) — banking, wallet and buy-now-pay-later apps often announce
transactions only as notifications. If you grant notification access,
fin parses those the same way, on the device.
- Approximate location (optional, off by default) — if you
enable location tagging, new transactions are annotated with a coarse
location so you can remember where a charge happened. Locations are stored
only in your on-device ledger.
Where your data lives
In an app-private database on your device. It is excluded from Android's
cloud backup. It leaves the device only when you export it — a file
you choose the destination for. Uninstalling fin deletes the database.
What leaves the device
- Nothing of yours. No message contents, transactions,
balances or identifiers leave your phone through fin. Bank logos are built
into the app; none are downloaded.
- Live exchange rates (only in Automatic + live rates) —
once a day fin downloads a public table of exchange rates from currency-api
(served by cdn.jsdelivr.net, or its mirror
currency-api.pages.dev). The request is the same
for everyone: it does not include your currency, your ledger, or any
identifier. Like any website, those servers see your phone's IP address
and handle it under their own policies. fin keeps the rates on your phone.
- Reading a screenshot uses Google Play services' text
recognition. Play services downloads the recognition model from Google;
the image and its text are read on your phone and are not sent. fin
switches off the usage reports this component would otherwise send from
the app.
- Purchases — subscriptions and one-time unlocks are handled
entirely by Google Play Billing under Google's own terms. fin receives only
an entitlement confirmation, never your payment details.
- Links you tap (for example a map lookup for a transaction
location, or the Save-a-Shark link) open in your browser like any link.
What fin does not do
- No accounts, sign-ups, or profiles.
- No analytics, tracking, or advertising SDKs.
- No crash reporting.
- No selling, sharing, or transmitting of personal data — there is no
server-side component at all.
- fin never sends SMS, never modifies messages, and never acts on your
accounts. It is a reader, not an agent.
Your controls
- Switch to Manual in Settings › How fin works, and fin stops reading straight away.
- Turn live exchange rates off in the same place, and fin stops going online.
- Revoke SMS access, notification access, or location at any time in system
settings — capture simply stops.
- Delete any transaction, or the entire database, from inside the app.
- Export your data (JSON backup or CSV) whenever you like, including after
your trial ends.
Children
fin is a personal-finance tool intended for adults and is not directed at
children under 13.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version will be published at this URL
with a new effective date. Because fin has no server, a change in policy can
never retroactively affect data — there is none held.
Contact
Questions or requests: helloizzylogic@gmail.com
fin. made with love.