Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 18, 2026

Heritage Trace is operated by Mesut Erce Ekmekçi, a sole proprietor ("the Operator").

This policy describes what the app collects, where it goes, and what we keep. It is short because the app collects little.

The short version

• Your photo is stored on your device. It's sent to be analysed, and it is not kept afterwards.
• We don't ask for your name, email, or account. There is no sign-up.
• There are no ads inside the app. We do advertise Heritage Trace elsewhere, and — only if you allow it when asked — we measure which ad brought you here.
• You can delete everything from inside the app, at any time.

What the app collects

Your selfie. The app captures a photo and, using Apple's ARKit, a set of geometric measurements of your face. The photo is stored on your device, in a location excluded from device backups. It is sent to our server, and from there to the vision model that reads it, for the length of that request only. We do not store it on our servers and we do not use it to train anything.

Face measurements. ARKit produces face geometry on your device. A small set of derived measurements (16 numbers describing face geometry) is sent with the analysis request.

What you choose to tell us. After purchase the app may ask for a family surname, an oldest known family location, whether light eyes run in your family, and any food allergies. All four are optional. Skipping them changes what the reading can say, not whether you get one. They are used only to produce your reading and are not saved after the session that uses them.

Permission to measure our advertising. If you first found Heritage Trace through one of our ads, we'd like to know which one worked — it's how we decide where to keep advertising. When the app asks for permission to track (Apple's standard prompt), granting it lets us use your device's advertising identifier to match your install to the ad you tapped. This is used for that measurement and nothing else. It is never linked to your face scan or your reading, and the app works exactly the same if you decline. You can change your answer any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.

Your subscription status. Apple tells the app whether you have an active subscription. Apple handles the payment; we never see your card, your billing address, or your Apple ID.

What we don't collect. No name beyond the optional surname above. No email. No account. No contacts. No location. We use an advertising identifier only if you allow tracking when asked, and only to measure our own ads.

Where it goes

To produce a reading, the app sends your photo and measurements to our server, which passes them to a vision model. To measure our advertising, install and purchase information is shared with Meta. These services are involved:

• Cloudflare — hosts our server and the counter that enforces the daily limit. Requests pass through Cloudflare's network.
• fal.ai — runs the vision model that reads the photo. The photo is sent for the length of the request. fal.ai's own terms govern what it does with a request on its side, which is why it's named here.
• RevenueCat — records subscription status, receiving a subscription identifier and your purchase state, not your identity. It also carries your ad-attribution attributes and forwards purchase events to our attribution provider so a subscription can be matched to the ad that led to it. RevenueCat's SDK also sends its own purchase and performance diagnostics to RevenueCat; we don't build a profile of you from this.
• Meta — our attribution provider for the ads we run on Meta's platforms. Its software in the app reports the install and app-open events with basic device information, and — only if you allowed tracking — your advertising identifier; subscription events reach Meta from RevenueCat's servers (that a trial or purchase happened, never what your reading said). This exists to tell us which ad brought you to the app; there are no ads shown inside Heritage Trace.
• Apple — processes every payment and manages every subscription. We never touch payment details.

We do not sell your data. We do not share it with anyone not listed above. No ads are shown inside the app; the services above measure our own advertising, they do not advertise to you within it.

What we keep

On our server: a rolling record of your recent scan times, kept to enforce the ten-scans-per-week limit. It is keyed to your App Store subscription identifier — not your name, email or photo — and each entry expires after about a week. Nothing else.

On your device: your photo, your reading, and your reading history.

Deleting it

Profile → delete my data removes your photos, readings and history from the device, and clears the advertising software's locally stored data. Deleting the app removes everything on-device with it. Because we never hold your photo or your reading on our servers, there is normally nothing of that kind on our side to delete. One narrow exception exists so a paid reading is never lost: if delivering your finished reading fails, the reading text (never your photo) may be held on our server for up to 24 hours solely so it can be delivered when your app reconnects — it is deleted the moment it is delivered, or automatically after 24 hours. Measurement events already delivered to Meta (that an install or a subscription happened) are held by Meta under its own data policy; you can exercise your rights over those directly with Meta. The optional answers (surname, family location, eye trait, allergies) are never saved to begin with — they are used for the one reading and discarded.

Your subscription is managed by Apple, not by us. Cancel it in Settings → your Apple ID → Subscriptions.

Children

Heritage Trace's age rating is shown on its App Store page. The app is not designed for children and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has used the app in a way that concerns you, contact us at [email protected] and we will address it, including deleting information where required.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal data we hold about you, or to object to its processing. In practice we hold almost nothing on our own servers: everything personal lives on your device and you can delete it yourself from Profile. To ask us anything, write to [email protected].

Changes

If this policy changes we'll update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

[email protected] Mesut Erce Ekmekçi