Cairn collects nothing. There is no account, no server, and nowhere for your data to go.
That is the entire policy. The rest of this page explains it precisely, because “we value your privacy” is what every app says and none of it is checkable.
Your notes, the places you attach them to, the radius you chose, what you have ticked off, and the record of when a note last fired. All of it is stored on your iPhone and nowhere else. It is not uploaded, backed up to a server we run, or synchronised through us, because there is no “us” in the loop — Cairn has no server.
If you have iCloud Backup switched on, your device backup is handled by Apple under Apple’s terms. That is between you and Apple; we never see it.
Cairn asks for location access so it can notice that you have arrived somewhere, including while the app is closed. That is what the product does.
Your location is read by your iPhone, compared against the places you saved, and discarded. It is never transmitted to us, and never to anyone else unless you choose to open a place in what3words, described below. We could not look up where you have been even if we wanted to, and no request from anyone could make us produce it.
Being exact about this matters more than sounding clean. There are two things, and each happens only when you choose it.
Place search. When you search for a place by name while creating a note, Cairn passes what you typed — and a rough area to search within — to Apple Maps, using Apple’s own MapKit framework. This is how the search returns results. That request is handled by Apple, governed by Apple’s Privacy Policy, and its results come straight back to your phone. We do not receive it, store it, or have any means of accessing it.
Open in what3words. This is off unless you turn it on in Cairn’s About screen. When it is on and you tap “Open in what3words” on a place, Cairn opens what3words’ own website or app at that place’s coordinates. The coordinates reach what3words in that link, because you chose to open it. Cairn itself never contacts what3words and receives nothing back. What happens after that is governed by what3words’ privacy policy.
If you never search for a place and never open one in what3words, nothing at all leaves your device.
The notifications Cairn sends are created on your device at the moment they are needed. They are not pushed from a server, and their contents — the place, the note, the items left — never travel anywhere.
Under the UK GDPR and equivalent laws you have rights to access, correct, export and erase personal data held about you. We hold none, so there is nothing for us to produce or delete. Your own copy is on your phone: deleting a note deletes it, and deleting Cairn removes everything it ever stored.
Cairn is suitable for all ages and collects no data from anyone, regardless of age.
If Cairn ever collects anything, this page will say so plainly and in advance, and the App Store privacy label will be updated to match before the version that does it ships.
Anything about privacy, or this page: ptgh@mac.com