Pongo

Privacy Policy

Pongo is a free food and label scanner. We've designed it to keep your data as quiet as possible — no accounts, no ads, no tracking. This page explains exactly what happens to your data so there are no surprises.

What stays on your device

Almost everything. The following is stored locally on your iPhone using standard iOS storage and never leaves your device:

• App preferences and small bookkeeping (like whether you've seen the scanner intro)
• Your most recent scan report, kept until you dismiss it
• Photos taken with the label scanner are held in memory only — they are not saved to your photo library, and are discarded as soon as the report is generated or the scanner is closed

Uninstalling the app removes all of this from your device.

One small exception: Pongo stores a small amount of anonymous data (a random ID, no personal info) in a private iCloud namespace, used to keep your experience consistent across reinstalls. When you delete the app, iOS may display a system warning that "data stored in iCloud will not be deleted" — that warning refers to this data. We don't require you to sign in or create an account to use the app.

What we send out

Analyzing a label uses a third-party AI model. When you scan:

• Scanning a product label: the photo you captured is sent to our forwarding server, which passes it to a third-party AI provider and returns the report. Photos leave your device only when you explicitly tap "analyze" after reviewing them on the in-app review screen.
• Report-ready notifications: if you allow notifications, an anonymous push token is stored so we can let you know when a scan finishes while the app is in the background.

We do not send your name, email, phone number, location, contacts, photos from your photo library, or any device or advertising identifier — Pongo never asks for any of these.

Permissions Pongo asks for

• Camera — only when you open the label scanner. The camera is active only while the scanner is on screen, never in the background. Photos are not saved to your photo library.
• Notifications (optional) — a single "your report is ready" alert per scan. You can decline or revoke this and the app works exactly the same.

iOS will prompt you the first time each is needed. You can revoke access at any time in Settings → Pongo.

Third parties

• A third-party AI provider processes the photos you submit for label analysis. Its own privacy terms apply to the data we send it. That data is retained only briefly for trust-and-safety review (by default, up to 30 days) and is not used to train its models.
• A third-party cloud hosting provider runs our small forwarding server, and its infrastructure may log standard request metadata (such as IP address and timestamp).

We do not use third-party analytics, crash reporters, or advertising SDKs.

What we don't do

• No accounts, sign-in, or passwords
• No advertising or marketing
• No tracking across other apps or websites
• No selling, sharing, or trading your data
• No microphone, location, contacts, photo library, or advertising-identifier access
• No background camera activity — the camera is active only while the label scanner is open and visible on screen

Your choices

Because nothing is tied to an account, you control everything from the device:

• Dismiss a report to clear it from the app
• Uninstall the app to remove all local data
• Email us if you want to know more about the data flow or have a request

Changes to this policy

If we update how data is handled, we'll update this page and bump the effective date above. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.

Contact

Questions or concerns? Email support.pongo@gmail.com and we'll get back to you within a few days.