Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and what this covers

HabitStakes is published by Scaling Adventures LLC (“we”, “us”). This policy covers:

• the HabitStakes iPhone app, version 1.0.0 (2), including its widgets and Live Activity; and
• this website at habitstakes-app.pages.dev.

It does not cover Apple’s own services. Apple Health, the App Store, Sign in with Apple, iCloud device backup, and iOS itself are operated by Apple Inc. under Apple’s privacy policy and terms. If you contact us by email, your email provider and ours handle that message under their own terms.

The most important structural fact in this policy is that we do not operate a backend for HabitStakes. In ordinary use, we do not receive your habit data, your Health data, your identity, or any usage telemetry, because there is nowhere for the app to send it.

2. Information involved, and where it comes from

“Involved” is a more accurate word than “collected” for most of this list, because most of it stays on your device and never reaches us.

2.1 Commitment and habit records — on your device

Source: you, as you use the app. Reaches us: no.

• Your active commitment: the habit, daily target, total amount in USD, duration, start date, and the IANA time zone recorded when the commitment starts.
• Your daily activity ledger: the per-day outcome of each commitment day — protected, forfeited, or unresolved — and the daily share amount that outcome applies to.
• Completed challenge history: an append-only local archive of finished commitments, their per-day outcomes, lifetime protected and forfeited totals, completion rate, and streaks.
• Check-ins and timer results for reading, hydration, and focus, which you enter or start yourself.
• Daily step totals used for verification, stored as day-level numbers alongside the commitment, not as copies of raw Apple Health samples.

2.2 Apple Health step data — with your permission

Source: Apple Health on your device. Reaches us: no. Covered in detail in section 4.

2.3 Optional Sign in with Apple identity

Source: Apple’s authentication flow, if you choose to use it. Reaches us: no.

Sign in with Apple is optional; the app is fully usable without it. If you use it, the Apple user identifier is stored in the device Keychain with device-only accessibility. Authorization credentials are handled in memory and then discarded; they are not written to app preferences or to recovery exports. Signing out removes the local identity from the Keychain, but it does not revoke your authorization with Apple — you can do that in your Apple Account settings. Keychain items are stored by iOS outside the app’s own container, so a Keychain identity can survive deleting the app; sign out or delete local data inside the app first if you want it removed.

2.4 App settings and permission state

Source: your choices in the app and in iOS. Reaches us: no.

Reminder toggles, reminder times, demo-mode state, and the app’s record of whether a permission request has been completed are stored locally in app preferences.

2.5 Information you send us on purpose

Source: you. Reaches us: yes.

If you email support@scalingadventures.com, we receive whatever you put in that message: your email address, its contents, and any attachments or screenshots you decide to include. Please do not send Health data, recovery keys, recovery files, or other sensitive information; the Support page lists what is actually useful.

2.6 Website request metadata

Source: your browser and network. Reaches us: only in the limited way described in section 10.

2.7 What the app does not do

• No advertising, ad SDK, ad identifier use, or App Tracking Transparency tracking prompt.
• No third-party analytics, crash-reporting SDK, attribution, or fingerprinting library.
• No payment processor, card entry, wallet, stored value, or in-app purchase.
• No remote push notifications and no device push token.
• No contacts, photos, microphone, camera, or precise-location access.
• No HabitStakes account server, cloud sync, or remote backup of your habit records.
• No writing to Apple Health.

3. Why each category exists

To run your commitment

Commitment terms, daily targets, and time-zone information determine what each day requires and when each day ends.

To verify a day

Step totals, check-ins, and timer results decide whether a day is protected, forfeited, or left unresolved.

To show your record

Activity ledger and history power the dashboard, result screen, History tab, widgets, and Live Activity.

To remind you

Reminder preferences and current progress schedule local notifications on your device.

To let you keep or move your data

Export and encrypted recovery exist so your records are portable and under your control.

To answer you

Email you send us is used to respond, troubleshoot, and improve the app.

To serve this website securely

Ordinary request metadata is processed by our host to deliver pages and protect them from abuse.

We do not use any of this for profiling, behavioural advertising, credit or insurance decisions, or automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.

4. Apple Health in detail

This section is the one to read closely if you use the steps habit.

• Read only, and narrow. HabitStakes requests read access to step count so it can total your steps per commitment day. It does not request or receive workouts, heart rate, sleep, weight, nutrition, cycle tracking, clinical records, or any other Health category.
• Nothing is written. HabitStakes never writes, edits, or deletes anything in Apple Health.
• Permission is yours. Access happens only after you grant it in the system Health prompt. You can review or change it at any time in Health › Sharing › Apps or Settings › Privacy & Security › Health › HabitStakes. Revoking access does not delete the day totals HabitStakes has already recorded locally; use the app’s delete control for that.
• Denial is invisible to apps. Apple deliberately does not tell an app whether read access was denied. HabitStakes therefore never claims to know. If nothing is visible, it says there is no step data available and points you to Health settings and a refresh action, and the affected days stay unresolved rather than being treated as failures.
• Never used for advertising or brokered. Health data is never used for advertising or marketing, never sold, never shared with data brokers, and never disclosed to third parties for their own purposes. It is used only to show you your own progress in the app.
• It stays on the device. Health-derived totals are not transmitted to us, are excluded from encrypted recovery files, and are not copied as raw Health records into the JSON export. The JSON export includes day-level totals HabitStakes recorded for verification.
• It can be late, partial, or wrong. Health data depends on your devices, on sync between them, and on other apps that write to Health. Totals can arrive hours late, arrive incomplete, or change after the fact. HabitStakes waits past the end of a day before finalizing it, and a later refresh can still improve a day from forfeited to protected, but no verification method here is guaranteed to be accurate.
• It is not medical information from us. Nothing HabitStakes shows is medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and the app is not a medical device.

5. Where information lives

• Your iPhone. Commitment, ledger, history, and settings are stored in the app’s own storage. An optional Sign in with Apple identifier is stored in the Keychain, which iOS keeps outside the app’s container and may retain after the app is deleted.
• A shared app group on your device. A minimal progress snapshot is written to a private app group container so the widget extension and Live Activity can render current progress. The widget extension performs no Health queries and no network requests.
• Apple’s systems, for Apple’s features. Apple Health data lives in Apple Health. Sign in with Apple is operated by Apple. If you use iCloud or encrypted device backups, iOS may include app data in those backups under Apple’s terms and your settings.
• Files you create. Anything you export goes wherever you save it — Files, iCloud Drive, another app, or another device. Those copies are yours to manage.
• Our mailbox. Email you send us sits with our email provider.

6. How long it is kept

Because app data is local, retention is tied to your device and your choices rather than to a schedule we run:

• Commitment, ledger, and history records stay on the device until you delete local data in the app or delete the app.
• The optional Sign in with Apple identity in the Keychain stays until you sign out or delete local data in the app. Because iOS stores Keychain items outside the app container, it is not guaranteed to be removed by deleting the app.
• Deleting all local data in the app removes the active commitment, the completed-challenge history, the activity ledger, demo state, and the Keychain identity, and clears cached Health totals held by the app.
• Deleting the app removes its container, which covers the commitment, ledger, history, and settings. It may leave the Keychain identity behind, so use the in-app Delete all local data or Sign out control before uninstalling if you want everything gone. Depending on your iOS settings, an existing device or iCloud backup may still contain a copy until that backup is replaced or removed, and files you exported yourself are unaffected either way.
• Exported JSON and encrypted recovery files persist until you delete them. We cannot reach or delete them.
• Support email is kept only as long as needed to handle your request and to keep a reasonable record of it, and is then deleted.
• Website request logs are handled by our host under its own retention practices; we do not maintain a separate visitor database.

7. Sharing and disclosure

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not disclose it to data brokers. There are no advertising partners, no analytics vendors, and no payment processor in this release.

The complete list of parties that can be involved at all:

• Apple Inc. — operates iOS, Apple Health, the App Store, and Sign in with Apple. If you install the app from the App Store, Apple handles that transaction and may provide us with aggregate App Store reporting. We do not receive your Health data from Apple.
• Cloudflare, Inc. — hosts this website on Cloudflare Pages and necessarily processes request and network metadata to serve and protect it.
• Our email provider — carries messages you choose to send to our support address.

We may also disclose information we actually hold if we are legally required to, if it is necessary to protect our rights or the safety of others, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets — in which case the receiving party would remain bound by this policy or notify you of a material change. Because we do not hold your habit or Health data, there is very little for such a request to reach.

8. Your controls

• Review. The Trust & data screen lets you read the activity ledger entry by entry.
• Export. Export your app-managed records as JSON to Files. The export includes commitments, completed challenge history, and activity records, including day-level totals recorded for verification. It does not copy raw Apple Health records. Export is unavailable while demo data is loaded.
• Delete. “Delete all local data” removes the records described in section 6 after a confirmation. It cannot be undone.
• Health permission. Grant, review, or revoke read access at any time in the Health app or in Settings.
• Notifications. Every reminder type can be turned off individually in the app, and all notifications can be turned off in Settings.
• Widgets and Live Activities. Remove widgets from your Home or Lock Screen, or turn off Live Activities for HabitStakes in Settings, at any time.
• Sign in. Sign out in the app to remove the local identity. Revoke the Apple authorization itself in your Apple Account settings.
• Ask us. Email support@scalingadventures.com with a privacy question or request. We answer requests about information we actually hold, which in practice is the email correspondence itself. We cannot access, produce, correct, or delete data that only exists on your device — the in-app controls are how that is done.

9. Exports and recovery files

Recovery is an explicit file you create; there is no automatic cloud backup.

• Each recovery export is sealed with authenticated encryption using a freshly generated 256-bit key.
• The recovery key is shown to you once, separately from the file. Both the file and the key are required to restore. HabitStakes does not store the key, and we cannot recover it for you. If you lose it, the file cannot be opened.
• Recovery files include commitment settings and completed-challenge metadata such as dates, goals, and protected or forfeited outcomes.
• Recovery files exclude your Apple identity, your Health authorization state, raw Apple Health samples, and Health-derived step totals. Restored history rows show zero steps to mark that number as intentionally unavailable rather than measured.
• Imports are validated, previewed before they are applied, and rejected if the file is malformed, oversized, or from an unsupported future version.
• Treat exported JSON and recovery files like documents: anyone who obtains a recovery file and its key can read the records inside it. Store them somewhere you trust.

10. This website

This site is static HTML, CSS, and images. It has:

• no cookies, local storage, or session tracking;
• no JavaScript, tag managers, pixels, or analytics;
• no forms, logins, or comment systems;
• no embedded third-party fonts, videos, or widgets, and no external network requests when the page loads.

The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Delivering and protecting any website necessarily involves the host processing ordinary request and network metadata — for example your IP address, the time of the request, the page requested, your user agent, and TLS details — and Cloudflare processes that under its own terms and privacy policy. We do not add analytics on top of it, and we do not build visitor profiles.

Links to Apple’s site or other third-party pages are provided for convenience. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which we do not control.

11. Security and its limits

What the design does for you: your records stay on hardware you control, protected by iOS app sandboxing and, when your device is locked with a passcode, by device encryption. The optional identity is held in the Keychain with device-only accessibility. Recovery exports use authenticated encryption. The app ships no payment credentials or provider secrets, because it has none.

What no design can promise: no method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. A lost, unlocked, jailbroken, or malware-affected device, a shared exported file, a compromised backup, or a leaked recovery key can expose your records. Deletion inside the app is a normal application deletion; flash storage can retain implementation-level remnants outside any app’s control, so we describe it as local deletion rather than guaranteed forensic erasure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, and we encourage a device passcode, current iOS updates, and careful handling of exported files.

12. Children

HabitStakes is intended for adults. It is not directed to children, and it is not designed for or marketed to anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Because the app stores information locally and sends none to us, the practical protection is the eligibility rule in the Terms of Use: you must be 18 or older to use HabitStakes. If you believe a child has sent us information by email, contact support@scalingadventures.com and we will delete that correspondence.

13. International visitors

Scaling Adventures LLC is based in the United States, and this website is served from a global content delivery network. If you use the app outside the United States, your app data still stays on your device; it is not transferred to us. If you email us, that message will be handled in the United States and wherever our email provider operates, which may have different data-protection rules than your home country. Use of the app and this site is voluntary, and you should not use them if that arrangement is not acceptable to you.

HabitStakes is offered in English and is designed around US dollar amounts. We make no representation that the app or this site is appropriate or available in every location, and you are responsible for complying with local law where you are.

14. US state privacy rights

Some US states, including California, give residents rights over personal information a business holds about them — typically the right to know what is held, to obtain a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to opt out of sale or sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, to limit use of sensitive personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights.

Here is how those rights map to a local-only app, stated honestly:

• We do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes beyond providing the app, so there is nothing to opt out of and no “Do Not Sell or Share” mechanism to operate.
• Your habit and Health information is not in our possession. We cannot produce, correct, or delete records we never receive. The in-app export and delete controls give you the substance of access, portability, and deletion directly, immediately, and without needing to identify yourself to us.
• For information we do hold — essentially your support correspondence — you can ask us to confirm it, provide a copy, correct it, or delete it by emailing support@scalingadventures.com from the address you wrote from. We will verify a request by replying to that address, and we will not discriminate against you for making one.
• Authorized agents. If someone submits a request for you, we may ask for reasonable proof of authority and may ask you to confirm it directly.

We aim to answer verifiable requests promptly and within the time limits applicable law requires. This section describes how we handle requests; it is not a promise that any particular statutory framework applies to us, and it does not expand rights you already have.

15. Changes to this policy

If the app’s behaviour changes — for example if a backend, an account system, analytics, or paid functionality is ever added — this policy will be updated before or at the same time as that change ships, and the effective date at the top will change. Material changes will be summarized here, and where the change affects data practices in the app, the App Store privacy details will be updated to match. Continued use after an update means you accept the updated policy.

16. Contact

Privacy questions and requests: support@scalingadventures.com.

Please include enough context to understand the request. Do not include Health data, recovery keys, or recovery files. This is a small operation, and we read messages as promptly as we can; we do not promise a guaranteed response time or service level.

Operator: Scaling Adventures LLC, United States.

Drafting note: this policy was written to describe the shipped HabitStakes build accurately and in plain English. It is not legal advice to Scaling Adventures LLC, it makes no claim of completeness under any particular statute, and no regulator has reviewed or approved it. Qualified counsel should review it, and it should be revised before the app’s data practices change in any material way.