Privacy Policy

Last updated November 13, 2026

Draft pending legal review. This version may change before launch.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data [Company legal name] ("Smuggy", "we", "us") collects when you use the Smuggy apps and website (the "Service"), why, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have. It's part of our Terms of Service.

1. Who is responsible

[Company legal name], [Company postal address], is the controller of your personal data. For anything about privacy, write to privacy@smuggy.app.

2. What we collect

Account

• Phone number, to send your WhatsApp sign-in code and identify your account. We also keep a one-way hash of it, so people who have your number in their contacts can add you to a claim (you can turn this off under "How friends find me"). Other users can't see your phone number, and someone who adds you by number isn't told which account it belongs to.
• Sign in with Apple or Google (if you use it): the account identifier those services give us and, if they share them, your name and email address (Apple may give us a private relay address). For Apple we also keep a token Apple issues, only so we can revoke your Sign in with Apple authorization when you delete your account or unlink Apple.
• Profile: your display name, an optional @username (anyone can find you by it), an avatar if you add one, your language, time zone, and the date you confirmed you are 16 or older. We don't ask for your birth date.

What you do in Smuggy

• Claims: the text you write, the contract we draft from it (question, conditions, deadline, sources), every version before it locks, and its visibility (private, group or public).
• Participation: sides you take, confidence levels, claims you watch as a witness, comments and progress updates, answers when settling a claim together, confirmations, concessions, appeals and votes.
• Social: friends, groups and their roles, and invite links you create or open.
• People you add to a claim: the name you give them and, for someone you add from your contacts, a one-way hash of their number, kept only while their invite is open (so it reaches them if they join with that number).
• Contacts (only if you use "From contacts"): the app reads your address book on your phone and turns each number into a one-way hash there. Only the hashes are sent, to check which belong to Smuggy accounts; we don't store them, your contacts' names or their numbers.
• Track record: ratings, wins and losses, streaks and calibration computed from your settled claims.
• Rulings: the outcome, reasoning, sources and technical details of how each claim was settled.
• Safety: reports you file and people you block.

Purchases

• Which credit packs you bought, whether and until when you have Smuggy Pro, store transaction identifiers, and how credits were spent or refunded. Apple and Google process the payment; we never receive your card details.

Device and usage

• Push notifications: a push token for your device and your notification settings (such as quiet hours).
• Analytics (only with your consent): product events such as "claim created" or "invite opened", with your account identifier and coarse properties (for example a category or a count). No claim text, phone numbers, IP address or location.
• Totals we count without asking: how many times each shared receipt was shared, opened by a person and led to a new account, per day; and how many people on each side of a ruling saw the "Told you!" card. These are numbers only: no IP address, device details or who opened what. To count each new account once we keep a mark that your account was already counted, deleted with your account. Link-preview robots and people on the claim are not counted.
• Crash and error reports: device model, operating system, app version and technical details of the error, scrubbed of phone numbers, codes, tokens and claim text.
• Server logs and security: IP addresses and request details our hosting providers log to keep the Service secure and working, and rate-limit counters keyed by a hashed phone number, account or IP address.
• Ads (free users only): see section 6.

What we don't collect

We don't upload or keep your address book, and we don't access your photos, microphone, camera or precise location. We don't collect government IDs or payment card numbers.

3. How we use it, and our legal bases

We don't use your data to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

4. The AI referee and other AI features

Smuggy uses AI models from Anthropic to draft a clear contract from a claim you type, to screen content for abuse, and, when a claim needs it, to rule on it ("the Ref").

• What the AI receives: the claim as you wrote it when drafting, and the claim's contract (question, conditions, edge cases, deadline and allowed sources) when ruling. That includes anything typed into them, such as a friend's name, so only write what you'd be happy for an AI to read. The Ref may search the public web to find the answer.
• Safety screening: the claims, comments and display names you write are checked for abuse when you post them. Clear abuse may be refused or hidden until a person reviews it; a person makes every final moderation decision.
• What it doesn't receive: anything that identifies your account, such as your phone number, account identifier or profile, and for rulings also who took which side or who paid for the ruling.
• Anthropic processes this data on our behalf, under terms that don't allow it to train its models on it.
• Rulings are automated, but they are never the last word: every proposed ruling has an appeal window, and participants can settle a claim together instead. Rulings only affect bragging rights.
• We keep each ruling's reasoning, sources and model details so rulings can be checked and appealed.

5. Who can see your information

• Your profile (name and avatar) is visible to your friends, people in your groups, and people taking part in or viewing a claim you're in. Your language, time zone, plan and age confirmation are visible only to you.
• Profiles are private by default. If you choose to make yours public, anyone signed in to Smuggy can see your name, avatar, title, badges and track record, and you may appear on the public leaderboard. You can make it private again at any time.
• Private claims are visible only to the people taking part and anyone holding an invite link you created. Group claims are visible to the group. Public claims and receipt links you or another participant share can be seen by anyone who has the link, including in link previews on messaging apps.
• Your track record and badges, while your profile is private, are visible only to your friends, people in your groups and people taking part in a claim with you, not to someone who only views a public claim you're in. The public leaderboard lists only public profiles that meet its rules; a moderator can take someone off it.
• Blocked people can't join or comment on your claims, and you don't see each other's comments.
• Reports are confidential: the person you report, and our moderators, never see who reported them.

6. Ads

If you don't have Pro and haven't bought credits in the last 30 days, the app shows a few ads through Google AdMob. On first use we ask for your consent through Google's consent form and, on iPhone, Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. Ads are non-personalized unless you agree to both. Even non-personalized ads involve AdMob processing your IP address and device information to deliver the ad, limit frequency and prevent fraud. You can change your choice at any time in the app. We never show ads on claim, ruling, invite or share screens, and we block gambling, betting, crypto, loan, dating, political and alcohol ads. Google's use of data is described in its policy at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

7. Service providers

We share personal data only with providers that help us run the Service, under contracts that limit how they may use it:

To settle claims from public data we query market and sports data providers (for example stock prices or match results). We send them only tickers, match identifiers and dates, never personal data.

We may also disclose data if the law requires it, to protect people's safety or our rights, or to a successor if Smuggy is sold or merged (we'll tell you first).

We don't sell your personal data. Under some US state laws, personalized advertising counts as "sharing"; it only happens if you agree to personalized ads, and you can withdraw at any time. We honor Global Privacy Control signals on our website.

8. International transfers

Smuggy is operated by a US company, our main database is in the European Union, and some providers process data in the United States and other countries. When we transfer personal data from the EU, UK, Switzerland or Israel to countries without an adequacy decision, we use safeguards the law recognizes, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified.

9. How long we keep it

10. Your choices and rights

In the app you can download a copy of your data (Account → Download my data), delete your account (Account → Delete my account, or on our account deletion page), turn analytics on or off, change your ad choices, and control notifications.

Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to access, correct, delete or port your data, to restrict or object to processing, to withdraw consent at any time (without affecting earlier processing), and to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" for targeted advertising. We won't treat you differently for using these rights. To use them, write to privacy@smuggy.app from the app or include the phone number on your account; we may need to verify it's you. We reply within one month (45 days where US state law allows). An authorized agent may act for you with proof of authority. If we refuse a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: in the EU, the authority where you live; in the UK, the ICO; in Israel, the Privacy Protection Authority.

11. Security

We protect your data with encryption in transit, row-level access controls in our database, sessions stored in your phone's secure keychain, rate limits against abuse, and the principle that secrets never leave our servers. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we'll notify you and the authorities as the law requires. You can report a vulnerability to support@smuggy.app.

12. Children

Smuggy is for people 16 and older and isn't directed at children. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child is using Smuggy, tell us at privacy@smuggy.app and we'll delete the account.

13. Changes

We'll update this policy as Smuggy changes. If a change is material, we'll tell you in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top shows the latest version.

14. Contact

• [Company legal name]
• [Company postal address]
• Privacy: privacy@smuggy.app
• Support: support@smuggy.app