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Privacy Policy for Starrise Contacts

Last Updated: September 23, 2026

This document describes how the Starrise Contacts app for iPhone, iPad and Mac (“the app”, “we”, “us”) processes your data. It applies to the app on every platform. It is intended to comply with applicable privacy laws and to follow Apple’s App Store privacy best practices.

1. Our Commitment to Your Privacy

Your privacy is a top priority. Our core principles are:

  • Your contacts and calendar contents stay on your device unless you explicitly use a feature that requires external processing.
  • If you turn on iCloud Sync, the app’s data is stored in your own private iCloud account, which we cannot access (see Section 6).
  • We do not upload your address book or calendar contents to our servers or to analytics providers.
  • We collect only a minimal amount of anonymous or pseudonymous usage data to understand how the app is used and to improve it.
  • When you use AI-powered features (such as the business card scanner, Voice Add or note summaries), only the specific data needed for that feature is processed—and only with your explicit action.
  • We do not use your data for third-party advertising or cross-app tracking.

2. Information Access vs. Collection (Contacts and Calendar)

To provide its core functionality, Starrise Contacts needs permission to access your Contacts and (optionally) Calendar data stored on your device.

On-Device Access Only

All contact and calendar processing (displaying, editing, reminders, moments, etc.) happens locally on your device using Apple’s system APIs.

No Upload of Contact or Calendar Contents

We do not collect, store, or share:

  • Names, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, birthdays, anniversaries
  • Calendar event titles, locations, notes, or invitees
  • Notes, gift ideas, or other free-text content you enter about a contact
  • File contents or filenames attached to a contact

This information never leaves your device through our servers or through our analytics system, except when you explicitly use an AI-powered feature as described in Section 5 below. If you turn on iCloud Sync, some of this information is stored in your own private iCloud account as described in Section 6; it still never reaches our servers.

Backups

Any backup of your contacts, calendars, or app data (for example via iCloud or device backups) is handled solely by Apple under Apple’s own privacy policy. iCloud Sync, which keeps the app’s data up to date across your devices, is described in Section 6.

3. Analytics and Usage Data

Starrise Contacts collects anonymous information about how the app is used. This helps us understand what works well and what needs improvement. We use the analytics services described in Section 4 to help us analyze this data.

3.1 What Anonymous Data We May Collect

  • App usage patterns: We may track when you launch the app, open features, navigate between screens, or interact with various functionality. We record that an action happened but never any personal details.
  • Aggregate statistics: We may collect general counts (such as total number of items) to understand usage patterns across our user base.
  • Technical information about your device: App version, device model, OS version, language settings, approximate timestamps, and an anonymous identifier to count users without identifying them.

We do not collect any personally identifying information, specifically:

  • Your contact names or personal details
  • Phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, birthdays, anniversaries
  • Calendar event titles or descriptions
  • Text in notes, gift ideas, or free-text fields
  • Names or contents of attached files

3.2 How We Use This Anonymous Data

  • Understand which features are popular
  • Measure overall app usage (for example, daily or monthly active users)
  • Find and fix problems or crashes
  • Decide which new features to prioritize

We do not:

  • Use this data for targeted advertising
  • Share this data with advertisers or data brokers
  • Combine it with other information to create a user profile

Apple’s App Store privacy labels reflect this by indicating we collect “Usage Data” that is “Data Not Linked to You.”

4. Third-Party Analytics Services

We use the following services for usage analytics:

  • PostHog (product analytics, hosted in the European Union) receives the app actions and technical device information described in Section 3, together with a random identifier created by the app. We never link this identifier to your name or other personal details.
  • Google Analytics for Firebase (Google) is part of the Firebase SDK included in the app. It may automatically record basic usage events, such as app opens, sessions and app updates, together with a pseudonymous app-instance identifier and technical device information (such as device model, operating system, app version, language and approximate country).

What these services do not receive:

  • Your contact or calendar contents
  • Your name, email address, or phone number
  • The content of your notes, gift ideas, or attachments

These services process data on our behalf under their own privacy terms: PostHog Privacy Policy and Google Privacy Policy.

We do not use any third-party advertising services. The app does not ask for permission to track you across apps and does not use your device’s advertising identifier.

5. AI-Powered Features and External Processing

Starrise Contacts offers optional AI-powered features to enhance your experience. These features use Google’s Gemini AI through Firebase (Google Cloud services) to process specific data that you choose to submit.

5.1 Features That Use AI Processing

  • Business Card Scanner: When you scan a business card, the extracted text is sent to Google’s Gemini AI service to parse and structure the contact information (such as name, company, phone numbers, and email addresses).
  • Note Summaries: When you request a summary of a note, the note’s text is sent to Google’s Gemini AI service to generate a concise summary.
  • Voice Add: When you add a contact with your voice, the audio recording of what you say is sent to Google’s Gemini AI service, which transcribes it and extracts the contact details (such as name, company, phone number and email address).
  • On-device processing: On supported devices, some of these features may instead run entirely on your device using Apple Intelligence. In that case, no data is sent to Google.
  • Other AI Features: We may introduce additional AI-powered features in the future.

5.2 What Data Is Sent

  • Only the specific content to process: For example, only the text of a scanned business card, only the note being summarized, or only the short voice recording you make with Voice Add.
  • No bulk uploads: We never send your entire address book, calendar, or notes collection to AI services.

5.3 How This Data Is Handled

  • Data is sent to Google’s Firebase AI / Vertex AI services for processing.
  • Google processes this data according to their Cloud Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
  • We do not store copies of the data you submit to AI services on our own servers.
  • Results are returned directly to your device.

5.4 Your Control

You are in control of whether to use these AI-powered features. If you prefer not to send any data to external AI services, simply do not use the business card scanner, Voice Add, or AI summary features. All other app functionality works entirely on your device.

6. iCloud Sync

iCloud Sync keeps your Starrise Contacts data up to date on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. It is part of Starrise Contacts Pro and uses Apple’s CloudKit service to store the data in the private database of your own iCloud account.

6.1 What Is Synced

  • Notes (title, text, formatting, AI summaries and linked contacts), gift ideas, and Moments from Notes
  • Information the app adds to a contact, such as favorites, the date, place and calendar event when a contact was added, when it was last opened, and Keep in Touch reminders
  • Your favorite and archived contact details (for example, which phone number is the main one)
  • File attachments, up to the size limit you choose in the app’s settings
  • Deleted contacts in the Trash, including a copy of the contact card (such as name, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses and photo), so they can be restored on any of your devices
  • Information used to recognize the same person on your other devices: device-specific contact identifiers and one-way cryptographic hashes (SHA-256) of a contact’s phone numbers, email addresses, or name and birthday

Your address book itself keeps syncing through the account each contact belongs to (for example iCloud Contacts, Google or Exchange). Apart from contacts in the Trash, iCloud Sync does not copy your address book.

6.2 Who Can Access It

  • The data is stored in your private iCloud database, which is tied to your Apple Account. We cannot view, access, or retrieve it, and it is never sent to our servers or to our analytics provider.
  • Apple stores and processes this data under its own terms and the Apple Privacy Policy.

6.3 Your Control

  • iCloud Sync requires a Starrise Contacts Pro subscription and an Apple Account signed in to iCloud. It turns on automatically when you subscribe, unless you have turned it off before.
  • You can turn it off at any time in the app’s settings (iPhone and iPad: Settings → iCloud Sync; Mac: Settings → iCloud). Your data then stays on your device, and the copy already in iCloud stays in your iCloud account.
  • Deleting a note, gift idea, file or other item in the app with iCloud Sync on also deletes it from iCloud and from your other devices. You can remove all of the app’s data from iCloud in your Apple Account’s iCloud storage settings.

7. Purchases, App Configuration and Apple Services

7.1 Purchases and Subscriptions

Purchases are processed by Apple through the App Store; we never receive your payment details. To provide Starrise Contacts Pro, the app uses RevenueCat, which receives your App Store purchase and subscription information (such as product, price, currency, storefront country, transaction dates and subscription status) together with a random app user ID and technical device information. RevenueCat does not receive your name, email address or contact data. See the RevenueCat Privacy Policy.

7.2 App Configuration

The app downloads configuration settings (for example, which AI model to use or whether a feature is switched on) from Firebase Remote Config (Google). These requests include technical information such as the app version, device language and region, and a Firebase installation identifier.

7.3 Apple Services

  • Maps and addresses: To show your contacts on the map, contact addresses are converted into map coordinates using Apple’s mapping services. Suggestions while you type an address are also provided by Apple.
  • Location: If you allow location access, the app saves where you are when you add a contact (Creation Location) and uses Apple’s services to turn the coordinates into a place name. This is stored with the contact’s data on your device, and in your iCloud account if iCloud Sync is on. Your location is also used to show where you are on the map.
  • Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight and widgets: Contact names and note titles and snippets are indexed on your device so they appear in Spotlight, Siri suggestions and widgets. Requests you make to Siri are handled by Apple.
  • These services are provided by Apple under the Apple Privacy Policy.

7.4 Other Apps

When you use a quick action, the app opens the app or website you chose (for example WhatsApp, Telegram, Google Maps or Waze) and passes it the phone number, address or username needed for that action. That app’s own privacy policy applies from there.

8. Data Retention

  • Contact and calendar data: We do not store copies of your contact or calendar contents. They remain on your device and your Apple account until you delete them.
  • iCloud Sync data: Stored in your private iCloud account until you delete it in the app or in your iCloud settings (see Section 6). We keep no copy.
  • Analytics data: Kept only as long as needed for statistics and app improvement, then deleted or permanently anonymized.
  • Purchase data: Kept by Apple and RevenueCat as long as needed to provide and manage your purchases and subscription.
  • AI-processed data: Data sent to AI services is processed in real-time and is subject to Google’s data retention policies. We do not maintain our own copies of this data.

9. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights regarding your personal data, including:

  • The right to access information we hold about you
  • The right to request deletion of your data

We do not collect your name, email address or contact data, and we do not store personal data on our own servers, so we generally cannot identify you from the data our service providers process. Deleting the app resets the random identifiers it uses. If you have a request about your data, contact us and we will help as far as we can. Data you sync with iCloud Sync is under your control in your own iCloud account (see Section 6.3).

10. Contact Us

If you have questions about this policy or your privacy rights, contact us:

We are aiming to resolve your concern or issue you might have as quickly as possible.

11. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time, for example when adding new features or services.

  • When changes occur, we will update the “Last Updated” date.
  • Continued use of the app after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.