Privacy Policy

Who is responsible

CircleBell is operated by Baran Toppare, Avenue Charles de Gaulle 10, 13469 Berlin, Germany. For privacy questions or requests, contact [email protected].

What this policy covers

This policy covers the CircleBell iOS app and the website at circlebell.app. The website does not provide accounts, forms, analytics, advertising, or cookies. Our hosting provider may process ordinary connection and security information, such as an IP address, browser details, and request time, when serving the site.

Information used by the app

Depending on how you use CircleBell, we process:

• Account information from Sign in with Apple, including your Apple account identifier, email address if Apple makes it available, and the name you choose to share.
• Your CircleBell display name and internal account identifier.
• Device and notification information, including APNs device tokens, app environment, notification authorization and delivery records.
• Content and activity you provide, including notification titles and messages, sender and recipient information, trusted-circle invitations and relationships, private recipient groups, notification preferences, scheduled delivery details, and recent Activity.
• Aggregate daily usage totals consisting only of the calendar day, immediate or scheduled delivery, individual or group audience, send count, and recipient count. These totals do not contain account, notification, batch, device, content, or exact-time identifiers.
• Pseudonymous app analytics, including a random installation identifier, event timestamps, app version and build, device type, operating-system version, country-level location derived from network information, screen names, app lifecycle events, and operational outcomes such as permission, notification submission, invitation, and paywall events. PostHog does not receive your CircleBell account identifier, email address, display name, contacts, invitation codes, notification titles or messages, APNs device token, or precise location.
• Purchase and entitlement information supplied through Apple and RevenueCat, such as product, entitlement, environment, country or region, and purchase lifecycle status. CircleBell does not receive your full payment-card details.
• Technical records needed to operate and protect the service, such as request identifiers, delivery outcomes, aggregate device counts, timestamps, and error details. Notification content and raw APNs tokens are not intentionally written to application logs, and routine notification-delivery logs omit sender, recipient, and notification identifiers.

How we use information

We use this information to authenticate accounts, maintain trusted connections, send and schedule notifications, apply recipient preferences, show recent Activity and delivery status, understand aggregate and pseudonymous product usage, improve CircleBell, provide purchases and Pro access, respond to support requests, prevent abuse, secure the service, and meet legal obligations.

Where applicable, we rely on performing our agreement with you, our legitimate interests in operating, understanding, improving, and securing CircleBell, your choices and permissions, and compliance with legal obligations.

Who receives information

We use service providers only where needed to operate CircleBell:

• Apple provides Sign in with Apple, App Store purchases, and Apple Push Notification service delivery.
• Supabase provides authentication, database, and server-function infrastructure.
• RevenueCat processes purchase and entitlement information used to provide CircleBell Pro.
• PostHog provides EU-hosted product analytics for the iOS app.
• Cloudflare hosts and protects the public website.

People you connect with can see the display name and notification content needed for their interaction with you. A sender may receive delivery-status information about a notification they sent. Private recipient groups are not disclosed to their recipients.

We do not sell personal information, use it for third-party advertising, or use analytics for tracking across other companies' apps or websites. The public website itself does not use analytics.

International processing

Our providers may process information in countries other than your own. Where required, they and we use recognized safeguards for international data transfers. Their own privacy notices provide more information about their infrastructure and transfer mechanisms.

Retention and deletion

Pending scheduled notification content remains in CircleBell until its scheduled delivery or cancellation. Cancelling deletes that pending notification content immediately. After a notification is successfully sent or reaches a final failed state, CircleBell keeps its content, participant links, batch details, and delivery attempts in the active service for 24 hours. It then becomes unreadable and is automatically deleted. Expiry timestamps remain part of restored database records, so expired activity stays subject to the same access restrictions and automatic cleanup.

Aggregate daily usage totals may be kept indefinitely because they contain no account, notification, batch, device, content, or exact-time identifiers. Pseudonymous analytics events are kept only as long as reasonably needed to understand and improve CircleBell, subject to the retention controls available from PostHog. Other account and operational information is kept while needed to provide, secure, and support CircleBell, maintain necessary records, resolve disputes, and comply with legal obligations.

You can delete your account from within the app. Account deletion removes the account and associated CircleBell data, but does not change aggregate daily totals or automatically locate and remove pseudonymous analytics events because those events are not connected to your CircleBell account. Deleted database records may remain temporarily in access-restricted infrastructure backups until those backups rotate according to the hosting provider’s retention schedule. Content already delivered through Apple Push Notification service may remain in Notification Center, on another person’s device, or in a screenshot and is outside CircleBell’s control.

Your choices and rights

You can edit your display name, change notification permissions in iOS Settings, manage trusted relationships and private groups, adjust notification preferences, and delete your account in the app.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a copy of your personal information, and to withdraw consent where processing relies on consent. Contact [email protected] to exercise a right. You may also complain to your local data-protection authority. In Berlin, this is the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information.

Age

You must be at least 13 years old to use CircleBell, or the greater minimum age required in your country to use the service on your own. If you are under 18, ask a parent or guardian to review these terms and this policy with you.

Security

We use technical and organizational safeguards intended to protect information, including authenticated access, restricted server-side operations, and database access controls. No service can guarantee absolute security.

Changes

We may update this policy as CircleBell changes. We will update the effective date and provide additional notice when required.