Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 5, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how BS Meter ("BS Meter," "we," "us," or "our"), a product of The Pocket App Company LLC, collects, uses, and protects information when you use the BS Meter application and related services (the "Service"). By using the Service, you agree to the practices described here.

1. The short version

Audio is turned into text on your phone. The speech recogniser runs offline, on the device. Audio is never uploaded and never stored.
The text is uploaded, because checking a claim is what the app is for.
The app sends a one-way hash of your phone's Android ID, so the free monthly checks are counted per phone and signing up again with a new email on the same phone does not hand out more. The hash is worked out on the phone; the Android ID itself is never sent. This is not the advertising ID.
There is no account by default, and there is no advertising identifier. Signing in with Google does not collect an email address. Signing in with an email address and password does keep that address, because it is what you sign in with.
There are no analytics or advertising SDKs in the app. Not configured off — not present. There is one crash reporter, Sentry. When the app or the server crashes, a report goes to Sentry: the error, where in the code it happened, the app version, and the phone's model and system version. It carries no account, no email address, no transcript, no video address and no screenshot.
We do not keep a record of what you personally checked. What the server caches is keyed by the content of a claim, not by who asked about it.

2. What the app collects on your phone

Audio from the video being checked

To check a video the app has to hear it. There are two routes, and they capture different things.

Sharing or pasting a link (the main route). The app opens the video's own published embed inside its own window, plays it silently, and listens to its own player. Nothing else on the device is part of that audio path. No screen recording and no system audio capture is involved.

The floating meter (optional). This route uses Android's playback-capture API, which requires your explicit per-session consent through the dialog Android itself shows. It is restricted at the operating-system level to the specific social apps the meter supports, so audio from any other app — a music player, a call, anything else — never reaches the recorder.

The microphone is never recorded. The app declares the RECORD_AUDIO permission because Android requires it for playback capture, but no part of the app ever opens a microphone input.

Audio never leaves the device and is never written to storage. It is converted to text as it plays and then discarded.

Text, findings and history

Transcripts and the verdicts produced from them are stored on your phone, so that your past checks are available and so a check can be exported if you contact us for support. Deleting a check, or uninstalling the app, removes them.

Nothing else

No contacts, no location, no photos, no calendar, no device advertising identifier, and no list of your installed apps. The one device-level value the app reads is the Android ID, and only as a SHA-256 hash worked out on the phone (see Section 3): the Android ID itself never leaves it. The app asks the system about the handful of social apps the meter supports, and about nothing else.

3. What is sent to us

When you run a check, the app sends:

Sent	Why
The transcript text of the video	It is what gets fact-checked
The platform and video id	Used as a cache key, so the same video is not paid for twice
A credential: a per-install token, or an account id if you signed in	Metering and abuse control
A device hash: a SHA-256 hash of a fixed label plus your phone's Android ID, worked out on the phone	Counting the free monthly checks per phone, and stopping repeat free sign-ups on one phone
If the server has Play Integrity switched on, a Play Integrity token from Google Play	Asking Google Play to confirm that this is the genuine app on a genuine phone
For an image check, the image	It is what gets checked
If you buy a check pack, the purchase token the app store issued for it, and the product id	So the server can ask the store whether the purchase is real before adding checks to your balance — the app's own word is never enough

Your name, phone number, contacts and location are not sent, because the app never has them.

Your email address is sent on exactly four requests, and only if you use the email-and-password sign-in: creating the account, confirming it with the mailed code, asking for a password reset, and signing in. It is not attached to a check, so nothing joins it to a video you looked at.

Your password is sent on those same requests over HTTPS and is never stored as you typed it — what we keep is a scrypt hash, which cannot be turned back into the password.

A problem report (Settings → Support → Report a problem, or REPORT THIS CHECK on a result) sends what you typed, the app version, the platform, the phone's system version and model, which screen you wrote from and, for a reported check, the video address or "picture" it was about. The reply address in the mail's "Reply to" line is only what you type into the email box — the app pre-fills it with the address you signed in with, and you can change it. An address is required, so that a report can be answered. The server also adds a "Who sent it" block so the support inbox can tell which account a report came from: your account reference (the short code Settings shows), how you signed in (Google, Apple, email or not signed in), your email address if you signed in by email (Google and Apple accounts hold none), how many checks you have used this month against your allowance, and a hashed install identifier. You may attach up to three screenshots from your photo library; the app shrinks each one on the phone before sending, and only pictures you pick travel — the app never takes one itself. The app's own error log also goes with a report: its newest 20 entries (the failure sentences the app showed you, the video addresses they were about, and what the app was doing at the time), so a problem can be diagnosed without a second exchange. The support inbox's copy also notes whether the service holds a stored verdict for a reported check, and carries a link to this install's crash reports, filtered by the same hashed install identifier. Nothing else is attached: not the transcript, not the claims, and never your credential, token or password. The server does not store the report; it mails it to the support inbox and the mail is the only copy.

4. What we store

Every table in our database is listed here. There is no other storage.

Stored	What is in it	Tied to you?
Cached analyses	A completed analysis, keyed by a hash of the video reference	No
Claim verdicts	A checked claim's text and its verdict	No — keyed by the claim's content
Claim evidence	Sources gathered for a claim	No
Scan log	One row per check: platform, counts, cost. Never content	No
Installs	A SHA-256 hash of the install token, platform, timestamps, a count	Pseudonymous
Accounts	The sign-in provider and that provider's id for you	Pseudonymous
Email accounts	An email address, a `scrypt` hash of the password, and whether the address has been confirmed	Yes — an address identifies you
Quota usage	A caller identity and a monthly count. Each check is also counted against the phone, in a second row keyed by a hash of the device hash the phone sent, never the value sent	Pseudonymous
Device integrity	Only if Play Integrity is on: that same double-hashed phone key, whether Google Play confirmed the app and phone, and when	Pseudonymous
Purchases	Older subscriptions only (check packs replaced subscriptions, and no new row is written for a pack). One row per subscription purchase: the store's purchase token, the product, the checks it grants, when it expires, its state, the store's order id, and the caller identity it raises. No email, no name, no store account id	Pseudonymous
Check pack credits	One row per check pack bought: the store's transaction key, the product, how many checks it added, the platform (Google Play or App Store), whether it was a sandbox test purchase, the store's order id, when it was credited, and the pseudonymous caller identity it was credited to. Never updated and never deleted. No email, no name, no store account id	Pseudonymous
Check pack balances	One row per caller who has bought a pack: the pseudonymous caller identity, the total of checks credited, the total spent, and when it last changed. No email, no name	Pseudonymous

These consequences are worth stating plainly, because they are the whole point:

The caches are keyed by content, not by person. A verdict about a claim is stored once and reused for everyone who encounters that claim. There is no record anywhere joining a person to the videos they checked.
Your install token is never stored. Only its SHA-256 hash. The token itself exists in one response and thereafter only on your phone.
Signing in with Google does not collect your email address. Google offers one; we store the provider's stable id for you and discard the rest. The app keeps the address on your phone only, so Settings can show which account you are signed in with. It is never sent to us on its own, is not included in phone backups, and is deleted when you sign out or delete your account.
Signing in with an email address does collect it, and there is no version of that feature which does not. It is what you sign in with. The password is never stored as you typed it — only a scrypt hash of it. Deleting your account deletes the address, in the app under Settings or at the deletion page.
The confirmation code is not stored either — only a hash of it, for up to 20 minutes, with a count of wrong guesses.
The phone's monthly counter is not removed when you delete an account. Its whole purpose is that signing up again does not reset the free checks, so it is kept for the calendar month it counts and then not read again. It holds no email address, no account id and no name — only a hash of a hash and a number. Write to support@thepocketappcompany.com and we will remove it on request.
The Android ID is never sent or stored as it is. The phone sends a SHA-256 hash of it with a fixed label, and the server hashes that again before storing it, so the stored value cannot be turned back into the Android ID.

The one place an IP address can be stored

The quota record notes who spent a check. In the published app that is a non-reversible fingerprint of your credential, not an address. If the Service is ever run without authentication, that field falls back to recording an IP address — and an IP address is personal data in the EU and UK. It is named here rather than omitted because it is a real branch in the code.

Ordinary web-server request logs at our hosting provider also contain IP addresses, as they do for every website.

5. Who else sees your data

We are not the only system involved in answering a check.

Who	What they receive	Why
Anthropic (model provider)	Transcript text and claim text	Extracting and checking claims
A web search provider	Individual claims, as search queries	Finding evidence
Render (server hosting)	Everything in transit, plus request logs	Runs the server
Supabase (database hosting)	The records listed above	Stores them
Google	That you chose to sign in (only if you use it). And, only if Play Integrity is on, an integrity token Google Play issued for this app on this phone, which our server sends back to Google to be decoded	Sign-in; and checking that the app is genuine and the phone is a real, unmodified one
Google Workspace	Your email address and a 6-digit code	Sending the confirmation and password-reset emails, and only if you use the email sign-in
Resend (email delivery)	Your email address and a 6-digit code; and, when you send a problem report from the app, what you typed, the app and phone details listed in Section 3, and your email address if you gave one for a reply	Delivering those same emails from our server, only if you use the email sign-in; and carrying problem reports to the support inbox
Google Play (and, when the iPhone app sells, the App Store)	Your purchase token, sent back to the store that issued it	Checking that a check pack purchase is real before it adds checks to your balance
RevenueCat (purchase bookkeeping)	Only once you buy or restore a check pack: the store's purchase token, your account's public reference (the 12-character handle shown in Settings → Account), and the phone's model, system version, language and IP address. Never a transcript, a verdict, a video address or an email address	Keeping one record of who has bought a check pack, restored one or been refunded, across both app stores
Sentry (crash reports)	When the app or the server crashes: the error, where in the code it happened, the app version, and the phone's model and system version. No account, no email address, no transcript, no video address, no screenshot	Finding and fixing crashes

Data is not sold, and is not shared with advertisers or data brokers. There are none involved.

6. How long things are kept

Audio	Never stored. Discarded as it is transcribed.
On-device history	Until you delete a check or uninstall the app.
Cached analyses and verdicts	Indefinitely, as a shared cache. Not linked to you.
Scan log	Indefinitely. Contains no content and no identifier.
Install and account records	Until the install is revoked or the account deleted.
The phone's monthly counter and its Play Integrity result	Monthly counts are kept as history and only the current month is read. They are not tied to an account, so deleting an account does not remove them; they are removed on request.
An email address and password hash	Until the account is deleted. Deleting it removes the row.
A confirmation or password-reset code	20 minutes, as a hash.
A problem report	Not stored by the server at all. It is an email in the support mailbox, kept there like any other support mail and deleted on request.
A purchase record	Kept after the check pack is used up, as the record of a sale. It names a pseudonymous caller identity, never an address, and deleting the account does not remove it. RevenueCat's copy is kept under its own policy; write to us to have it removed.

7. Your rights and how to use them

Wherever you live, you can:

Delete your history — in the app, per check or all at once.
Delete everything — uninstalling removes all data held on the device. To delete your account and its records from our servers, use Settings → Delete your account in the app, or follow the deletion page. The one thing that is not removed this way is the phone's monthly check counter (see Section 4); write to the address in Section 11 and we will remove it on request.
Use the app without an account — anonymous is the default, not a concession.

If you are in the UK, EU or EEA, UK GDPR and GDPR give you rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection. The lawful basis for processing a check is performance of a contract — you asked for the check — and for the caps and counters it is legitimate interests, specifically keeping the Service's costs from running away.

If you are in California, the CCPA/CPRA give you rights to know, delete and opt out of sale. There is no sale to opt out of.

To exercise any of these, write to the address in Section 11. If you signed in with an email address, write from that address. Otherwise we hold no address for you, so a request will need the install or account identifier the app can show you, or it cannot be matched to anything.

8. Children

BS Meter is not directed at children under 13, and no part of it is designed for them. No age is collected. If you believe a child has provided personal information, write to the address in Section 11 and it will be deleted.

9. Other people in the videos you check

A video you check contains someone else's speech, and that transcript is processed and cached. Two rules bound what the app does with it, and both are enforced in the software rather than merely promised here:

Verdicts are stated about claims, never about people. What a person is is never ruled on, in either direction — clearing somebody is as much a public judgement as accusing them.
A refusal is never reported as an open question. Where the evidence does not support saying something, the app says the check was withdrawn, rather than leaving an insinuation standing in its place.

Please do not use the app on private recordings of people who have not published them.

10. Security

Traffic is HTTPS end to end.
Secrets are held as environment variables at the host, and are not in the app or in our source code.
The install token is stored only as a hash, so disclosure of the database could not yield a working credential. Passwords are stored the same way, as a scrypt hash.
Database row-level security is applied at start-up, and a failure to apply it is reported rather than passing silently.

No system is perfectly secure, and this one is maintained by a very small team.

11. Contact us

For questions about this Privacy Policy or your information, contact:

The Pocket App Company LLC, 2501 Chatham Rd Ste N, Springfield, IL 62704-4188
Email: support@thepocketappcompany.com

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date above and, where they change what is collected, in the app's release notes. The version that applies is the one published at this address.