Zari privacy policy
Zari is an iPhone app for saving places you find in videos and posts. It is published by Alexis Logothetis. This page explains what the app and this website do with your information. If anything here is unclear, write to hello@zarithemole.com.
The short version
- You sign in with Apple, and the account is there only for invites. Zari does not ask Apple for your name or your email address, and your spots are never stored with the account.
- The spots, notes, categories and links you save are stored on your phone, with a backup copy in your own iCloud. We cannot read either.
- Searching for a place sends your search text and the area on your map to Apple or Google so they can answer.
- When you save a spot from a post you shared, Zari notes which place that post was about, so the next person who shares the same post is shown it straight away. The note holds the post and the place, and nothing about you.
- When you save a place, Zari counts it, so that we can later show which places are popular. The count says how many people saved a place, never who they are or what else they saved.
- Sharing a spot sends it to whoever you choose to send it to, as a link that holds the place. Nothing about it is stored with us.
- We collect anonymous usage statistics. They never include the places you save, your searches, your links, your notes or your location.
- There are no ads. We do not sell your information and we do not track you across other apps or websites.
- If you give this website your email address to hear about the launch, we use it for that one email and nothing else.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time.
What stays with you
Your spots
Every spot you save (its name, address and position), your categories, your notes and the link a spot came from are stored in the app on your phone. They are not sent to us.
iCloud backup
Zari keeps a copy of your spots and categories in your iCloud account, so they come back when you reinstall the app or move to a new iPhone. Apple stores that copy under your Apple Account and we have no access to it. You can switch it off for Zari in the iCloud section of the Settings app.
Your location
If you allow it, Zari uses your location to show where you are on the map, to pin a spot where you are standing and to put nearby places first when you search. We do not store your location. Zari works without it, and you can change the permission at any time in the Settings app.
Your clipboard
When you open the map, Zari checks whether your clipboard holds a link it can import and, if it does, offers to import it. Nothing from your clipboard leaves your phone unless you accept. The sign-in screen checks it the same way for an invite link, so that an invite you tapped before installing Zari still counts; only the invite’s code is sent, and only once you have signed in.
What leaves your phone
Some features only work by asking another service. This is everything the app sends, and who receives it.
Your account: Sign in with Apple
The first time you open Zari, you sign in with your Apple Account. Zari asks Apple for nothing but the sign-in itself: not your name and not your email address. Apple gives Zari an identifier for you that only Zari’s apps receive, and that is what your account is.
The account is held by Supabase, in Frankfurt, Germany. It contains that identifier, when the account was made and when it last signed in, your invite code, and how your invites stand. So that deleting your account can also end your Sign in with Apple link with Zari, we also keep the token Apple issues for that. Supabase’s sign-in service keeps a log of sign-ins with the IP address they came from, as sign-in services do.
Your spots, notes, categories, links and location are not in the account and are never sent to it. Your usage statistics are not linked to it either: PostHog is never told who you are.
Invites
Free Zari holds a limited number of spots, and each friend you invite who then saves ten spots of their own raises your limit. To make that work, our server keeps:
- your invite code, a random eight-character code that is the whole of the link you send;
- for each friend who joined with your code, which two accounts the invite joins, when it was used and, once they have saved ten spots, when that happened. The friend’s phone tells our server when it reaches ten; the count is all it sends, never the spots.
- for a friend who counted, a one-way scrambled form of their Apple identifier, which cannot be turned back into it. It stops the same Apple Account from counting as a friend twice, for example by deleting the account and joining again.
Someone you invite can see nothing about you, and you can see only how many of your friends have counted or are still saving, not who they are or what they saved. Sending an invite hands the link to the app you choose, as sharing a spot does; Zari sends it nowhere itself. The invite server counts requests per hour against a scrambled form of your IP address, as the relay does, in counters deleted after about a day.
Place search: Apple and Google
When you search for a place, or Zari looks one up for a link you shared, it sends the search text, the area your map is showing, and your phone’s language and region. Depending on the language you type in, the request goes to Apple Maps, to Google’s Places service, or to both.
Requests to Google pass through a small relay server that we run, hosted by Supabase in Frankfurt, Germany. The relay forwards the request and does not store your searches. To stop abuse it counts requests per hour against a one-way scrambled form of your IP address, which cannot be turned back into the address, and those counters are deleted after about a day.
Place details: Google
When you open a saved spot, its rating, opening hours and reviews are shown in a card that Google provides and loads directly. Google receives the place’s identifier, your IP address and basic information about your device.
The map: Apple
The map is Apple Maps. Apple receives the area you are looking at in order to draw it.
Importing a link
When you share a link to Zari, the app asks the site the link belongs to, for example TikTok or Instagram, for the post’s public title and caption. The request goes straight from your phone, so that site sees your IP address and which link was asked for, as it would if you opened the link in a browser. The caption is read on your phone to work out which place the post is about.
Watching a saved post
A spot keeps the link it was saved from. If you tap “Watch the post” on a spot, Zari shows that post in the player its own site provides, TikTok’s or Instagram’s, and the post is streamed from that site. Zari does not download or keep the video.
The player comes straight from TikTok or Instagram, so that site sees your IP address, basic information about your device and which post was played, and can measure how it was played, as it would on any website that shows one of its posts. Zari sends it nothing that identifies you, the player keeps no cookies once you close it, and nothing is loaded until you tap “Watch the post”. The arrow beside it leaves Zari and opens the post in that site’s own app or in your browser.
Posts other people have shared
Many people share the same posts, so Zari keeps one shared list of which place a post turned out to be about. It is stored on our server, hosted by Supabase in Frankfurt, Germany.
- When you share a post to Zari, the app asks the list whether anyone has saved a spot from it. The request contains the post’s public identifier (the video or post number) and nothing else.
- When you save a spot from a post, the app adds the post’s identifier and the place’s Google identifier to the list.
An entry in the list is those two identifiers, a count of how many times the pair has been saved, and the day it was last saved. It has no name, no account and no identifier for you or your phone. It does not contain the link you shared, which can identify the person who sent it to you, or your notes, your category or your location. Spots you add without a link are never added to the list.
These requests are counted the same way as the relay’s: against a scrambled form of your IP address that cannot be turned back into the address, in counters that are deleted after about a day.
Places people save
When you save a place that Google knows, the app tells our server the place’s Google identifier, sent with your sign-in so that each person is counted once. The server keeps, for each place, one entry per person who has saved it: the place’s identifier, the day, and a code made from your Apple identifier and that place with a secret key only our server holds. It is used to keep anyone from being counted twice for the same place, for example by saving it again or by making a new account.
The code is different for every place, so your entries cannot be put together to see what you have saved, and they are not linked to your account. They contain no name, no account, no notes, no category and no location. Deleting your account leaves them, since they were never tied to it. We will use these counts to show places that many people have saved, and only places saved by several people.
Sharing a spot
When you tap Share on a spot, Zari writes a short message and hands it to the app you choose to send it with. Zari sends it nowhere itself. The message is the spot’s name, its address and a link to this website.
The link holds the spot’s name, its position on the map, Google’s identifier for the place and the link to the post you saved it from. The codes TikTok and Instagram add to the end of a link are left out, though a shortened link can still identify the person who first shared the post. Your notes and your category are not in the link.
Nothing about a shared spot is stored on our server: the link is the only copy, and anyone who has it can read what is in it. Opening it in Zari fills in a new spot from the link, which is saved only if the person opening it chooses to save it.
Usage statistics: PostHog
Zari sends anonymous events to PostHog, hosted in the European Union. An event records that something happened, such as “a spot was saved”, “a link import started” or “the subscription screen was shown”, along with counts and outcomes. If the app hits an error, a technical error report is sent too.
Each event carries a random identifier created on your phone, the app version, and general device information such as the system version, language, time zone and screen size. PostHog also sees the IP address the event came from and uses it to estimate your country and city.
Events never contain place names, addresses, coordinates, links, captions, notes or search text.
Subscriptions: Apple and RevenueCat
Zari Pro is bought through the App Store. Apple handles the payment and we never see your card details. To know whether a phone has an active subscription we use RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., United States), which receives your account’s identifier with us (or, if you are not signed in, a random identifier for your install), so that Pro follows your account, the purchase records Apple provides (the product, dates, price and store country) and general device information. The random identifier used for usage statistics is attached as well, so that purchases can be counted in those statistics.
Version check
When the app opens it downloads a small file from this website to check that your version is still supported. The web host sees your IP address when it does.
This website
The launch list
Until Zari is on the App Store, this website has a form where you can leave your email address. We keep the address and the time you signed up, and we use them to send you one email when Zari is available. We do not send anything else to it and we do not pass it to anyone else.
The list is stored by Supabase in Frankfurt, Germany. We delete it within 30 days of sending that email. To be taken off before then, write to hello@zarithemole.com from the address you signed up with.
To stop abuse, the form counts sign-ups per hour against a one-way scrambled form of your IP address, which cannot be turned back into the address. Those counters are deleted after about a day.
Visiting the site
The website sets no cookies and has no analytics. Cloudflare, which hosts it, sees your IP address and which page you asked for, as any web host does.
Opening a shared spot
A link to a spot opens a page on this website, or Zari itself on an iPhone that has it. Everything the page shows comes from the link. The spot is part of the page’s address, so Cloudflare sees it when the page is asked for, as it sees the address of any page. We keep no record of it. On an iPhone, tapping Open in Zari copies the spot’s link to your clipboard, so that if you have to install Zari first, it can offer you the spot when you open it. The page does not tell the App Store which link you came from.
Opening an invite
An invite link opens a page on this website, or Zari itself on an iPhone that has it. The invite’s code is part of the page’s address, so Cloudflare sees it when the page is asked for. We keep no record of it. On an iPhone, tapping the page’s button copies the invite link to your clipboard, so that Zari can find it once you have installed it.
Why we are allowed to do this
Under the GDPR, the legal bases we rely on are:
- Providing the app you asked for. Your account, invites, search, link import and subscriptions cannot work without the information and requests described above.
- Our legitimate interests. Anonymous statistics, error reports and abuse protection keep the app working and tell us what to improve, with very little impact on you.
- Your consent. Zari uses your location only after you allow it in the system prompt, and you can withdraw that at any time. The launch list holds your email address only because you entered it, and you can ask us to remove it at any time.
Where your information goes
Our relay server, your account and invites, our usage statistics and the launch list are hosted in the European Union. Apple, Google and RevenueCat may process information in the United States and other countries, under the safeguards set out in their own terms, such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or Standard Contractual Clauses.
Each of them handles what it receives under its own privacy policy:
How long it is kept
- Spots on your phone stay until you delete them or delete the app.
- The iCloud copy stays until you switch iCloud off for Zari.
- The relay’s request counters are deleted after about a day.
- Your account, your invite code and the Apple token are kept until you delete your account, and are then deleted. An invite that had not yet counted is deleted with either account.
- When a friend you invited has counted, the record that they counted is kept after either of you deletes your account, so that your raised limit stays and the same Apple Account cannot count again. It then holds no account, only the dates and the scrambled form of the friend’s Apple identifier.
- Entries in the shared list of posts and places are kept for as long as they are useful. They hold nothing about who added them, so we cannot find or remove “yours”.
- Email addresses on the launch list are deleted within 30 days of the launch email being sent.
- Usage statistics are kept for as long as they are useful for improving the app, and are then deleted.
- Purchase records are kept for as long as a subscription is active and for the period tax and accounting rules require afterwards.
Your choices and rights
- Turn location or iCloud off for Zari in the Settings app. The app keeps working.
- Delete the app to remove everything it stored on your phone.
- Delete your account under Profile in the app. This deletes the account from our server and ends Zari’s Sign in with Apple link. Your spots stay on your phone. You can also stop using Sign in with Apple with Zari in your Apple Account settings, which signs you out of the app.
- Manage or cancel Zari Pro in the app, or in your Apple Account’s subscriptions.
- Write to hello@zarithemole.com to be taken off the launch list.
If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or another place with similar laws, you have the right to ask for a copy of your personal data, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict its use, and to complain to your local data protection authority.
Your account holds only what is described above, and deleting it in the app removes it. Your usage statistics are not linked to your account, so we usually cannot tell which of them belong to you. Write to hello@zarithemole.com and we will do what we can to find and delete the records from your install.
Children
Zari is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
Changes to this policy
If the app or this website starts handling information differently, we will update this page and the date at the top before the change reaches you.
Contact
Alexis Logothetis
hello@zarithemole.com