In short: what you put in Expiry Guard stays on your phone. There is no account, no sign-in, and no server holding your food, your prices, or your habits. The only things that leave your device are barcode lookups you trigger yourself, and the data collected by Google and its advertising partners to show ads.
What stays on your device
Everything you enter is stored in a database on your phone and nowhere else:
- Food names, storage locations, quantities and units
- Expiry dates and shelf-life choices
- Any prices you choose to enter (optional — the app works fully without them)
- Your record of what was rescued or thrown away, and the resulting statistics
- Your shopping list
- Your settings: theme, reminder time, and how many days count as expiring
We cannot see any of it. It is not backed up to us, synchronised, or transmitted anywhere. Uninstalling the app deletes it permanently, and Settings → Empty everything clears it at any time.
What leaves your device
| What | When | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|
| A barcode number | Only when you scan a barcode | Open Food Facts, to look up the product name |
| Advertising identifier, device and app information, approximate location derived from IP address | While the app is open and showing ads | Google and its advertising partners, through the Google Mobile Ads SDK |
The barcode lookup sends the barcode digits and nothing else — no identifier, no account, and we keep no record of what you scanned. Open Food Facts is an independent, open database with its own privacy policy.
Advertising
Expiry Guard is free and shows banner advertisements supplied by Google AdMob. To do this, Google's SDK collects information including your device's advertising identifier, device and app details, and an approximate location inferred from your IP address.
This information is shared with Google and with Google's advertising partners — the advertising networks and technology companies that bid on and deliver the ads you see. There are currently around 198 such partners. They may use the information to select ads, to measure how those ads perform, and to build a profile of your interests.
How Google uses this data is described in Google's own policy.
Your choice, and how to change it
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Expiry Guard asks for your consent before any of this happens. You can accept, refuse, or open Manage options to decide purpose by purpose and to read the full, current list of advertising partners by name.
Refusing is always allowed and costs you nothing. The app works exactly the same either way; you will simply see non-personalised ads, which are chosen from general context rather than from anything about you. If the consent request cannot be shown for any reason, the app treats that as no consent given.
Wherever you are, you can reset or delete your advertising identifier, or turn off ad personalisation entirely, in your device settings under Settings → Google → Ads.
We do not receive, store, or have access to any of this data ourselves. We see only aggregate earnings reports.
Permissions the app asks for
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Camera | To scan barcodes. The camera is used only to read a barcode as you hold it up — no photograph is saved, stored, or transmitted. You can decline this and enter items by hand. |
| Notifications | To show your daily summary of what needs eating. The notification is created on your device; nothing is sent through any server. |
| Run at startup | To restore your scheduled reminders after the phone restarts. Android discards pending reminders on reboot. |
| Internet | For barcode lookups and advertising, as described above. |
Children
Expiry Guard is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. The app has no account system and asks for no personal details.
Your control over your data
Because your data never leaves your phone, you control it directly:
- Delete everything: Settings → Empty everything, or uninstall the app.
- Delete a single item: open it and remove it.
- Advertising data: reset or delete your advertising ID in your device's Google settings.
There is no data on our servers to request, export, or have erased, because there are no servers.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted at this address with an updated date. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes on Google Play.
Contact
Questions about this policy or about privacy in Expiry Guard:
contact@kinetixbuild.com
Kinetix Build