Fallback — Privacy Policy

Who is responsible

Fallback is made by Patrik Lackström, an independent developer in Sweden. Questions about this policy: plackstrom@outlook.com.

Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation that makes him the data controller. As set out below, the app itself collects no personal data, so in practice the only thing this applies to is an email you choose to send.

What the app stores on your device

Everything you enter, and nothing more:

• the things you keep, whether food, water, fuel, batteries, medicine, tools or anything else, with quantities, dates and where each is kept;
• your places, with their coordinates if you put them on the map, and which of them you marked sensitive;
• firearms and ammunition records, serial numbers included, and logs such as range trips, reloading and maintenance;
• kits, scenarios and their checklists, meeting points, the contacts you type into them, and photos of documents you keep in a scenario;
• product photos, whether you took them or the app downloaded them;
• your household: names, and optionally sex, life stage or date of birth for each member, which the app uses only to work out how much food and water the household needs;
• what has been used, and when; your shopping list, meal plan and recipes;
• the maps you download, and your settings.

All of it lives in the app's own private storage on your device. None of it is sent to us. Deleting the app deletes all of it, and there is no copy anywhere else unless you made one yourself with a backup, an export or one of the sharing options below.

Places you mark sensitive are shown only after Face ID (or your passcode) confirms it is you. The check is made by iOS: the app is told yes or no, and never sees your face or fingerprint.

What the app sends over the internet

Four things, and nothing else.

1. Maps, from GitHub. Fallback's offline maps are published on GitHub. When you open Get a map, the app fetches the list of maps from there, and when you choose one it downloads that map's file. The request names the list or the map, and nothing else: not what you keep, not where you are, and no identifier for you or your phone. GitHub is not us. Like any web server it records the requests it receives, which include the IP address they came from and which map was asked for. GitHub's privacy statement is at https://docs.github.com/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement. Once downloaded, a map is drawn on your phone from its file: looking at it, or putting your places on it, sends nothing.

2. Barcode lookups at Open Food Facts. When you scan a food's barcode, the app asks the Open Food Facts database what product it is. The request contains the barcode, the name of the app, the name of your device's operating system (for example "ios"), and a contact address for the app, not yours. It contains nothing else. Open Food Facts is an independent non-profit association, not us; like any web server, theirs records the requests it receives, including the IP address they came from. Their privacy policy is at https://world.openfoodfacts.org/privacy. If you never scan a barcode, this request is never made.

3. Product photos from Open Food Facts. If a product you scanned has a picture in their database, the app downloads it and keeps it on your device.

4. Importing a recipe from a web address, only if you turn it on. This is off when the app is installed. With it on, pasting a link makes the app fetch that page and read the recipe out of it. The site you pasted sees the request, much as it would if you had opened the page in a browser.

There is no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, not in the app and not in any library it is built on. Fallback does not track you across other apps or websites, which is why it never asks you for permission to. Links you tap, such as the sources quoted beside a figure, open in your browser.

Sharing your household between phones

This is optional and off until you set it up. When you do, what you share is encrypted before it goes anywhere.

Pairing two phones by QR code creates an encryption key that stays on those phones. It is never sent to us; we have no server to send it to. Everything that then travels between them is sealed with that key, whether you send it as a file, put it in a shared folder, hand it straight to another phone on your Wi-Fi, or use iCloud. So the cloud provider holding it holds bytes it cannot read, and so would we.

Four kinds of thing stay on your phone unless you switch them on: serial numbers, places you marked sensitive, copies of documents, and firearms records. Each is a switch under Sharing, off when the app is installed, and each phone answers for what was entered on it.

Nearby devices is a separate switch, off until you turn it on. With it on, the app looks for other phones in your household on the same Wi-Fi and sends to them directly; nothing goes through the internet. Your phone asks for permission the first time, because iOS requires it for anything that looks around the local network.

Three things are deliberately outside the encryption, and they are the only three. A file placed in a shared folder is named with the sending phone's identifier and the time it was written, so that another phone can skip its own files without opening them. A phone looking for nearby devices announces that same identifier with a short fingerprint of your household's key, so that two phones can tell whether they belong to the same household before they connect; the fingerprint cannot be turned back into the key. And if you share over iCloud, Apple holds the list of Apple IDs you invited, because that is how it lets them in. The share is labelled "Fallback" and nothing else.

That identifier is a random value the app made for itself: not your phone's serial number, not an advertising identifier, not anything the operating system supplies.

Food shared with Proviant on the same phone

If Proviant, our food-tracking app, is installed on the same iPhone, the two keep one food inventory. Each writes its food to a folder on the phone that only these two apps can open. Nothing leaves the phone for it, and only food crosses: not water, fuel, places, firearms or anything else.

Backups and exports

A backup is a file you save where you choose. A backup holding a place you marked sensitive, or a document's copy, is always sealed with a passphrase you set, and cannot be made without one; we never see the passphrase. A spreadsheet export, a print-out or a scenario sent as a file leaves out places you marked sensitive unless you choose to include them. Where any of these go afterwards is up to you.

Camera, photos and documents

The camera reads barcodes, and takes photos of products and of documents you keep in a scenario. Reading a barcode happens entirely on your device. A photo you take, or one you pick from your library, is stored in the app's own storage; Fallback sees only the photos you pick.

Notifications and the widget

Reminders are scheduled by your own device from the dates you entered; there is no server behind them. If you share over iCloud, Apple's silent notifications may wake the app when another phone in your household has changed something; they carry no content. The home-screen widget shows what the app has written for it on your phone.

Purchases

Fallback is free, with nothing locked. Settings → Support Fallback offers three tips, which unlock nothing. A tip is an in-app purchase handled entirely by Apple: opening that screen asks the App Store, through iOS, for the tips' prices, and the payment is between you and Apple. We never see your name, your card or your Apple ID, and the app keeps no record of a tip.

If you send feedback

"Send feedback" opens your own mail app with the subject line filled in. Nothing is sent until you send it. If you do write, your message and your address arrive in an ordinary mailbox, and are used to reply to you and to fix what you reported, nothing else, and they are not passed to anyone. Ask, and they are deleted.

Children

Fallback is a tool for keeping track of a household's supplies. It collects no personal data from anyone, of any age.

Your rights

The GDPR gives you the right to ask what personal data is held about you, and to have it corrected or deleted. We hold none, so there is nothing to answer, except for an email you have sent us, which is deleted on request.

What you keep in Fallback is yours and already in your hands: More → Backup will save all of it, and deleting the app erases it.

Changes to this policy

Any change is published on this page with a new date at the top.