Privacy Policy
Effective August 17, 2026 · Applies to The Tin for iOS
The short version: The Tin has no account, no analytics, and no tracking. Your collection is stored on your device, and backed up to your iCloud so a new phone can restore it — it never reaches our servers. What leaves your phone for us is an anonymous identifier used to deliver card data, and — if the app crashes — an anonymous crash report so we can fix it. The app is open source, so all of this is verifiable, not just promised.
What we collect
Four things, all of them technical necessities:
- Crash reports. If the app crashes, Firebase Crashlytics (a Google service) sends us a report describing the crash: the stack trace, the model of device, the iOS version, and how long the app had been running. It contains no personal information and nothing about your collection — it describes the failure, not you. We use it only to find and fix bugs.
- An anonymous identifier. On first launch the app signs in anonymously with Firebase (a Google service) so it can download card data from a backup source. This identifier is a random string; it is not connected to your name, email, phone number, or anything else — no such information exists in The Tin, because there is nothing to sign up for.
- Device integrity attestation. The app uses Apple's App Attest to prove to our card-data server that requests come from a genuine copy of The Tin. Attestation tokens describe the app's integrity, not you.
- Transient server logs. Like effectively every server on the internet, our card-data server and its content delivery network (Cloudflare) see the IP address of incoming requests in routine operational logs. These logs are used only to keep the service running and are not used to identify or profile anyone.
What we don't collect
- No name, email address, or account of any kind.
- No analytics, usage statistics, or behavioral data.
- No advertising identifiers — there are no ads.
- No collection data. The cards you own, want, scan, or value are stored in a database on your device. They are never transmitted to us — we operate no server that could receive them and no account they could be attached to. Camera frames used by the scanner are processed on-device and are never uploaded anywhere at all.
Your iCloud backup
So that a lost or replaced phone doesn't mean a lost collection, the app keeps a backup of your collection — your groups, cards, wishlist, and any photos you have taken of your own cards — in your private iCloud container, under your own Apple ID. It happens automatically when iCloud is available.
This is worth being precise about, because "stored on your device" alone would no longer be the whole truth:
- The backup goes to Apple, in your iCloud account. It does not go to us, and we have no way to read it — we are not a party to it at any point.
- It is covered by Apple's privacy policy and by your own iCloud settings, and it counts against your iCloud storage.
- Turning off iCloud Drive, or signing out of iCloud, stops it. The app keeps working; it just has nothing to restore from.
- Scanner camera frames are never part of it. Photos are only ever ones you deliberately attached to a card.
Third-party services
The Tin relies on a small set of infrastructure providers, each of which processes only the technical data described above:
- Google Firebase (anonymous authentication, backup content delivery, app integrity, crash reporting) — Firebase privacy documentation
- Cloudflare (content delivery for card data) — Cloudflare privacy policy
- Apple (App Attest device integrity; iCloud backup of your collection, in your own account) — Apple privacy policy
If you open a card's marketplace listing (eBay, TCGplayer), that page loads in an in-app Safari view and those sites' own privacy policies apply from that point.
Data deletion
Deleting the app deletes the copy of your collection on your device, and the anonymous identifier becomes permanently orphaned — it points to nothing and can't be connected to you. There is nothing for us to delete on request, because there is nothing of yours on our side to begin with.
Your iCloud backup is the one thing deleting the app does not remove — that is the point of it, so that reinstalling restores your collection. To delete it too, remove The Tin's data under Settings → Apple ID → iCloud on your device. That is between you and Apple; we cannot do it for you and cannot see whether you have.
Children
The Tin is not directed at children under 13, and it collects no personal information from anyone — which is the strongest protection we can offer any user, of any age.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date. Because the site and app are open source, the full history of every change is public.
Contact
Questions about privacy: support@thetinapp.com