AutoNest for iOS
Privacy Policy
About this policy
AutoNest (“AutoNest,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is a vehicle maintenance, fuel, and expense-tracking app for iOS published by Massimiliano Salvato, trading as Slvt001.dev (PO Box 108475, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates). This Privacy Policy explains what information AutoNest collects, how it’s stored and used, and your choices. It covers the AutoNest app and its home-screen widget.
Contact: [email protected]
The short version
- No accounts, no sign-up, no email required to use AutoNest.
- Your vehicle, fuel, expense, and maintenance data is stored on your device and, if you’re signed in to iCloud, synced through your own private iCloud (CloudKit) database. We do not run a server that stores your data, and we cannot access your private iCloud database.
- Ads (Google AdMob) are non-personalized for every user, regardless of any tracking permission.
- AutoNest does not ask for and does not perform cross-app/cross-site tracking.
- Premium is sold through Apple’s In-App Purchase system only.
- AutoNest uses TelemetryDeck to record a small set of anonymous, content-free usage signals, never anything you typed or photographed. Whether this starts on or off depends on your device’s region setting; you can change it anytime.
Information we collect
2.1 Content you create. Vehicles (make, model, year, odometer, insurance/registration/inspection dates), fuel fill-ups, charging sessions, expenses, maintenance reminders, and optional attachments (photos or PDFs of receipts/invoices, a vehicle photo). Stored locally via Apple’s SwiftData framework and, if iCloud is enabled, mirrored to your private CloudKit database (iCloud.com.maxsalvatoapps.AutoNest). Photo/PDF attachments are compressed and stored the same way: they sync to your own iCloud, never to any server we operate.
2.2 Camera and Photo Library. Used only to attach receipt/invoice images or a vehicle photo. iOS shows the standard permission prompt; declining just means you can’t attach a photo.
2.3 Face ID / device authentication (optional, off by default). If you turn on app lock, AutoNest uses Face ID or your passcode via Apple’s LocalAuthentication framework. Biometric data never leaves Apple’s Secure Enclave and is never seen by us.
2.4 Notifications. Local-only reminders (e.g., upcoming maintenance, document expiry) scheduled and delivered entirely on your device via Apple’s notification framework. We do not run a push server and have no visibility into whether or when a reminder was shown.
2.5 Motion sensor. A brief, real-time read of device tilt (Core Motion) animates the app’s logo. Not stored, not transmitted.
2.6 Siri & Shortcuts. AutoNest offers optional Siri/Shortcuts actions (Premium feature), e.g., asking for your odometer or logging a fill-up by voice. These run entirely against your local data on-device; nothing is sent to us. Apple’s own Siri personalization may retain this activity per Apple’s platform behavior, outside our control.
2.7 Subscription/purchase information. Premium is purchased through Apple’s In-App Purchase system (StoreKit 2). Apple is the merchant of record: we never see your payment card or billing details. We only read your current entitlement status (active/inactive) from Apple’s on-device APIs.
2.8 Currency conversion. If you track expenses in multiple currencies, AutoNest requests exchange rates from two public, unauthenticated APIs (a Cloudflare-hosted currency API, and Frankfurter/ECB as a fallback). Each request contains only a date and currency codes (e.g., “usd,” “eur”): no personal data, no amounts, no identifiers. Rates are cached on your device.
2.9 What we don’t collect. No name, no email, no account, no precise or approximate location (AutoNest does not use location services at all), no contacts, no microphone/audio, no health data.
Anonymous usage analytics
AutoNest uses a privacy-preserving analytics service, TelemetryDeck (based in Germany), to understand how the app is used. It sends a small set of anonymous usage signals: most describe app usage (e.g., that a form was opened, a paywall was shown, or a quick-log action was used), and one marks the first session recorded on that installation (this can re-fire after a reinstall or after app data is cleared, so it does not identify a genuinely new user), whose only extra parameter is a day-granular date. App-usage signals carry only fixed category values or booleans (a screen name, a form type, a coarse duration bucket, a paywall trigger, a quick-log source).
No signal ever includes anything you typed or photographed: no plate numbers, VINs, notes, station names, amounts, or odometer readings.
Every signal also carries TelemetryDeck’s standard technical metadata (device model, OS version, locale, and app version) along with a rotating, non-identifying value TelemetryDeck derives itself; AutoNest does not supply any user identifier, and the SDK’s automatic session-start signal is disabled.
- Whether analytics starts on or off is based on your device’s region setting, not your physical location. If your device’s region is set to the EU, UK, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, or Liechtenstein, or if your region can’t be determined, analytics defaults off. For any other device region, it defaults on. You can change this at any time in Settings → Privacy & Lock → “Share anonymous usage data”. Because this follows your device’s region setting rather than where you actually are, someone physically in a covered region with a device set to a different region will see the on-by-default behavior.
- Turning analytics off in Settings stops collection immediately; nothing further is recorded. Signals recorded before you turned it off may still be sent afterward, since they may already be queued on your device for delivery.
- When analytics is off, the SDK is never initialized, and no signal, including the first-session signal, is ever sent.
- TelemetryDeck processes this data in Germany (EU); your anonymous usage data may be processed within the EU regardless of where you are.
Crash reports
If AutoNest crashes, a crash report is written to a file on your device only; this does not happen automatically over the network. On your next launch, you can choose to share that report with us (via the system share sheet, e.g. by email) to help us fix the problem, or discard it. Nothing is sent unless you choose to share it.
This describes AutoNest’s own crash logging only. Separately, the Google Mobile Ads SDK we use for advertising (§5) may collect its own performance and crash/diagnostic data as part of operating the ad service, under Google’s own privacy policy. See §5 for what Google’s SDK collects independently of AutoNest’s own code.
Google AdMob (free tier only)
Free-tier users see ads served by Google AdMob, with Google’s User Messaging Platform used to show a GDPR/UK consent dialog where legally required. Key facts:
- Every ad request AutoNest makes is non-personalized (
npa=1), for every user, unconditionally; this does not depend on any permission or setting. - AutoNest does not request App Tracking Transparency permission and performs no tracking. No advertising identifier (IDFA) is read or used by our code.
- AutoNest participates in Apple’s SKAdNetwork, a privacy-preserving, on-device ad-attribution system that reports only aggregated campaign performance, never individual user activity, to us or advertisers.
- Premium subscribers see no ads.
- Google’s SDK independently collects certain data as part of operating the ad service itself (e.g., a device identifier, coarse/IP-based location, ad interaction data, and performance/diagnostic data), under Google’s own privacy policy. This data is not linked to your identity by AutoNest and is not used by AutoNest for tracking. See Google’s Privacy Policy for details on how Google handles this.
Data export
You can export your data from within AutoNest as a local file, handed to Apple’s share sheet: you choose where it goes (AirDrop, Files, email, etc.); AutoNest never sends it anywhere on its own.
The export file is not encrypted. It is wrapped so it opens only in AutoNest and is not readable as plain text by other apps; this is a deterrent against casual viewing (e.g., renaming the file to open it elsewhere), not protection against a determined attacker. Treat exported files the way you’d treat any other sensitive personal file.
How we share information
We do not sell your personal information, and we have no server of our own that holds your vehicle data to share. Third parties involved in running AutoNest:
- Apple: iCloud/CloudKit sync (your own private database only), device authentication, notifications, App Store purchases, Siri.
- Google (AdMob / User Messaging Platform): non-personalized ad serving and, where required, consent messaging.
- TelemetryDeck: anonymous, content-free product-usage analytics (see §3).
- Public currency-rate APIs: exchange rates, no personal data (see §2.8).
We do not use any separate crash-reporting or analytics service beyond those named above and in §3–§4.
We may also disclose information if required by law or to protect our legal rights.
Data retention and deletion
Your data stays on your device (and your private iCloud, if enabled) until you delete it: individually in-app, by deleting the app, or by turning off iCloud sync for AutoNest. We hold no separate copy on our end to retain or delete, because we operate no backend server for your vehicle data.
Children’s privacy
AutoNest is a general-audience app, not directed at children under 13, and does not knowingly collect data from children. It requires no account and collects no first-party personal data at all.
Your choices
- Camera / Photo Library / Notifications / Face ID: manage in iOS Settings → AutoNest.
- iCloud sync: manage in iOS Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud.
- Analytics: Settings → Privacy & Lock → “Share anonymous usage data”, inside AutoNest (see §3).
- Ad consent (EEA/UK users): the ad consent dialog is shown where the law requires it. AutoNest does not currently offer a control to change that choice afterward. To change it, you can delete and reinstall the app (note that this also removes any data not synced to iCloud, so export your data first, see §6) or contact us.
- Crash report sharing: a one-time choice each time a report is pending (see §4): share it or discard it.
- Export or delete your data at any time from within the app.
Depending on where you live, you may have further rights (e.g., under GDPR or CCPA/CPRA) to access, correct, or delete personal data. Because AutoNest keeps no account or server-side database of your personal information, most such requests are already satisfied by the in-app export/delete tools; you can also reach us at the email below.
Security
Your data benefits from Apple’s platform security: on-device protections and, for sync, Apple’s private CloudKit database. We do not operate servers holding your vehicle data. No method of storage or transmission is ever 100% secure.
International users
Where iCloud sync is enabled, your data is handled by Apple’s iCloud infrastructure under Apple’s own data-protection and cross-border-transfer commitments. Where analytics is active, anonymous usage data is processed by TelemetryDeck in Germany (EU).
Changes to this policy
We’ll update the effective date above when this policy changes, and note material changes in the app’s release notes.
Contact
Data controller: Massimiliano Salvato, trading as Slvt001.dev
PO Box 108475, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates