Privacy

Who is responsible

sourca runs this service and decides what happens to the information in it. For anything about your personal data, use the contact page.

What is recorded

The things you enter: products, their photos and prices, the shops you buy from with their shop numbers and contacts, your order lists, and your stock. Plus your name, email address and, if you set one, a password, stored only as a hash that cannot be reversed.

If you pin your location on a capture, the coordinates are saved with that item. That is the only location data recorded, and only when you press the button.

We also keep a record of sign-ins and account changes, including the internet address (IP) they came from, to protect your account. We note which kind of device you use sourca on (the iPhone app, the Android app or a web browser), the app version and when you last used it, so we know which versions are still in use. And we keep a list of the emails we send you (the address, the subject and whether our mail server sent it), never their contents.

The apps

The sourca apps for iPhone and Android are the same service, on your phone. They ask your permission for three things, and only at the moment you use them: the camera, when you photograph a product or a business card; your photo library, when you choose a picture you have already taken; and your location, if you press Pin location on a capture. Nothing is collected in the background, and saying no to any of them leaves the rest of the app working.

Photos you take in the app are shrunk on the phone and stored with the product or shop they belong to. The app does not read your photo library, your contacts or anything else on the phone, and it does not add sourca's photos to your camera roll.

Signing in with Apple or Google

If you sign in with Apple or Google, they confirm who you are and tell us your name and email address. We do not receive your Apple or Google password. If you choose Apple's "Hide My Email", we only see an address Apple creates for you, and our emails reach you through Apple's relay. When your account is closed, we also cancel sourca's Sign in with Apple link to your Apple account.

Notifications

If you turn on notifications on a device, we keep a delivery address for that device, issued by your browser, Apple or Google, so we can send reminders to it. Notifications are delivered through Apple's, Google's or your browser's push service and can appear on your lock screen. For that reason they never contain your prices, products, shop names or other business details, only a short reminder such as "captures are waiting to upload". You can turn notifications off at any time in Settings → Notifications, or in your device's settings. When you turn them off, or your account is closed, we delete that device's delivery address.

How your data is protected

Everything sent between your device and sourca uses an encrypted connection (HTTPS). Shop contact details, product notes and payment notes are also encrypted in our database. Product names, prices and shop names are not encrypted there, so the app can search and sort them.

Your photos, including product photos and business cards, are encrypted on our server too, and they open only for your own business and businesses you choose to share with. Anyone else, signed in or not, gets nothing, even with the photo's address. As with any online service, the people who run the server could reach the stored files directly. We do not, and support only sees your records if you approve a request, as described below.

Only people in your business, and businesses you choose to share with, can see your records. Our administrators cannot open your business's records unless you allow it, for a length of time you choose, and you can see when that happened. Access is read only, ends by itself, and every request is recorded.

Password-reset and email-confirmation links are stored only as a one-way fingerprint, so a copy of our database cannot be used to get into an account.

What you can see is decided by which business you are in, and paying for a bigger plan does not widen it. Sharing is view only, one way, and can be withdrawn at any time.

What leaves your device

Captures are written to your phone first and uploaded to our server when you have signal. Our server is run by a hosting provider in Singapore, and its backups are kept in India. Photos are shrunk on the phone before they are sent.

Business cards you scan are sent to an external reading service when the phone has signal, so the text can be read off the photo. It is used to answer that one request and is not used to train anything. With no signal the card is read on the phone itself and no image leaves it.

Nothing here is sold, and nothing is shared with advertisers. In a web browser, Google Analytics can count your visits, but only if you accept the cookie banner (see Cookies below). The sourca apps for iPhone and Android contain no analytics.

If you sign in with Apple or Google, that company knows you signed in to sourca.

If you turn on notifications, they are delivered by Apple, Google or your browser's push service, which see that a notification was sent but not your business details.

Your rights

You can see and correct what is held about you in Settings, and your business's records can be exported at any time from Settings → Your data. The export includes your spreadsheets and every photo: products, business cards, the screenshots on a trip's buying list, and your own WeChat code. You can ask to see anything else held about you, or to have it corrected, from the contact page.

You can delete it yourself. From Settings → My account an owner can delete a business, and anybody can close their account, which deletes every business they own with it.

How long it is kept

Until you delete it. When you do, nothing is removed for 7 days: the business is locked, you are emailed a link that cancels it, and you can still download everything. After that it is deleted for good (products and their photos, shops, order lists, trips, stock and settings) and cannot be brought back. When the 7 days are up, we also delete the delivery addresses of your devices, the list of emails we sent you and the record of which devices you used, and cancel the Sign in with Apple link.

Invoices and payment records are kept after a deletion, under the business name they were issued to, because the law requires them to be. The record of sign-ins and account changes is also kept, no longer linked to your account. Nothing else is.

Suspending a business does not delete anything: its records stay exactly where they are and come back when the suspension is lifted.

Cookies

The session cookie that keeps you signed in. It carries no personal information, just a session identifier, and it is strictly necessary, so it is set without asking.

sourca can also use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are used, but only if you agree. Until you accept, Google's script is not loaded at all and sets no cookies; decline and it never is, and any cookies it left on this site are removed. Nothing you capture is sent to Google: no product, shop, price, photo or note, and no account or business name.