Seaglass privacy policy

Seaglass is an Android app made by Enrique Amaya. This policy explains what Seaglass reads on your phone, what leaves it, how your data is kept safe, and how to delete it. For any question about privacy, write to developerdfa@gmail.com.

In short

What leaves your phone

Link previews

When you save a link, Seaglass downloads the start of that page from the link’s website, following its redirects, to read the page’s title, description and preview picture. Then it downloads the picture from wherever the page says it is.

• What those websites see: the address of the page, your phone’s internet (IP) address, and that the request comes from Seaglass, as they would if you opened the link yourself. What they do with their logs is up to them.
• What the request carries: no cookies, no referrer and no identifier.
• Encryption: the request only goes over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). A link that starts with http:// gets no preview: Seaglass doesn’t switch it to HTTPS, and it sends nothing unencrypted.
• Turning it off: link previews are on unless you turn them off in Settings. With them off, Seaglass makes no network requests of its own.

Google Play’s Data safety section lists this as “Web browsing history”: collected for app functionality, optional, and not shared.

Text in pictures

Text in pictures reads the words in your pictures on your phone, so you can search for them. Seaglass never sends the pictures or their words over the internet; the words do go to your phone’s own text service when you open a picture (see Your phone’s text service).

• It reads nothing until you download its reader in Settings.
• Once downloaded, it reads every picture you save until you turn it off in Settings, which also forgets the words it read.

The reader is Google’s ML Kit, which Google Play services downloads and supplies to Seaglass on your phone. Google says such features may send Google data for diagnostics and usage analytics, over an encrypted connection, and that Google does not pass it to third parties (ML Kit’s disclosure). That data includes:

• device and app information;
• performance and error data;
• a device identifier.

Google handles it under the Google Privacy Policy. Google Play’s Data safety section lists it as “Diagnostics” and “Device or other IDs”: collected for analytics, optional, and not shared.

Downloads you start

If you download Gemini Nano (on phones that support it) or the text-in-pictures reader, Android or Google Play services download it, as they do for any app. Seaglass itself makes no network request for these downloads.

What Seaglass reads on your phone, and keeps there

• What you save. Text, links, pictures and files that you share, select or drag into Seaglass are copied into its private storage. Seaglass works out a title, a kind and tags for each piece on your phone:
  • on phones that have it, with Android’s on-device model, Gemini Nano;
  • elsewhere, with rules in the app;
  • with Auto tag on, Google’s image-labeling model, built into the app, also suggests tags for photos, on your phone.
• Where a piece came from. With “Remember the app” on (it is on by default), Seaglass notes the app a piece came from and shows that app’s name and icon. For drops on the edge sidebar, if you grant usage access, Seaglass reads Android’s record of which apps came to the front over the last few hours, only to find the app you dropped from. It keeps nothing but that app’s name. With “Remember the app” off, no source is stored.
• The daily reminder. If you turn it on, it counts what you saved that day, on your phone.

Your phone’s text service

Seaglass finds phone numbers, email and street addresses, dates and links in a piece’s words, so you can tap them. To do that, it asks your phone’s own text classifier, the service behind text selection in every app. It asks:

• when you open a piece, including the words read from its picture;
• when you tap a date;
• with Auto tag on, about each new note when you save it.

That service is part of your phone, provided by Android or your phone’s maker. On some phones it can reach the internet, and what it does is up to its provider. On Android 8, Seaglass finds links, email addresses and phone numbers itself instead.

Sharing

Seaglass doesn’t sell or rent your data, and it shares it with no one beyond what this page describes. When you share a piece, open it in another app or add a date to your calendar, it goes to the app you pick, because you asked.

How your data is kept safe

• On your phone: everything Seaglass keeps is in its private storage, which other apps can’t read.
• Link previews: they use encrypted connections only, and carry no cookies or identifiers.
• Backups: a backup is a file you choose where to save. It is not encrypted, so keep it somewhere you trust. If you save it to a cloud folder, that provider stores it under its own policy.
• Android’s backups: Android’s cloud backup never copies Seaglass’s library. Android’s phone-to-phone transfer can move it to a new phone when you set one up.

Keeping and deleting your data

• Your library stays on your phone until you delete it. A piece you delete is removed for good about an hour later.
• To delete everything, uninstall Seaglass, or clear its storage in Android’s Settings. Backup files you made are yours to delete.
• The developer holds no copy of your data, so there is nothing to ask them to delete.
• Others: websites keep whatever they log from link-preview requests under their own policies, and Google keeps ML Kit’s diagnostics under Google’s.

Children

Seaglass is not directed at children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date.

Contact

Enrique Amaya, developerdfa@gmail.com