Summary
- Photos you take with Beamfy are sent encrypted to our servers and then to an AI provider to be analyzed: OpenAI, or Anthropic as a backup. Beamfy does not store your photos.
- Results (descriptions, recognized text) and the approximate location attached to a request are kept for 30 days at most, then deleted. They are deleted immediately if you delete your account.
- No face recognition. Beamfy does not recognize faces and does not process biometric data.
- Location is sent only when you use SOS or navigation.
- Voice input is handled by Apple’s or Google’s speech recognition. Beamfy does not store audio.
- This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics or tracking.
- We do not sell your personal data and we do not use it for advertising.
Who is responsible for your data
The Beamfy app and the website beamfy.ai are operated by AtaForge Inc. (“Beamfy”, “we”, “us”), which is the controller of the personal data described in this policy.
Contact for any privacy question or request: [email protected].
What we process, why, and for how long
| Data | Why we use it | Who processes it | How long it is kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account data: email address, name if you give it or if Apple or Google share it at sign-in, sign-in identifiers, a hashed password if you use email sign-in | To create and secure your account | Beamfy | Until you delete your account |
| Camera photos | To describe your surroundings, read text and identify products | Beamfy servers (in transit only), OpenAI (primary), Anthropic (backup) | Not stored by Beamfy. The AI providers may keep request data for a limited period for abuse monitoring, under their own API policies (see below) |
| AI results: descriptions, recognized text, product names, and the approximate location if your phone attached one to the request | To return the answer to you, and for troubleshooting | Beamfy | 30 days at most, then deleted; immediately on account deletion |
| Voice input | To turn what you say (for example a destination) into text | Apple or Google speech recognition, on your phone where it supports this | Beamfy does not receive or store audio; only the resulting text is sent to us when needed |
| Navigation requests: the destination you searched for and your location at that moment | To find the place and calculate a walking route | Beamfy, Google Maps Platform | 30 days at most on Beamfy servers, then deleted |
| Emergency contact: the name and phone number you enter | To send your SOS alert | Beamfy | Until you change it or delete your account |
| SOS alerts: your location when you press SOS, the time and the delivery status | To send the alert to your emergency contact by SMS | Beamfy, Twilio (SMS delivery) | 30 days at most, then deleted |
| Subscription status: whether you have Premium, product, renewal and expiry dates | To give you the features you paid for | Apple App Store or Google Play (payment), RevenueCat (purchase receipts and subscription status) | Until you delete your account; the stores keep their own purchase records |
| Usage counts: how many descriptions and readings you used each day | To apply the free daily allowance and the daily fair-use limits | Beamfy | 30 days at most |
| Free-trial fingerprint: a keyed one-way fingerprint (HMAC, a cryptographic code, not a biometric) of your sign-in identifier (your Apple or Google account identifier, or your email address) | Only to avoid granting a second free trial to the same person | Beamfy | Kept after you delete your account (see below). It contains no readable personal data and cannot be turned back into your identifier |
| App settings: language, voice speed and similar preferences | To keep your preferences | Beamfy | Until you delete your account |
| Push notification token | To send notifications to your device | Beamfy, Expo push service | Until you sign out or delete your account |
| Support emails | To answer you | Beamfy, our email service provider | As long as needed to deal with your request |
| Password reset emails | To let you reset your password | Our email service provider | Not kept by Beamfy after sending |
| Technical logs: IP address, device type, app version, error messages | To keep the service secure and working | Beamfy (on our own servers), Cloudflare | For a short period, for security and troubleshooting |
Beamfy does not use your photos or results to build advertising profiles, and we do not sell personal data.
What we keep after you delete your account
When you delete your account, everything listed above that is stored by Beamfy is deleted, with one exception: the free-trial fingerprint. It is a keyed one-way fingerprint (HMAC, a cryptographic code, not a biometric) of your sign-in identifier. It contains no readable personal data, cannot be turned back into your email address or account identifier, and is used only to check whether a new account should receive the 7-day free trial. Data held by the app stores and by our AI providers is subject to their own policies.
Camera photos and the AI providers
When you take a photo, it is sent over an encrypted connection (TLS) to Beamfy’s servers, which forward it to an AI provider for analysis. Normally this is OpenAI. If OpenAI does not answer in time or returns an error, the same request is sent to Anthropic instead. The answer comes back to your phone and is spoken aloud. Beamfy does not save the photo.
OpenAI and Anthropic process the photo under their API terms. They may retain API inputs and outputs for a limited period to monitor for abuse and misuse. The exact periods and conditions are set by them and can change, so please read their policies:
- OpenAI: Enterprise privacy and Privacy policy
- Anthropic: Privacy center and API data retention
Please avoid photographing other people’s private documents or people who have not agreed to it.
No face recognition, no biometric data
Beamfy does not recognize or identify faces and does not create face templates or any other biometric data. A photo may show people; Beamfy may describe what is visible (for example “a person sitting on a bench”) but does not identify who they are.
Location
Your phone’s location is sent to Beamfy only:
- when you press SOS, so that your emergency contact receives your location, and
- when you use navigation, so that we can find places near you and calculate a route (Google Maps Platform receives the destination text and your location for this).
If your phone attaches an approximate location to a description request, it is kept with the result for 30 days at most, as described above. You can turn off location access for Beamfy at any time in your phone’s settings; SOS and navigation will then not be able to share your location.
SOS
When you press SOS, Beamfy sends an SMS through Twilio to the emergency contact you entered, with your location. Beamfy does not contact emergency services. SMS delivery depends on mobile networks and on the phone number being correct. To prevent abuse of the SMS service, Beamfy sends at most 3 SOS text messages per 10 minutes from one account; the SOS alert itself is never blocked.
Purchases
Payments are handled by Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play). We never receive your card details. RevenueCat receives the store’s purchase receipts with an app user identifier and tells us whether your subscription is active.
Service providers
We use these service providers (processors) to run Beamfy. They may only use your data to provide their service to us, under their own terms and privacy policies:
- OpenAI (primary) and Anthropic (backup when OpenAI does not answer): AI analysis of photos.
- Google Maps Platform: place search and walking routes (Google Privacy Policy).
- Twilio: SMS delivery for SOS alerts (Twilio Privacy Notice).
- Apple and Google: app distribution, payments, sign-in and on-device or cloud speech recognition (Apple Privacy Policy, Google Privacy Policy).
- RevenueCat: processing of App Store and Google Play purchase receipts and subscription status (RevenueCat Privacy Policy).
- Expo: delivery of push notifications (Expo Privacy Policy).
- Our email service provider: password reset and support emails.
- Cloudflare: content delivery, encrypted connections and protection against attacks (Cloudflare Privacy Policy).
- Our own servers: the Beamfy servers and databases run on a server that we operate ourselves with the self-hosted Coolify platform; the data centre that provides this server stores the data on our behalf.
This website
beamfy.ai sets no cookies, uses no analytics and loads no third-party scripts, fonts or images. If you choose a language, your choice is remembered in your browser’s local storage on your device only; it is never sent to us. Our own server and Cloudflare process your IP address in server logs to deliver the site and protect it against attacks.
Legal bases (EEA, UK and similar laws)
- Contract: to provide the app and the features you ask for (descriptions, reading, navigation, SOS, subscriptions).
- Legitimate interests: to keep the service secure, prevent abuse and fix errors.
- Consent: where the law requires it, for example access to your camera, microphone and location, which you give and can withdraw in your phone’s settings.
- Legal obligation: where we must keep or disclose information by law.
International transfers
Some of our service providers process data outside your country, including in the United States. Where the law requires it, these transfers are covered by appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, to object to or restrict some processing, and to withdraw consent. To use these rights, email [email protected] from the address linked to your account. You can delete your account at any time in the app (Settings, then Delete account); see Delete your account.
You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.
Children
Beamfy is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
Security
All connections between the app, our servers and our providers are encrypted in transit (TLS). Access to personal data is limited to people who need it to run and support the service. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will inform you and the authorities as the law requires.
Changes to this policy
We will update this page when our data practices change and show the date of the last update at the top. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
AtaForge Inc. · [email protected]