Privacy policy
For the PaperTin app on iPhone and Android. Effective 9 October 2026.
The short version
- Your bills never leave your phone. No account.
- We don’t collect, see, sell or share your bills. The app sends us nothing.
- No ads, no analytics, no tracking.
- On Android, Google’s on-device text reader and language model send Google diagnostics, such as error codes and an install ID. Never your bills.
- What’s stored
- Permissions
- Reading bills
- Android diagnostics
- Backups
- If you email us
- Deleting data
- Contact
Who we are
PaperTin is made by ValueAdd Apps (“we”, “us”). If you have a question about this policy, email support@valueaddapps.com.
What PaperTin stores, and where
Everything you add stays in PaperTin’s private storage on your phone: photos and PDFs of your bills, the words read from them, the names, shops, dates, amounts and notes you save, your categories, your reminders and your settings.
There is no account and no sign-in. PaperTin doesn’t send your bills or anything you type to us or to anyone else, and we have no way to see them.
Your phone’s own backups: on iPhone, if iCloud Backup is on, iOS includes PaperTin’s data in your device backup, kept by Apple under your Apple Account. On Android, PaperTin opts out of Android’s automatic cloud backup, so use PaperTin’s own backup file instead (see Backups).
Permissions, and why PaperTin asks
- Camera
- To photograph a receipt, invoice or warranty card when you tap Snap a bill.
- Photos
- To add a photo or screenshot of a bill. PaperTin receives only the pictures you pick; on Android the system photo picker hands over just those.
- Files
- When you add a PDF or import a backup, the system file picker gives PaperTin only the file you choose. No standing permission is needed.
- Notifications
- For reminders before a warranty, renewal or expiry date. Reminders are local notifications, scheduled on your phone. PaperTin doesn’t use push notifications and never sends marketing messages. It asks the first time you save something that has a reminder, or when you tap Turn on reminders in the tour, never just because you opened the app.
- Share Sheet
- When you share an image or a PDF to PaperTin from another app, it’s saved into PaperTin on your phone.
You can turn any of these off in your phone’s settings. The rest of PaperTin keeps working.
Reading bills, on your phone
PaperTin reads the text on your bills so it can fill in the shop, date, amount and warranty, and so you can search the words printed on them. This happens on your phone:
- On iPhone, with Apple’s Vision and PDFKit frameworks.
- On Android, with Google’s ML Kit text recognition, whose model is built into the app.
On phones that have one, PaperTin can also use the phone’s built-in language model to suggest a category: Apple Foundation Models on iPhone (iOS 26 or later with Apple Intelligence on), or Gemini Nano through Android’s AICore. These run on the phone too. You can turn suggestions off in Settings, under Privacy.
Diagnostics Google receives on Android
Google’s ML Kit libraries send Google diagnostics about how they ran. That covers the text reader, and the on-device language model: PaperTin checks whether the phone has one even when suggestions are off. The diagnostics are the device model and Android version, PaperTin’s package name and version, per-installation identifiers and, for the language model, user or device identifiers that Google uses for diagnostics, the languages set on the phone, performance figures such as how long reading took, settings such as image size, and error codes. Google uses them for diagnostics and usage analytics. They’re encrypted in transit, and Google says it doesn’t pass them to third parties.
They never include your pictures, the text read from your bills, or anything you type. We don’t receive this data. Details are in Google’s ML Kit data disclosure and Google’s privacy policy. This is why PaperTin’s Google Play data safety section lists app info and performance, and device or other IDs.
Nothing like this happens on iPhone: Apple’s frameworks run on the phone, and PaperTin’s App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”.
Backups are files you control
Settings → Export backup makes one file with all your bills and their pages, and opens your phone’s share sheet. You decide where it goes: Files, a cloud drive, an email to yourself. The file isn’t encrypted, so keep it somewhere private. Once it’s there, that service’s terms apply.
Settings → Import backup restores a file you pick. It replaces what’s on the phone.
If you email us
Mail to support@valueaddapps.com is forwarded by Cloudflare’s email routing to a Gmail inbox we use for support. We use your address and what you write only to reply to you. We delete support threads within 12 months, or sooner if you ask. Please don’t send photos of your bills; we don’t need them to help.
This website
valueaddapps.com is served by Cloudflare, which processes standard request logs (such as IP address and browser) to deliver and protect the site. The site sets no cookies and has no analytics.
No ads, analytics or tracking
PaperTin has no ads and no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting code of ours. It doesn’t track you across apps or websites, doesn’t use your advertising ID, and doesn’t build a profile of you. We don’t sell or share personal information.
Settings → Copy diagnostics puts a list of error codes on your clipboard, with no names, amounts or file names, for you to paste into a support email if you choose.
Children
PaperTin isn’t directed at children. The app sends us nothing, so we don’t collect information from children; the Android diagnostics Google receives are described above.
Deleting your data
- Settings → Delete all data removes every bill, subscription and reminder from the phone.
- Settings → Delete history removes finished things: cancelled subscriptions and finished reminders, and, if you choose, bills whose warranty has ended.
- Deleting the app removes all of PaperTin’s data from the phone.
Backup files you exported, and your phone’s own iCloud backup, are kept where you put them until you delete them there. The app sends us nothing, so there is nothing from the app for us to delete; to have support emails deleted, ask us.
Security
Your data sits in PaperTin’s private storage, which the phone’s operating system keeps apart from other apps and encrypts when the phone is locked with a passcode. Backup files are not encrypted, so keep them somewhere private. This website is served over HTTPS.
Retention
Data in the app stays on your phone until you delete it or the app. Support emails are kept for at most 12 months. Google keeps the Android diagnostics under its own policies.
Your rights
Privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct and delete personal information a company holds about you. We hold nothing from the app: your data is on your phone, under your control. For support emails, ask us and we’ll delete them. For the diagnostics Google receives on Android, see Google’s privacy policy.
Changes to this policy
If PaperTin starts handling data differently, we’ll update this page and its effective date before the app version that makes the change is released, and say so in that version’s release notes.