budget_privacy_policy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: [Nov 28, 2025]

This Privacy Policy describes how መዝገብ Budget App (“we”, “us”, or “our”) collects, uses, and discloses your information when you use our mobile application (the “Service”).

We are committed to protecting your privacy. This policy specifically addresses our use of sensitive permissions, including SMS access, to ensure transparency and compliance with Google Play Store policies.

1. Information Collection and Use

To provide you with a better experience while using our Service, we may require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information. The information that we request will be retained on your device and is not collected by us in any way.

SMS Data and Financial Information

Our app’s core functionality is SMS-based money management. To automate expense tracking and budget reconciliation, we request the READ_SMS permission.

• What we collect: We access SMS messages stored on your device.
• How we filter: We strictly filter and process only messages from known financial institutions and service providers (e.g., CBE, Telebirr, Dashen, Awash, Hibret, Zemen, Coop). We do not read or store your personal SMS conversations.
• Purpose: The data extracted from these messages (transaction amount, date, merchant/bank name) is used solely to populate your local transaction history and calculate your budget balance.

2. Local Data Processing (Offline-First)

Your financial data never leaves your device.

• On-Device Processing: All SMS parsing, categorization, and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) analysis happen locally on your smartphone using on-device algorithms.
• No Server Transmission: We do not operate a backend server to store your financial records. Your transaction history is stored in a local database (SQLite/Room) on your device.
• Security: Since your data is not transmitted over the internet to our servers, the risk of remote data breaches involving your financial records is eliminated.

3. Third-Party Services

While we do not collect your data, the app does use third-party services that may collect information used to identify you.

We use the following third-party services:

• Google Play Services: Used for core app functionality and updates.
• AdMob (Google): We use AdMob to display advertisements. AdMob may collect data (such as Advertising ID) to provide personalized ads.
  • Link to AdMob Privacy Policy

4. Camera Usage

We request camera access to allow you to scan physical receipts. This feature uses Google ML Kit to perform text recognition directly on your device. No images or extracted text are sent to our servers.

5. User Rights and Permission Revocation

You retain full control over your data and permissions.

• Revoking Permissions: You can revoke the READ_SMS or Camera permissions at any time by navigating to your device’s Settings > Apps > Budget App > Permissions.
• Data Deletion: You can clear all app data through your device settings, which will permanently remove the local database containing your transaction history.

6. Security

We value your trust in providing us your Personal Information, thus we are striving to use commercially acceptable means of protecting it. But remember that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable, and we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

7. Children’s Privacy

These Services do not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13.

8. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Thus, you are advised to review this page periodically for any changes. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

9. Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us at:

Email: [dawitfikadu3@gmail.com]