Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how Umwelt (“we,” “us,” “the app”), made by Back Room Strategies Ltd, handles information when you use the app.

TL;DR: Umwelt does not collect any data about you. It has no backend, no analytics, no advertising, no third-party SDKs that phone home. The app does not have user accounts. Everything you do in the app — answers you write, photos you attach, settings you adjust — stays on your phone. The single exception is Google Play, which handles the optional umwelt+ purchase entirely on its own; we receive only a purchase token, never your card or contact details, and we have no server to send anything to even if we wanted to.

What we collect

Nothing. Umwelt does not collect any personal information. It does not have user accounts, passwords, email addresses, names, or contact information. It never asks for any of those.

What stays on your phone

Umwelt stores three kinds of data, all of them on your device, all of them only on your device:

• The question corpus. A bundled list of more than 450 noticing prompts across 23 contexts, shipped with the app. The same on every install.
• Your answers. Whatever text you write in response to a question, plus any photo you choose to attach to that answer.
• Settings and runtime state.Sensitivity, the watched-app list, places (home / work) you’ve designated, quiet-hours preference, the timestamp of the most recent notification fire, and a few small bookkeeping values used by the trigger logic.
• Your umwelt+ purchase token, if you bought one. When you tap “get umwelt+,” Google Play handles the transaction and hands the app a purchase token confirming you’re entitled to the unlock. The app stores that token on your phone so it can verify your entitlement on subsequent launches without re-querying Play. We do not transmit it anywhere; we have no server.

All of this lives in the app’s private storage on your phone. Other apps cannot read it. We cannot read it. There is no Umwelt server.

What leaves your phone

Nothing about you, ever. Umwelt does not have a backend, does not contact any server we operate, and does not contain analytics, telemetry, advertising, crash-reporting, or third-party SDKs that phone home. When you open Umwelt, attach a photo, or answer a question, no data is transmitted anywhere.

The single connection the app makes to anything outside your device is to Google Play, and only when you choose to buy umwelt+. Google Play handles the entire transaction — your name, payment method, and contact details stay between you and Google. The app never sees them. All we receive is a purchase token confirming you’re entitled to the unlock. You can read Google’s privacy policy here.

Permissions the app uses

• Usage data access (PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS). Required to detect when you’re using a scrolling app, so Umwelt knows when to send a question. The app sees only which app is in the foreground and for how long. It does not see anything you read, type, or tap inside those apps. This permission is granted via Android’s Settings → Apps → Special access → Usage data access; we never receive your actual app contents.
• Notifications (POST_NOTIFICATIONS). Required on Android 13 and above so the app can send you a noticing prompt. If you deny, the trigger pipeline still runs but no notification is posted.
• Location (ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, optional). Only requested if you choose to set a “home” or “work” place in Settings. Umwelt uses location to identify whether you are within a small radius (around 150 metres) of those places, so questions can be context-aware. Location is never recorded as a path, history, or trace — only the comparison “are you near home or work right now” is computed, and the result is a single tag in memory. Background location is never requested. You can grant or revoke this permission any time.
• Camera capture (no CAMERA permission). When you tap “attach photo,” Umwelt launches the system camera. The camera app holds its own permissions; the captured photo is written into Umwelt’s private storage on your phone.

Photos you attach to answers

Photos you attach to answers are stored as files inside Umwelt’s private storage on your phone. They are not uploaded anywhere. They cannot be read by other apps. They are deleted when you uninstall the app.

Children

Umwelt is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect any data from anyone of any age. We could not do so even if we wanted to, because we collect no data.

Your choices

• To delete everything, uninstall Umwelt. All data — answers, photos, settings, runtime state — is removed from your phone with the uninstall.
• To clear specific things, use Settings → reset to defaults, which wipes user preferences. There is no “delete all answers” affordance today; this may be added in a later release. Until then, uninstall is the only path to bulk deletion.
• To revoke a permission,use Android’s system settings: Settings → Apps → Umwelt → Permissions for runtime permissions, or Settings → Apps → Special access → Usage data access for the special-access permission. The app will continue to run; some features may not.

How to contact us

Email seth@backroomstrategies.com for any privacy question or feedback. Since the app collects nothing about you, there is no “account deletion request” we can fulfil — uninstalling the app removes everything we could possibly have.

Changes

If this policy ever changes — for example, if a future version of Umwelt introduces optional cloud features that genuinely need a privacy disclosure — we will update the “Last updated” date above and note what changed. Material changes will be called out clearly inside the app before they take effect.

Jurisdiction

Back Room Strategies Ltd is based in Colorado, United States. This policy is governed by Colorado law.