Privacy Policy

The short version

The Spark app is free, and it needs a free Spark account for one thing: pairing your Spark. Once you are signed in, the app keeps your setup and your session history on our servers so a new phone can restore them — the full list is below. Even signed out, the app talks to our servers: it sends a random install ID, downloads its settings, checks in while a session is locked, and asks Expo, our update provider, for new versions.

The content of your phone — what is on your screen, the pages you read, how long you spend in each app — is read on the phone and stays there. What syncs is the setup you create and a record of your sessions. This website runs Google Analytics and sets a few cookies of its own, all listed below, and collects what it needs to sell and deliver a Spark. We do not sell your data, and there is no advertising SDK in the app or on this site.

The Spark app

What the app sends, even when you are signed out

• An install ID. A random ID the app creates when it is installed — not a hardware identifier — sent with every request to our servers (as the x-tapblock-device header).
• Settings downloads. When it opens, at most every six hours, the app downloads its settings and the rules it uses to recognise short-video feeds.
• A session heartbeat. While a session is locked, the app checks in with our server every 30 seconds.
• Update checks.The app asks Expo's update service whether a newer version of its code is available. Expo receives that request, including your IP address and the app's version.

Like any request over the internet, each of these arrives with your IP address. What our servers keep of that is under How long we keep things.

Pairing a Spark needs an account

Pairing a Spark needs a free Spark account and an internet connection, once — the app will not lock until a Spark is paired. When you pair one, our servers store the key's record: an ID the app generates for it (not the hardware's own ID), the name you give it, whether it is a Bluetooth or an NFC Spark, and an encrypted copy of the key's unlock credential, so a new phone signed in to your account can use the same Spark.

If you bought your Spark on this website, we link the purchase to your account by matching the verified email address you sign in with to the email address on the order.

What syncs when you are signed in

• Your modes — the package names of the apps each one blocks, the websites and custom domains it blocks, and its YouTube channel allow and block lists.
• Your schedules, per-app daily limits and category overrides.
• Your sessions — when each one started and ended, how many times you tried to open something blocked during it, and any emergency unlocks you used. Focus time is counted on our server from the session heartbeat.
• Your settings — streak and goal settings, and whether the adult-content filter is on.
• Your profile and push token, below.

We use it to restore your setup and history on a new phone and to run focus rooms. It is tied to your account and erased when you delete the account.

Android: what the Accessibility service reads

On Android, Spark uses an Accessibility service to enforce your modes. On the phone, it reads:

• which app is open, so a blocked one gets the block screen;
• your browser's address bar, if you block websites;
• other apps' screens, to spot short-video feeds such as YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight and Facebook Reels, if you block feeds;
• in YouTube, the name of the channel you are watching, for channel allow and block lists.

What it reads is used there and then and is not sent to us — with one exception you control: when you add a YouTube channel to a list, the channel's name is saved in that mode, and it syncs with your other modes if you are signed in.

iPhone: Screen Time

On iPhone, blocking runs on Apple's Screen Time (Family Controls) framework. It gives the app opaque tokens for the apps you choose rather than their names, and your usage data stays inside Apple's framework, where neither the app nor we can read it.

What stays on your phone

• On Android, your per-app usage statistics, which the app works out on the phone for daily limits and your screen-time report.
• Everything the Accessibility service reads, apart from the channel names you save.
• iPhone Screen Time data.

Your account and profile

• Sign-in details — your email address, and your name if your sign-in method shares it — held by Clerk, our sign-in provider, and copied to your Spark account.
• A display name, an @handle and, if you add one, a profile photo(stored with Cloudflare). People in focus rooms you join — in a public room, that includes strangers — see your display name, @handle, photo and focus time, and that room's leaderboard ranks you by it.
• Your date of birth, asked once and not changeable afterwards: an age check for public focus rooms. It is never shown anywhere, not even back to you; it is only used to answer “old enough?”.
• One record per phone — the install ID, the platform and a device label, so you can see which phone holds your account. An account has one active phone at a time.
• A push token, if you allow notifications, so we can send them.

Your Path

The Path is the part of the app that suggests one thing a day to do away from your phone. It is optional, it only runs when you have a Spark paired, and you can leave it switched off without losing anything else in the app.

• What you tell it — what you do most days, in your own words; where you are in it; up to three things you would like more of; whether you prefer to be alone or with people, to move or to sit, to learn, make or rest; how much time a day feels right; and any goals you write. Kept as you wrote them.
• How your days went — which suggestion you were offered, whether you said it was done, partly done or skipped, and the reason if you gave one. Plus, each day, a single number: how many minutes your phone was locked.
• What your days add up to— a small table your phone works out for itself (“evening suggestions get finished more often than morning ones”). The table is what gets used for planning; the individual days are not sent for that purpose. You can read every line of it in the app, say any line is wrong, or erase the lot.

To build your week we send this to Google, whose model writes the plan, and they process it as a business customer of theirs rather than for their own purposes. Wenever send your name, your email, your @handle, your photo, your phone number, your order details, your device identifiers, or which apps you use — your account travels as a meaningless identifier. Google keeps what we send for a limited period to check for misuse, and may process it in any country they operate in.

You are asked before any of this is sent, and saying no still gives you a working Path: your phone picks each day itself from a fixed catalogue, with no model involved. You can change that answer at any time from the Path screen.

No analytics or advertising SDKs in the app

The app contains no third-party analytics SDK and no advertising SDK. We make money by selling a key once, not by watching what you do with it.

This website

When you order

• Your name, email address, phone number and delivery address — to deliver your order, to contact you about it, and for the tax records we are required to keep.
• What you bought and what you paid.
• The referral link or code the order came through, if any, so the right person is credited.

We never see your card or UPI details.Payments are handled by Razorpay; you type them into Razorpay's form, not ours. Checkout needs no account — the email address on your order is what later links the purchase to your Spark account.

Analytics and page speed

The production website runs Google Analytics 4. It records the pages you visit, how you arrived, and your device, browser and approximate location (which Google works out from your IP address), using the _ga cookies below. We do not send it your name, email address or order details, and invite links (/i/… and /affiliate/claim/…) are kept out of it.

Your browser also reports page-speed measurements to our own server: the measurement, its value and the page's path — no identifier and no query string. They are kept as server log lines.

Cookies

A few things live in your browser's local storage instead of a cookie: your basket, a code you typed at checkout, and whether you have claimed the scratch-card offer. They stay in your browser; the basket and codes reach us only when we price your cart or you check out.

Referral links and the scratch card

When you open a referral link (/r/…), our server records the click: the code, the page you landed on, your spark_cid, and your IP address and browser user-agent in hashed form — we keep a fingerprint, not the values. The homepage scratch card records the prize drawn for your spark_cid. Both kinds of record are deleted after 90 days.

The referral programme

Joining is optional. If you join, we hold:

• your contact email address and phone number, so we can spot orders placed through your own link;
• your payout details — a UPI ID, or a bank account number and IFSC — and your PAN if you give it, all stored encrypted;
• if you apply as a creator, or accept an invite: the profile links you give us, the follower counts you report, what you post about, where your audience is, and any note you add;
• the clicks and orders credited to your link, your commission, your payouts and any tax (TDS) deducted from them.

If you delete your account after earning or being paid commission, your affiliate record is kept, anonymised — your contact and payout details are removed — because payout records are tax records. Your PAN is kept with it only if tax was deducted from a payout. If you never earned anything, the record is deleted with your account.

Who else processes your data

• Razorpay — payments on this website.
• Clerk — sign-in, for the app and this website.
• Google Analytics — statistics about visits to this website.
• Resend — sends our emails, such as order confirmations and referral-programme messages.
• Expo — app updates, and relaying push notifications to Apple or Google for delivery.
• Cloudflare — stores profile photos.
• Netlify — hosts this website.
• Railway — runs our servers.
• Our database host — stores the data described on this page.
• Our courier partner — your name, address and phone number, to deliver the parcel.

Several of these providers are based, or process data, outside India. We do not sell your data, and there is no advertising network on this site or in the app.

How long we keep things

• Orders, with your name, contact details and delivery address: as long as tax law requires.
• Checkouts that were started but never paid: kept with our order records and marked expired. We do not delete them automatically yet; ask us and we will erase yours.
• Synced app data, your profile, key records and phone records: until you delete your account.
• Referral click records and scratch-card draws: 90 days.
• Your Path's daily records — the suggestion, your answer and the minutes locked: 400 days. Long enough that the app can still answer its own year-long questions, and no longer.
• Your Path's weekly plans: 90 days. Once a week is over, what matters is the days it produced.
• A log of the calls we make to the model — which job, which model, how many tokens and what it cost: 90 days. It holds no copy of what was sent or what came back; it exists so we can keep the feature inside its budget and explain the bill.
• What you told the Path, your goals and the table of what your days add up to: until you delete your account, or erase them yourself from the Path screen.
• Copies of the emails we send, with the address each went to: 90 days after sending.
• Referral-programme records: kept anonymised if commission was earned or paid, with your PAN if tax was deducted — see above.
• Your @handle: retired for good when you delete your account, so nobody else can ever take it. The handle is kept; nothing links it to you.
• Records of changes our staff make in the admin console, which can include a copy of the record changed: two years.
• Server logs — IP address and browser user-agent, with other personal details redacted: our own log files are rotated after 14 days, and our hosting providers keep logs for their own retention periods.

Your rights, and deleting your data

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to erase it.

The fastest route to erasure is the app's own Settings → Account → Delete account, which works immediately and needs no email. It erases your account, everything synced to it, your key records, focus history and profile photo; the account deletion page lists exactly what is kept and why, and what to do if you no longer have the app. Signing out stops the app syncing.

You can also write to akshay@heyspark.work and we will respond within 30 days. Data we must keep for tax records — invoices, for instance — may not be erasable until the statutory retention period ends.

Changes and questions

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Questions about it go to akshay@heyspark.work.