BeerCounter Privacy Policy

How to Delete Your BeerCounter Account

Steps to Delete Your Account

1. Open the BeerCounter app on your device
2. Go to your User Profile
3. Tap on Edit Profile
4. Scroll down and select the Delete Account button
5. Confirm by selecting Delete, or select Cancel to keep your account

You can also request deletion without the app by emailing beercounterpivo@gmail.com from the address linked to your account. See also our Data Deletion page.

What Data Will Be Deleted?

When you delete your account, we delete:

• Your sign-in account and profile (username, email address, country, profile picture)
• All photos you uploaded, including the copies kept on our server for beer recognition (see section 3)
• Your beer log (logged beers, descriptions and timestamps)
• Your achievements, points and leaderboard entries
• Your friends list, friend requests and notifications, including your entries in other users' lists
• Your push notification tokens and your customer record at RevenueCat

Purchase records held by Apple and Google are kept by them as required for billing and tax purposes. Usage and crash statistics stay in Google Firebase for their standard retention period under a random ID that no longer leads to a profile. Deleting your account does not cancel an active subscription; cancel it in your App Store or Google Play settings. Requests sent by email are completed within 30 days.

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 30, 2026
Previous version: November 18, 2024

This policy explains what personal data the BeerCounter mobile app and website collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have. BeerCounter (contact details at the bottom of this page) is the controller of your personal data.

1. Information We Collect

a. Account Information

• Sign-in: If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your email address, name and (for Google) profile picture. With Sign in with Apple you may choose to hide your email, in which case we receive an Apple relay address. If you register with email, we collect your email address and password.
• Profile: the username, country and profile picture you choose.
• Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication. They are stored hashed and we never see them in plaintext.

b. Beer Photos and Beer Log

• Photos you take or choose from your gallery to log a beer, with the time you logged it and any description you add.
• Your beer counts (total and monthly), achievements, points and rankings.

c. Friends and Social Features

Friend requests, friend connections, and the activity and notifications shared between friends (for example, when a friend logs a beer or earns an achievement).

d. Purchases (BeerCounter Premium)

If you buy Premium, payment is processed by Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play). We never receive your card details. Through our purchase provider RevenueCat we receive the product you bought, purchase and expiry dates, and whether your subscription is active. Your purchases are linked to your BeerCounter user ID.

e. Advertising Data

Free users see ads served by Google AdMob. AdMob may collect device identifiers (such as the Advertising ID on Android or IDFA on iOS), IP address, and ad interaction data to show and measure ads. See section 6 for your choices. Premium users do not see ads.

f. Device, Usage and Diagnostic Data

• Device model, operating system, app version, language and IP address
• App usage events (for example screens viewed and features used), your ad-consent status and whether you have Premium, linked to your user ID
• Crash reports and performance data
• A push notification token, so we can send you notifications
• App integrity checks (Firebase App Check) to protect our services from abuse

g. Permissions

The app asks for camera and photo library access only so you can photograph or select beers and a profile picture, and for notification permission so we can send you notifications. On iOS it may ask for permission to track (App Tracking Transparency) for personalized ads. We do not collect your precise location or your contacts.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To create and secure your account and sign you in
• To recognize whether a photo contains beer and add it to your log
• To run collection tracking, achievements, global, country and friend leaderboards, and friend features
• To check usernames, beer descriptions and profile pictures for inappropriate content
• To send notifications about achievements, friend activity and updates
• To provide Premium features (such as extended statistics) and to verify purchases
• To show ads to free users and measure them
• To fix crashes, improve performance and understand how the app is used
• To improve our beer recognition
• To enforce our Terms, prevent fraud and abuse, and comply with the law

3. AI Image Recognition and Content Checks

When you log a beer, your photo is uploaded to Firebase Storage and analyzed by our own server to decide whether it shows a beer.

• OpenAI: for the analysis we send a reduced-size copy of the photo, with metadata (such as location and camera EXIF data) removed, to OpenAI's API. The copy is sent without your name or email. We ask OpenAI not to store the request, and under OpenAI's API terms such data is not used to train their models.
• Our server: a copy of each analyzed photo, labelled "beer" or "not beer" and linked to your user ID, is kept on our server in Germany (Hetzner) so we can improve recognition accuracy and investigate misuse. These copies are deleted with your account, and you can ask us to delete them earlier at any time.
• Profile pictures are checked for inappropriate content with Amazon Rekognition (AWS). AWS processes the image only to return the result.
• Usernames and beer descriptions are checked for offensive language, first against our own word list and then with Google's Perspective API. Only that text is sent, without your name or email, and Google processes it only to return the result.

Photos you add to your beer log stay in your log until you delete them or your account.

4. Legal Bases (EEA, UK and Serbia)

• Contract: providing the app, your account, beer log, social features and Premium
• Consent: personalized ads and ad tracking, and push notifications. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legitimate interests: security, abuse prevention, content moderation, crash reporting, analytics and improving beer recognition
• Legal obligation: keeping records required by law and responding to lawful requests

5. Sharing Your Data

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only:

• With other users: your username, profile picture, country, beer count, achievements and rank appear on leaderboards and to your friends
• With the service providers listed in section 9, who process it on our behalf
• With Apple and Google, who handle store purchases
• If required by law, or to protect the rights and safety of our users and BeerCounter

6. Your Advertising Choices

• In the EEA, UK and Switzerland we ask for your consent through Google's consent form before showing personalized ads. You can change your choice at any time in Profile → Privacy Settings.
• On iOS, you can allow or deny tracking in the App Tracking Transparency prompt or later in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
• On Android, you can reset or delete your Advertising ID in your device settings.
• If you decline, you may still see non-personalized ads. Premium removes ads.

7. Data Storage and International Transfers

Your data is stored with Google Firebase and on our server hosted by Hetzner in Germany. Some of our providers (Google, OpenAI, Amazon Web Services, RevenueCat) may process data in the United States or other countries. Where required, these transfers are protected by safeguards such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

8. Data Retention

• Account, profile, beer log, friends and achievements: until you delete them or your account
• Analyzed photo copies on our server: until you delete your account or ask us to delete them
• Analytics and crash data: for the retention periods set in Google Firebase
• Purchase records: kept by Apple and Google as required for accounting, tax and legal purposes; the RevenueCat record is deleted with your account
• Server logs and backups: kept for a short period and then overwritten

9. Third-Party Services

The app relies on these providers:

• Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore database, Storage, Cloud Functions, Cloud Messaging, Analytics, Crashlytics, Performance Monitoring, Remote Config, App Check)
• Google AdMob and Google's User Messaging Platform for ads and ad consent
• Google Sign-In and Sign in with Apple for authentication
• OpenAI for beer image recognition
• Amazon Web Services (Rekognition) for profile picture moderation
• Google Perspective API for username and description moderation
• RevenueCat, Apple App Store and Google Play for in-app purchases and subscriptions
• Hetzner Online for hosting our API server and website (Germany)

Each provider handles data under its own privacy policy.

10. Your Rights and Controls

Depending on where you live (including under the GDPR and the Serbian Law on Personal Data Protection), you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it
• Correct inaccurate data (you can edit your username, country and profile picture in the app)
• Delete your data (see "How to Delete Your BeerCounter Account" above)
• Object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent at any time
• Data portability
• Complain to your data protection authority. In Serbia this is the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection (poverenik.rs).

To exercise these rights, email beercounterpivo@gmail.com. We respond within 30 days.

11. Security

We protect your data with encryption in transit (HTTPS), authenticated access to our API, restricted server access and the security controls of our providers. No system is completely secure, but we work to protect your data from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure or destruction.

12. Age Restriction (18+)

13. Changes to the Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices or services. The effective date at the top shows when it was last changed. Significant changes will be communicated through the app or by email.