We don't collect anything. Not some things — anything.
The rest of this page is the same thing, said precisely, plus the two narrow situations where we could end up with something of yours. Section 11 covers your rights wherever in the world you're reading this.
Tells (“the app”) is made by Çınar Şan Kartal, of Esatpaşa Mah. Güzel Bahar Sok. No: 4A, Daire 17, 34704 Ataşehir/İstanbul, Türkiye, and is available worldwide through the App Store. Wherever you are, we are the party responsible for what this policy describes — the “data controller”, in the language most of these laws use.
Rather than write one policy per country, we've written one that meets the strictest requirement that could apply to you. That includes the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation, Türkiye's Law No. 6698 (“KVKK”, which is our own home law), California's CCPA/CPRA and the other US state privacy laws, Brazil's LGPD, Canada's PIPEDA and Australia's Privacy Act.
Meeting all of them at once turns out to be easy, for one reason: we don't collect anything. Most of what those laws regulate — profiling, sharing, selling, retention schedules, cross-border transfers, breach exposure — simply doesn't happen here. Section 11 sets out your rights and where to complain, by region.
Questions about any of this: tellsappsupport@gmail.com.
Tells is a self-contained app. It has no backend, no user database and no cloud component. It makes no network requests carrying your content, because it makes no network requests at all in the course of doing its job.
The practical proof is in your hands: put your phone in aeroplane mode and the app works exactly the same. Pick a photo, get a result, browse your history. If your photo were going anywhere, that wouldn't be possible.
Everything, start to finish, on your device:
At no point is the photo transmitted, uploaded, backed up to us, shared, sold, published, or shown to any person at Çınar Şan Kartal. We have built no mechanism that could do any of those things.
Sharing a result is a separate, deliberate act. Nothing leaves the app unless you tap Share, and then it goes wherever you send it, through iOS. The card the app makes contains your score, the label, the one-line summary and the two bars — it never contains the photo. That is a design decision, made specifically so that nobody's picture can be posted from this app.
To be exhaustive rather than reassuring:
The app writes three things to its own private storage area on your device, readable by no other app:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your past results — scores, write-ups, labels, dates, and any star rating you gave | So your history works |
| A small thumbnail of each analyzed photo | So the history list has something to show |
| One setting recording that you've seen the intro screens | So you don't see them twice |
Settings → Delete all my checks erases all of it immediately and permanently. Deleting the app removes it too.
One thing outside our control that you should know about: if you have iPhone backups switched on, iOS may include this app's local data in your own iCloud or computer backup. That backup is yours and is governed by Apple's terms, not ours — we have no access to it. You can exclude it in your device settings.
Everything above is about the app. There are exactly two situations in which data of yours could reach us, and both require you to take an action outside the app.
If you write to our support address we will have your email address and whatever you put in the message. We use it to answer you and nothing else. We keep it for 12 months and then delete it. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in answering support requests (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)).
One thing worth being straight about if you're outside Türkiye: an email to us arrives in Türkiye, where we are. Türkiye is not covered by an EU adequacy decision, so for readers in the EEA or the UK that is a transfer to a third country. It is made under GDPR Article 49(1)(b) — a transfer necessary to take steps at your own request — and, in sending it, Article 49(1)(a). If you would prefer nothing of yours to reach Türkiye, don't email us. There is no other route by which anything of yours could get here — not even reading this page, as the next part explains.
These two pages are static files published through GitHub Pages. Opening one takes you out of the app and onto GitHub's servers, not ours. GitHub Pages gives a site's author no access logs and no visitor statistics, and we have added neither, so we receive no record of your visit — we cannot see that you read this, when, or from where.
GitHub itself does log the request, as any host does, to keep its service running and secure and to meet its own legal obligations. That is GitHub's processing rather than ours and it is governed by GitHub's privacy statement, which has a section specifically about visitors to GitHub Pages sites. GitHub is a company in the United States, so for readers in the EEA or the UK, opening this page reaches a US host under GitHub's own transfer arrangements. We are not in a position to promise a retention period on GitHub's behalf, so we don't claim one.
We have added nothing to these pages. No analytics, no tag manager, no trackers, no advertising, no embedded fonts, no third-party scripts, and no cookies of ours. Everything each page needs is inside the file itself, which is why they work with JavaScript switched off. We say “of ours” deliberately: what a host does at its own layer is the host's to describe, and GitHub's statement above is the place it is described.
None of this reaches the app. The app itself contains no third-party code whatsoever and sets no cookies, because it isn't a web page and talks to nobody — see sections 2 and 4. Reading this policy is a visit to a website; using Tells is not.
Your download of the app, and any interaction with the App Store or the “rate us” prompt, is between you and Apple under Apple's privacy policy. Separately, if you have turned on Share With App Developers in your iOS settings, Apple may give us anonymised crash and performance reports. That is Apple's system, it is off unless you switched it on, you can switch it off at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements, and it contains no photos and no content from your analyses.
Two, both only at the moment you need them, both refusable:
We want to be unambiguous, because “an app that analyzes photos of people” could reasonably be assumed to do things it does not do.
What the app measures is the arrangement of two bodies in a single frame: distance, orientation, contact, posture, expression. Because this does not allow or confirm the unique identification of anyone, it is not biometric data within the meaning of GDPR Article 4(14) and falls outside Article 9. For the same reason it is not a “biometric identifier” under laws such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act or the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act.
Almost every photo you analyze has someone else in it. We'd rather address that directly than let it go unmentioned.
When you use a photo, you are responsible for having the right to do so — see the Terms of Use, which prohibit analyzing photos of children, intimate images, and photos of anyone who would object.
What protects them, structurally, is that there is nothing for us to misuse:
If you appear in a photo someone put through this app and want to contact us, write to tellsappsupport@gmail.com. We will not be holding a copy of the image — we never had one — and we will confirm that to you in writing.
Tells is rated 18+ and is not intended for anyone under 18. That threshold sits above the age of digital consent in every country the app is available in — 13 under the US COPPA, and 13 to 16 depending on the member state under the GDPR — so there is no parental consent mechanism to operate.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. In fairness we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone, as sections 2 to 4 explain. If you believe a child has used the app and somehow given us data, write to tellsappsupport@gmail.com and we will delete whatever we have.
Privacy laws differ in their detail, but they give you broadly the same set of rights: to ask whether we hold personal data about you, to get a copy, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how it's used, to take it elsewhere, and not to be subjected to significant decisions made purely by a machine.
You have all of those here, and two honest notes on what they amount to in practice:
To exercise any right, write to tellsappsupport@gmail.com. We answer within 30 days, and we don't charge for it.
California (CCPA/CPRA): we do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we have not done either in the preceding twelve months. There is no “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link on this site because there is nothing to sell or share. We do not offer financial incentives for data, and we do not discriminate against anyone for exercising a right.
Other US states — including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon and Montana: the answer is the same. We do not sell or process personal data for targeted advertising, we do not profile you, and we hold nothing that would need to be accessed, corrected, deleted or ported.
Your rights under Brazil's LGPD (Article 18), Canada's PIPEDA, Australia's Privacy Act and comparable laws are exercised the same way, through the address above. Because we collect nothing, we can generally satisfy an access or deletion request by confirming, in writing, that we hold nothing about you.
Your data sits in the app's private container on your device, protected by iOS file protection and your device passcode. These two pages are served over HTTPS.
The strongest security measure available to us is the one we've taken: we hold no user data at all. The safest record is the one that was never created.
This policy describes an app that sends nothing anywhere. If that ever changes — if we add an online analysis service, analytics, accounts or anything else that transmits your data — we will update this page, change the date at the top, update our App Store privacy disclosure, and tell you inside the app before the change takes effect. We will not quietly start doing something this page says we don't do.
Çınar Şan Kartal
Esatpaşa Mah. Güzel Bahar Sok. No: 4A, Daire 17, 34704 Ataşehir/İstanbul, Türkiye
tellsappsupport@gmail.com