BuyAway is a mobile app that tells you whether a product you are looking at abroad is cheaper there or back home. This policy explains what the app stores, where, why, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read, not skimmed; the short version is that BuyAway keeps the minimum an account needs, shares nothing with advertisers or analytics companies, and lets you delete everything yourself from inside the app.
Who we are: BuyAway is operated by Haim Elbaz (“we”). For anything in this policy, write to [email protected].
1. What the app stores about you
You are not under any legal obligation to give us any of this information. Giving an email address and a display name is a condition of having an account, because the app has no anonymous mode; everything else is optional and the app says so where it asks. The purposes for which each item is used are set out beside it below and in section 5.
Your account
When you create an account we store the email address and display name you enter, and a one-way hash of your password. The password itself is never stored and never visible to us. You confirm the address once, with a six-digit code we email you; an account cannot be used until its address has been confirmed, so nobody can register with an address that is not theirs. Accounts and sign-in are handled by our database provider (see section 4).
We also record, with the account, the date you accepted these terms and whether you chose to receive offers from partner stores (section 3a).
Your trip and settings
Your home country and the country you are travelling in, your app language, and your in-app preferences (haptic feedback, whether you contribute prices, whether you have seen the tour). These sync to your account so they follow you to your next device. The light/dark appearance choice is stored only on the device.
Your lists
The Plan list (products you intend to buy) and the Purchases list (products you have bought): for each entry, the product’s name, brand, barcode and picture link as returned by the product database, the price you saw or paid and the home price it was compared with, the currencies and countries involved, the quantity, any note you added, and the date. These are yours alone and are never shown to other users.
Prices you record
When you enter a price you saw on a shelf, and “Share the prices you record” is switched on in Settings (it is on by default), the app stores a price observation: the barcode, product name and brand, the price, currency and country, whether it was discounted, the date and, when you have let the app notice where you are shopping (see Your location below), the name of the shop you were standing in — the chain, such as “Zara”, never an address. It is linked to your account so that it can be deleted with it.
Other users never see your individual observations, your name or your email. They see only aggregates — for example, the typical recent price of a product in a currency, and how many people reported it. You can turn contribution off at any time in Settings › Shared prices; the app then keeps your prices on your device only.
You may also report that a price shown to you is wrong. A dispute stores the barcode, currency, the figure you were shown, and the date, linked to your account.
Your location (optional, off by default)
The app can notice which country you are shopping in and which shop you are standing in, so that it can offer to switch your trip to that country and tell you what that shop charged other travellers. This is off until you switch it on, in the card on the home screen or under Settings › Notice where I am shopping, and your phone asks for its own permission at that moment. It works only while the app is open; the app never reads your position in the background.
When it is on, each time you open the app your phone’s coordinates are sent to two OpenStreetMap services (section 3) to be turned into a country, a town and the name of the nearest mapped shop. We do not store your coordinates, your route or your position history, on the device or on our servers; the place is kept in the app’s memory only for as long as it is open. The only thing that outlasts the moment is the shop’s name on a price you chose to share, as described under Prices you record.
Switch it off at any time in Settings, or withdraw the permission in your phone’s settings; either stops it at once.
Usage statistics
Each time you scan or look up a product, the app records that a scan happened: the moment, whether a product was found, how the code arrived (camera, typed, searched by name or read from a label), and the two countries of your trip. It does not record the barcode, the product, the price or where you were. These rows exist so that we can tell whether the app is being used at all; they are counted, never read one by one, and they are deleted with your account.
The app also uses Google Analytics for Firebase to count which screens are opened and how scans and verdicts turn out. What Google receives: the event name (for example “scan”, “verdict”), a category (found or not, cheaper here or at home), the screen name, your device model and operating system version, the app version, your country as derived from your IP address, and a random identifier for this installation of the app. What it does not receive: your name, email, barcodes, products, prices, lists, precise location, or your device’s advertising identifier, which the app switches off. Google processes this on our behalf and keeps it for 14 months. You can switch it off at any time in Settings › Anonymous usage statistics; from then on nothing is sent.
Diagnostics
The app keeps the last few errors of the current session in memory only. If you choose Report a problem in Settings, the app opens your own mail app with a message to us that contains the app version, your trip pairing and those errors; nothing is sent until you send it, and you can read and edit the message first. Nothing is sent automatically.
Keeping the app current
On launch the app reads a small public table that says which versions are still supported, so that a version with a serious fault can be retired. That request carries no account information — only the ordinary technical details any internet request carries. There is no crash-reporting service and no advertising SDK in the app; the one analytics component is described under Usage statistics above and can be switched off.
What the app does not collect
No location unless you switch it on, and no location history ever. No contacts. No photos from your library. No advertising identifier. No payment details: the app currently sells nothing, and if it ever does, payment would go through Apple or Google, who never pass card details to us.
2. The camera
Scanning a barcode is the app’s primary function. Barcodes are decoded on your device. When a barcode is a shop’s own and no database knows it, you may photograph the label so the app can read the product name; that text recognition also runs on your device, and the photograph is discarded immediately. No image ever leaves your phone.
The text recognition component is Google ML Kit, an on-device library. Google publishes what that component may report to Google about itself (device type, app version, performance metrics); see Google’s ML Kit data disclosure. BuyAway sends it no personal data.
3. Who else receives data, and what
To identify a product and price it, the app asks public databases. Each request carries only what is listed here, plus the ordinary technical information any internet request carries (your IP address, which those services see as any website would).
| Service | What is sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Open Food Facts (openfoodfacts.org) | The barcode, or the words you typed when searching by name | Identify the product |
| Open Prices (prices.openfoodfacts.org) | The barcode and a country code | Find recent shelf prices in your home country |
| UPC Item DB (upcitemdb.com), via our own lookup function | The barcode, or the words you typed | Identify products Open Food Facts does not know. The request is made by our server, so UPC Item DB does not see your device |
| Exchange-rate provider (open.er-api.com) | Two currency codes | Convert between currencies |
| OpenStreetMap — Nominatim and Overpass (openstreetmap.org), only if location is switched on | Your phone’s coordinates at that moment, and the app’s language | Name the country and town you are in, and the shop you are standing in |
| Our database provider | Everything in section 1 | Hosting the account and database, in the European Union |
| Google Analytics for Firebase | The usage statistics described in section 1, with no identity and no advertising ID | Counting screens, scans and verdicts |
Israeli home-country prices come from files that Israeli retail chains are required by law to publish. Our server downloads them nightly; no user data is involved.
We do not sell, rent or trade personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. The one case in which your email address is shared with anyone is the optional offers programme in section 3a, and only if you have said yes to it.
3a. Offers from partner stores (optional)
When you create an account there is a box, unticked, that reads Send me offers from partner stores. It is also a switch in Settings, Offers by email. If — and only if — you turn it on, we may pass your email address (nothing else: not your name, your lists, your prices or your trips) to selected stores and brands so that they can email you deals relevant to travellers. Each partner may use the address only to send you those offers, must let you unsubscribe from every email, and may not pass it on. When there are partners, they are listed at the end of this policy; at the time of writing there are none.
You can turn the switch off at any time. From that moment your address is shared with no one further; partners who already have it are told to stop. Leaving it off changes nothing else about the app.
3b. Links to online shops
Under every price verdict the app offers the same product on AliExpress, Amazon and eBay. These are ordinary links to a search on the shop’s own website, built from the product’s name or barcode. Tapping one opens the shop in your browser, where the shop’s own privacy policy applies. Nothing about you is sent along with the link: no account identifier, no lists, no prices. The link may carry BuyAway’s affiliate identifier, in which case the shop pays us a small commission on a purchase; the app says so under the links whenever that is the case. The verdict itself never depends on these links and is never changed by them.
4. Where the data is kept
Account and database data is hosted by a cloud database provider on infrastructure in Frankfurt, Germany. A copy of your lists and settings is kept on your device so the app works offline.
If you use BuyAway from Israel, your data is transferred to the European Union. The EU has recognised Israel as providing adequate protection, and Israeli regulations permit transfers to EU member states.
5. Why we may process it (legal bases under GDPR)
- Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): running your account, syncing your lists and settings across devices.
- Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): building the shared, anonymous price aggregate that is the app’s purpose, and keeping the service secure. You can object by switching contribution off, at any time, with one tap.
- Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): using the camera, which you grant through your operating system’s permission prompt and can withdraw there; and offers from partner stores (section 3a), which you give by ticking the box and can withdraw in Settings.
- Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)), again: the usage statistics in section 1, which contain no product and no price and let us know whether the app is used. The Google Analytics part can be switched off in one tap, and we will move it to an explicit opt-in where the law requires one.
For people in Israel, offers by email are sent only with the explicit opt-in the Communications Law (section 30A) requires, and every such email carries a way to stop them.
6. How long we keep it
For as long as your account exists. When you delete your account, everything in section 1 is deleted from the database at once, by a cascade that removes every row belonging to you; the copy on your device is erased at the same time. Data may persist in the hosting provider’s backups for a limited period before those backups roll over. Our providers also keep ordinary service logs — sign-in events, emails sent, requests to our lookup function — for a short period, at most 30 days, after which they are gone.
7. Your rights
You can, at any time:
- See and change your name, email and password in the app under Settings › your account.
- Export your lists — they are shown in full in the app — and request a machine-readable copy from us.
- Delete your account and all data yourself: Settings › your account › Delete account. It asks for your password and an explicit confirmation. See also our account deletion page.
- Stop contributing prices: Settings › Shared prices.
- Stop the app noticing where you are: Settings › Notice where I am shopping, or your phone’s location permission for BuyAway.
- Ask us to access, correct, erase or export your data, or to restrict or object to processing, at [email protected]. We answer within one month.
- Complain to a supervisory authority: in the EU, the authority of the member state where you live; in Israel, the Privacy Protection Authority.
8. Children
BuyAway is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly create accounts for them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
9. Security
Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes. All network traffic uses TLS. Database access is bounded by row-level security so that an account can read and write only its own rows; the aggregate price view carries no account identifiers. The app’s release builds contain no administrative credentials.
10. Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the new version is published at this address and the effective date above moves. For a change that affects what we collect or why, we will also say so in the app. Earlier versions are available on request.
11. Contact
Haim Elbaz · Israel · [email protected]