Privacy

Short version

Comic Scry processes the comic-cover photos you capture in order to identify the book. Photos are never saved to your camera roll and are never persisted on Comic Scry's servers. Your collection (what books you scanned, when, what prices the app showed) stays on your device. We do not sell, share, or advertise against your data, ever.

What we collect

• Cover photos at scan time. When you tap to capture, the full-resolution image is held in memory, sent to Comic Scry's identification service if the on-device tiers can't recognize it, and discarded as soon as the response comes back. The full image is never saved to your camera roll and never stored on our servers. If you choose to save the result to your collection, a smaller compressed thumbnail of the capture is stored locally on your device (so the saved item shows the cover you scanned). That thumbnail never leaves your phone.
• A per-install device identifier. Two pieces, tied together: an Apple App Attest key (Apple's anti-fraud attestation, generated on-device, never shared) plus a random UUID we generate on first launch and store in the iOS Keychain. Together they let our server confirm a scan request is from a real, unmodified Comic Scry install and count it against your allotment. The UUID is not linked to your Apple ID, your name, or anything else identifying.
• Scan counts. We track the number of scans you've used so we know whether you've still got free trial or Comic Scry Pro scans left. We do not track which comics you scan on our servers unless you turn on anonymous scan stats (below).
• App Store purchase receipts. When you purchase Comic Scry Pro, Apple sends us a cryptographically signed receipt. We verify it server-side to unlock Pro on your device.
• Price-alert push token and watched books (only if you turn on Price Alerts). Price Alerts are off by default. If you turn them on in Settings, two things go to our server: (1) an Apple Push Notification token for your device, so we can deliver the alert, and (2) the identity (series, issue, year) of any book you save while its price is still being looked up — so we can notify you when that book's value lands at or above the tier you chose. Both are tied only to your anonymous device identity (above), never your name or Apple ID. The watched-book records are short-lived and expire automatically after a few days. Setting Price Alerts back to Off tells the server to forget your push token. We never send marketing pushes — only the price confirmation you asked for.
• Newsletter email address (only if you sign up). The signup form on the homepage POSTs your address to a small Cloudflare Worker endpoint that forwards it to Beehiiv (our newsletter host). We don't persist the address on our side. Unsubscribe in any email or by emailing hi@comicscry.com.

What we do not collect

• Your name, email address, account, or any other personal identifier (unless you choose to email support).
• Your collection. The books you save are stored locally in SwiftData on your device; Comic Scry's servers never see them — with one opt-in exception: if you turn on Price Alerts, the books you save while their price is still resolving are sent so we can notify you (see "What we collect" above).
• Your location, contacts, photos other than the cover capture, or any third-party analytics SDK. No Mixpanel, Amplitude, Segment, or similar.

Third-party services

Comic Scry uses these services to identify and price comics, host the app's backend, and host this website. Each is invoked anonymously — none of them receive any identifier tied to you.

• Azure OpenAI (Microsoft) — for the AI cover-identification fallback. We send the cover image. Microsoft's Azure OpenAI data, privacy, and security policies apply: no training on input, 30-day at-rest abuse-monitoring window, then deletion.
• Pricing — price ranges are the current asking prices for the identified book on eBay. To fetch them, our server sends the book's identity — series, issue, and year — to eBay's listings API. We never send your photo, your device identity, or anything that identifies you: only the title of the book, the same search you could run on eBay yourself.
• Grand Comics Database (comics.org) — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, volunteer-curated since 1994. Used by Comic Scry's server (not your device) for cover artwork in the on-device bundle. We don't send your device identifier to GCD. We donate to support their work.
• Cloudflare — hosts the Comic Scry identification Worker (the backend API), the request-counting KV store, and this website. Standard IP-level request logs are retained briefly for abuse detection per Cloudflare's policies — see Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Beehiiv — hosts our newsletter. Only invoked if you submit the email signup form on the homepage. See Beehiiv's privacy policy.
• Apple App Store — for purchase processing. We never see your payment details.
• Apple Push Notification service (APNs) — delivers price alerts to your device, only if you turn Price Alerts on. Apple relays the notification; we send it the device token and the alert text, nothing tied to your identity.

Children

Comic Scry is rated 4+ and contains no objectionable material, but it is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

Data deletion

Uninstalling the app removes all local data — your collection, the device identifier in Keychain, and the learned-cover cache. There's nothing on our end you need to do to wipe what's on your phone.

The server-side scan count tied to your device's App Attest identity is automatically deleted after 365 days of inactivity.

To request earlier deletion of the server-side scan-count record: open Comic Scry → Settings → Data ID and copy the value shown there. Email hi@comicscry.com with that ID and we'll delete the row within 30 days, subject to abuse-prevention review. We need the ID because no email address or other identifier is ever linked to your scan count — if you can't give us the ID we have no way to find your row.

If you've already uninstalled the app and can't retrieve the ID, your account auto-purges within 365 days of your last scan. There's nothing we can do to delete it sooner than that — there's no reverse path from an email address to the App Attest identity.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email hi@comicscry.com.