Silly Scan Privacy.

01The short version

Silly Scan collects nothing, from anyone, of any age. There are no accounts, no sign-up, no analytics, no advertising, no trackers, and no third-party code. The app contains no network code at all, so it has no way to send anything anywhere. The camera picture is turned silly on the device, and that is where it stays.

02What is collected

No personal information of any kind. Silly Scan does not ask for a name, email address, age, or location. It does not use device or advertising identifiers, and it does not record how the app is used. Its App Store listing declares Data Not Collected.

03The camera

Silly Scan needs the camera, because making the picture is the whole app. iOS asks for permission before the camera turns on for the first time, and you can say no, or change your mind later in Settings.

Camera frames are processed on the device, in memory, only while the app is open and on screen. They are never uploaded, never sent to Phil Woolley or to anyone else, and never kept once a scan is over. While a finished scan is on screen, its short video sits in the app's temporary folder on the device so it can play and be saved. It is deleted as soon as your child taps Again or the X, and anything left behind is cleared the next time the app opens.

Silly Scan does not use the microphone, and the videos it makes have no sound.

04Photos

A picture is saved only when your child taps Save. Save adds one photo and one short silent video to your photo library. For that, Silly Scan asks for add-only access: it can put new items into Photos, but it cannot see, read, or change anything already there. Once saved, those pictures are yours, and you manage and delete them in the Photos app like any others.

05What the app remembers

One thing: whether the how-to cards have already been shown, so they appear on the first launch and not every time. That single yes or no is stored on the device. Everything else, including the chosen direction, speed, loop, and sound settings, resets every time the app opens, on purpose. There is no cloud sync and no server.

06Third parties

Silly Scan contains no third-party analytics, advertising, attribution, or crash-reporting code, and no third-party SDKs of any kind. Nothing is shared with, sold to, or received from any other company.

Apple runs the App Store, which handles the download and updates under Apple's own privacy policy. If you have chosen in your device's settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may pass along anonymous crash reports and usage totals under Apple's terms. The app itself sends nothing to Apple, to Phil Woolley, or to anyone else.

07Links out of the app

Silly Scan has no links to websites, no ads, no chat, no sharing to social media, and no way to contact other people. The only way out of the app is a button that opens the iPhone or iPad Settings when the camera or Photos permission is off. It sits behind a grown-up check: an "Ask a grown-up" card whose button has to be pressed and held for three seconds. Letting go early starts the count over.

08Children's privacy

Silly Scan is made for children and is listed in the App Store's Kids category for ages 6 to 8. It was built with Apple's rules for kids apps and the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in mind, and it meets them in the simplest way available: by collecting no personal information from children at all. There is no account for a child to create, no profile, no advertising of any kind, nothing to buy, and no way for a child to share or publish anything.

Because nothing is collected, there is nothing to review, correct, or delete on a child's behalf, and no parental consent to manage. If you have a question about your child's privacy, email me and I will answer it.

09Keeping and deleting data

Nothing is kept off the device, because nothing leaves it. On the device, the only things Silly Scan keeps are the how-to cards setting and, briefly, the temporary video of the scan on screen, both described above. Deleting the app removes both. Photos and videos your child saved stay in your photo library until you delete them in Photos.

You can turn camera or Photos access off at any time in Settings, then Silly Scan (on iOS 18 and later: Settings, Apps, Silly Scan).

10The web version and this website

This policy covers the Silly Scan app. There is also a free version that runs in a web browser at silly-scan.vercel.app, and it works the same way: the camera picture is drawn in your browser's memory and disappears when you close the tab, nothing is uploaded, and saving a picture hands the file to your browser's downloads. It uses no cookies, analytics, or third-party code.

The Silly Scan pages on philwoolley.com, including this one, have no analytics, advertising, cookies, or tracking scripts. Both sites are hosted by Vercel, which, like any web host, handles basic request information such as IP addresses in order to deliver the pages. The pages on philwoolley.com load their typefaces from Google Fonts.

11Changes

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new effective date. Since the promise is that nothing is collected, any change would be to make that clearer, not to start collecting.

12Contact

Silly Scan is made and published by Phil Woolley in Salt Lake City, Utah. Questions about this policy or your child's privacy? Email woolley.pj@gmail.com.