Privacy Policy

Last updated: 5 September 2023

Summary

  1. Business model: We offer value to users and users pay us. We do have a Free tier, whose users are not monetized.
  2. Some anonymous usage data is collected to improve the app. None of it is shared with third parties.
  3. No Health data leaves your device.
  4. No ads. So no personally identifying information is collected.

Philosophy

We feel very strongly about preserving user privacy. Users should not have to worry about their personal data being snooped upon when using a digital service, or being sold to third parties for targeted ads. Hence we collect as little data as possible, tied to no individual, and only for the purpose of improving the app, as detailed below.

What we collect

Anonymous Device ID: All data collected from users is tied to a randomly generated number, which is not related to the user’s identity or their device’s identity. Deleting and reinstalling the app will generate a new random identifier and sever any connection to the old one.

This ID helps us figure out what % of people are using the app repeatedly and how often (discussed in aggregate stats such as Weekly Active Users and Monthly Active Users, as announced often by all major companies).

Also, such an ID is unavoidable for the purpose of uniquing users. For example, let’s say we have just 2 users, one iOS 15 user who opens the app 4 times and another iOS 16 user who opens the app just once. In the absence of an ID, we would think that the market share of iOS 15 is 4/5 = 80%, when it is actually 1/2 = 50%.

We collect the following data tied to this anonymous Device ID:

  1. Device information. We collect anonymous data (examples in brackets) such as device type (iPhone), iPhone model (iPhone 11), text size (extraLarge), iOS version (v 16.6), app version (2.6), device language (en_US), and a few other such non-identifying technical details. These aggregate stats help us recognize user needs and make engineering and design decisions.
  2. Usage data. We collect anonymous data such as app launches, taps on individual views, errors faced, etc. We analyze collective stats about this interaction data from all users to be able to draw conclusions about feature usage trends, to understand the efficacy and impact of our design and product choices, remove bugs, simplify screens and more (as explained in ‘User Benefits’).
  3. Pro status. We collect data indicating whether a user has purchased Meltum Pro or not. This is done anonymously of course. This data helps us observe aggregate usage differences between Free and Paid users, and accordingly prioritize user needs when making any changes, such as language translations, design adaptations for screen width or text size, etc.

Why we collect what we collect

We collect ‘What we collect’ and analyze it in aggregate for the following benefits:

User Benefits

Aggregate stats help us take better engineering, design and product decisions which directly benefit the user.

  1. Real world usage. The data tells us in what conditions the app is actually being used in the real world and test it in those settings to fix more bugs. These conditions can be aspects such as font sizes, screen width, unit preferences, device language, etc.
  2. iOS version support. Knowing which version of iOS our users are on, helps us tremendously in adapting newer features and dropping support for older unused OS versions. This helps speed up development by reducing complexity and not having to rebuild features which are in-built in the newer iOS versions.
  3. Visual accessibility. Collecting the text sizes being used helps us understand the accessibility needs of our users, so that we design for those who would benefit from it, while not drawing alternate designs for sizes which are not used. This helps us optimize design and engineering time.
  4. Reliability. Crash reports and errors help our designers and engineers figure out alternative approaches in design. (Note: Crash reports are collected by Apple and made available to us anonymously by Apple for those who have opted-in, as governed by their Privacy Policy).
  5. User experience (UX) improvements. Usage data helps us identify and fix issues and bottlenecks, improve app flow, navigation and the overall user experience. It helps us improve permission prompts and error screens, so that users do not get stuck, and guide them if they do.
  6. Feature expansion. If a certain feature is used heavily, we might consider adding further details and customizations for such features, or adding further variations of it. Knowing which features are unused allows us to consider improving them with feedback or to drop them, if necessary.
  7. Future translations. Knowing which language is used on our users’ devices informs us regarding which translations need to be prioritized.

Business Benefits

Aggregate stats help us understand the needs of our paid users and free users better.

  1. Revenue and expansion. Since our paid users are the only source of income we have, we strive to improve our service (as explained in ‘User Benefits’ above), which would lead to higher revenue. A higher revenue will allow us to hire engineers, designers and fitness experts to expand the app and build out our extremely exciting roadmap. Now that is a win-win for both the Meltum team and our users.
  2. Marketing communication. We intend to use aggregate stats for the purpose of sharing major milestones in our marketing communications on social media, blogs, emails, interviews, etc. For example, “10,000 users downloaded our app”, “Meltum is used by people in 100+ countries”, etc.

What we don’t collect

We do not collect any other data besides our ‘What we collect’ declarations. However, we would like to explicitly clarify the two biggest things people care about when using a health and fitness app:

  1. Identifying information. We do not collect any information which is tied to your identity. We do not ask for your name, email address, physical address, phone number, location or any such identifying detail. We also do not collect any identifying number or ID from your device such as device name (eg. Alan’s iPhone), serial number or anything of that sort.
  2. Health data. Access to different categories of health data is required for Meltum to function as designed. Using that data, Meltum calculates different stats locally on your device without sending any of it outside your phone. Your Health data is your business and not ours.

Why we don’t collect what we don’t collect

We have detailed above ‘What we don’t collect’. Here’s why:

  1. Business model. We have a clear business model where the user gets what they pay for. Due to the negligible cost of providing a subset of the functions of Meltum to free users, we are able to offer a free tier, in the hope that some day we will provide enough value for them to consider upgrading to Meltum Pro. However, we do not currently monetize our Free users in any way, besides showing them what Meltum Pro offers.
  2. Purpose. We are not in the business of subsidizing our free users by showing targeted ads or selling personal user data to third parties. We are only interested in aggregate data and trends for improving Meltum, not in the individual user’s behavior or data.
  3. Third parties. The collected data is not shared with or sold to any third party. Besides us, only our analytics provider has access to it, as described in ‘How we collect data’.
  4. Trust. We strongly believe in providing maximum value to the user and growing the business while collecting minimum possible data. This ensures that users do not have to worry about someone snooping over their shoulder.

How we collect data

For the collection of data as described in this document, we use the services of an anonymous, privacy-first analytics platform called Telemetry Deck, whose philosophy about analytics aligns with ours. Their Privacy Policy, which is just as easy-to-understand as ours, is available here. Their SDK is open-source (unlike most other analytics platforms) which means we can read their code, which we include inside our app, to verify that they are not collecting anything beyond what we have programmed it to.

 

How we store data

The collected anonymous data is stored in the servers of Telemetry Deck, our analytics provider. Meltum does not have a copy of the data. We can just access it through the Telemetry Deck dashboard.

We deliberately limit the data collected to be minimal and anonymous so that even in the case of it being stolen, no user can be identified (thanks to randomly generated identifiers).

 

Support email

When you contact Support at hello@meltum.com, we use that information only for contacting you again for further information or to inform you when the issue has been resolved. That information is not used for any other purpose.

 

Accessing and collecting data

For the purpose of this document, ‘accessing data’ refers to the Meltum app, installed on the user’s device, being able to see that data. ‘Collecting data’ refers to Meltum transmitting that data to its servers or those of related partners, as explained in ‘How we collect data’ and ‘How we store data’, for the purposes as described in ‘Why we collect what we collect’.

 

Future development​

Meltum is in a growth stage. We are planning to greatly expand our offerings in the near future as well as over the coming years. That will require changing many of these terms as stated above.

If, and when, Meltum is incorporated, this policy may be amended to accommodate necessary changes.

However our privacy philosophy shall remain unchanged: same business model (user pays for value), all usage data collected will be anonymous, no snooping, no third-party ads.

‘No third-party ads’ means that we reserve the right to tell our users about any of of our own future offerings related to health and fitness.

 

Amendments

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Meltum may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and at Meltum’s sole discretion. Your continued use of the app after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Every time we make changes to our Privacy Policy, we will announce it in the ‘What’s New’ section in our App Store page. Also the ‘Last updated’ date is always noted in the webpage hosting this policy.

If you believe we could do more or if you have any query, feel free to get in touch with us at hello@meltum.com.