Privacy Policy
- Your SMS and financial data are processed on your phone and never leave it through the app.
- Data on the phone is encrypted (AES-256). Backups are made when you ask (or on a schedule you turn on), encrypted with AES-256 using a key only you know, and saved only where you choose.
- There are no Unspend servers, no accounts and no bank logins.
- We never sell, share or upload your data, and never use it for advertising or credit decisions.
- The free version shows a few ads from Google AdMob, which never receives your financial data.
Summary
Unspend processes your SMS and financial data entirely on your device. We do not run servers and there are no accounts. Your SMS, transactions, people, cards, bills and budgets never leave your phone through the app. The free version shows a small number of ads served by Google AdMob, which receives standard device information (described below) but none of your financial data.
SMS messages
With your permission, Unspend reads incoming and existing SMS messages to find transaction alerts from banks and card issuers. From those alerts it extracts the amount, whether money was debited or credited, the bank name, the last digits of the account or card, the payee or sender name and the available balance. Messages from personal phone numbers, one-time passwords and promotional messages are ignored. When you set up Unspend, it looks through the last 6 months of messages on your phone to list the accounts and cards they mention, so you can say which are yours; nothing is stored until you choose, and alerts for an account you mark as not yours are ignored from then on. The original text of a matched bank alert is kept on the device so you can view it later.
SMS data is used only to provide the app's expense-tracking features. It is never uploaded, sold, shared, or used for advertising or credit decisions.
Storage and deletion
All data is stored in the app's private storage on your device, encrypted with AES-256 (SQLCipher). The encryption key is generated on your phone and sealed by the Android Keystore, so it never leaves the device and a copy of the app's files can't be read elsewhere. It is removed when you use "Clear all transactions", clear the app's data, or uninstall the app. The app opts out of Android's automatic cloud backup and device-to-device transfer, so your data is never copied off the phone automatically. You can save an encrypted backup yourself (see Backups below).
Backups (encrypted)
You can save a backup from Settings → Back up. Nothing is backed up automatically, and the app never uploads a backup anywhere.
What a backup contains: one file with all your Unspend data. That covers your transactions (amount, payee, bank, the last digits of the account or card, category, note and, where present, the original bank SMS text and balance), categories and budgets, remembered merchant rules, the people you track and money they owe, credit cards (name, bank, last 4 digits, limit, statement and due days), the bank accounts and cards you reviewed (bank, last digits, the name and type you gave it, the balance you entered, and whether you hid it or marked it as not yours), bills, spending-plan items, and settings such as your name, currency, income and monthly budget.
How it is protected: before saving, the app asks you to choose a backup key. The file is compressed and encrypted on your phone with AES-256-GCM using a random 256-bit key made just for that backup. That key is itself encrypted with a second key derived from your backup key using Argon2id (32 MB of memory, 3 passes, random salt), a deliberately slow, memory-hard method that makes guessing your backup key very expensive. Without your backup key, the file's contents can't be read, and any change to the file, including its header, is detected.
Your key is never stored or sent anywhere, not in the file, not on your phone, and not to us. If you forget it, the backup cannot be opened or recovered by anyone, including us. The app suggests something you will always remember, such as your phone number or date of birth. Keys like these are easy to remember but can be guessed by people who know you, so keep backup files somewhere private.
The file is saved only where you choose (your phone's storage, or a cloud drive or app you pick in Android's file picker). Where it goes after that is under your control. To restore, choose Settings → Restore from backup and enter the key. Backups made by versions before 1.4.1 were not encrypted. If you have one, restore it, save a new encrypted backup, and delete the old file.
Automatic backups (optional): if you turn on Settings → Automatic backups, the app saves an encrypted backup daily, weekly or monthly to a folder you pick, and keeps only the newest few. So that this can run on its own, your backup key is kept on the phone, sealed by the Android Keystore; it is never sent anywhere. The files are encrypted exactly as described above, nothing is uploaded by the app, and you can turn this off at any time, which also deletes the stored key.
Smart features (on your device)
Unspend learns your categories and the messages you mark as spam, finds recurring payments, price increases, unusual spends and possible double charges, and forecasts your month-end spending. All of this is computed on your phone from your own data, using small models and statistics built into the app. Nothing is sent to any AI service, and your data is never used to train anyone's model.
Voice entry: tapping the microphone opens your phone's own speech recogniser, and Unspend asks it to work offline. Only the recognised words come back to the app; Unspend never records or stores audio. If your phone's recogniser can't work offline, it may use its provider's online service, under that provider's terms.
Sharing
Unspend does not sell, share or transfer your SMS or financial data to anyone. Files are only created when you choose to export (CSV or PDF) or back up, and they are saved to a location you pick.
Advertising (free version)
The free version shows at most two full-screen ads per day, plus rewarded ads only when you choose to watch one. Ads are provided by Google AdMob. To serve and measure ads, AdMob may collect your device's advertising ID, IP address (approximate location), app interaction and diagnostic information, as described in Google's advertising policy. No SMS content, transaction, amount, payee, person or bank information is ever passed to AdMob. In regions where consent is required, the app asks for it using Google's consent form, and you can change your choice in Settings → Ad privacy choices. You can also reset or delete your advertising ID in Android Settings → Privacy → Ads. Unspend Premium shows no ads.
Purchases
Unspend Premium is sold through Google Play. Payments are handled entirely by Google; we never see your payment details. The app only checks with Google Play whether your account owns Premium.
Permissions
- Receive and read SMS: detect transactions from bank alerts.
- Notifications: category prompts and the optional daily summary.
- Display over other apps (optional): show the category picker instantly. When a payment arrives, the app also uses it for a moment to check whether a full-screen app (such as a game or video) is open, so the pop-up doesn't interrupt it. It cannot see which app is open or anything on the screen, and nothing is stored.
- Biometrics: confirm it's you with your fingerprint, face or screen lock (PIN or pattern) before amounts are shown, and optionally to lock the app. This check is done by Android; the app never sees or stores your fingerprint or face data.
- Internet and network state: used only by Google AdMob to load ads in the free version, by Google Play to confirm purchases, and by Google Play to tell you when an app update is available.
- Run at start-up: re-schedule your bill, card and nightly reminders after the phone restarts.
- Advertising ID: used by Google AdMob in the free version (see Advertising).
You can revoke any permission at any time in Android Settings.
This website
This website does not use cookies, analytics or trackers, and it loads no third-party scripts or fonts. Your theme choice (light or dark) is stored only in your browser. Like any website, our hosting provider (Netlify) processes standard server logs such as IP addresses to deliver the pages securely.
Your choices
Because your data lives only on your device, you are in full control: you can view, export, back up or delete it at any time from inside the app, and revoke permissions in Android Settings. We hold no copy of your data, so there is nothing for us to access, correct or delete on our side.
Children
Unspend is not directed at children under 13 (16 in the EEA), and ads are not personalised for users identified as under the age of consent.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be published at this address with a new effective date.
Contact
Questions about privacy: unspend.support@gmail.com