Privacy Policy

Ghost is built around giving you more control over your phone. We apply the same principle to your personal information: collect as little as we reasonably can, keep sensitive activity on your device where possible, and be clear about what leaves it.

This Privacy Policy explains how Ghost handles personal information when you use tapghost.com, the Ghost iPhone app, reserve or purchase a Ghost product, or contact us.

1. Who we are

Ghost is operated by:

Ryan Shuckford, trading as Ghost
5A Hebers Grove
Ilkley
LS29 9JR
United Kingdom

Email: hello@tapghost.com

For UK data-protection purposes, Ryan Shuckford trading as Ghost is the controller of personal information described in this policy where Ghost determines how and why that information is used.

2. Information we collect through tapghost.com

Reservations

If you reserve or register interest in Ghost through the website, we may collect:

• your email address;
• the Ghost state or experience choices you make;
• the distractions or options you select in the website experience;
• your preferred Ghost card finish, where applicable;
• how you heard about Ghost, if you choose to tell us;
• whether you have chosen to receive Ghost marketing emails.

We use this information to record and administer your reservation or expression of interest, understand demand for Ghost and its different product options, communicate with you about your reservation, and, where you have separately opted in, send you Ghost launch and product marketing.

A reservation is currently free and is not a paid order.

Website reservation information is stored using Lovable Cloud/Supabase infrastructure.

Website technical information

Our hosting and security providers may process technical information when you visit tapghost.com, such as:

• IP address;
• browser or device information;
• requested pages;
• timestamps;
• security and request metadata.

This information is processed primarily by infrastructure providers including Cloudflare and Lovable for hosting, website delivery, security and abuse prevention.

Ghost does not currently use website analytics, advertising pixels, behavioural tracking, session replay, advertising identifiers or cross-site advertising technology.

Support communications

If you contact us at hello@tapghost.com, we receive the information contained in your email and anything else you choose to provide.

Support email is currently handled using Google Workspace.

3. Information handled by the Ghost iPhone app

Ghost has deliberately been designed so that most behavioural information stays on your iPhone.

Apps you choose to hide

When you choose apps, categories or websites through Apple's Family Controls interface, Ghost receives opaque Apple-generated tokens.

Ghost does not receive the human-readable names of the apps you selected and cannot use those tokens to reconstruct a list of apps installed on your phone.

Those selection tokens are stored locally on your device and are not transmitted to Ghost's servers.

Ghost does not receive:

• the contents of blocked apps;
• messages or notifications from blocked apps;
• your screen contents;
• your Screen Time usage history;
• app usage duration supplied by Apple;
• a record of attempts to open blocked apps.

4. Ghost Activity

Ghost Activity is generated locally on your iPhone.

A Ghost session records only:

• a locally generated session identifier;
• when a Ghost session began;
• when it ended.

Ghost uses those timestamps locally to calculate information such as:

• Protected This Week;
• Ghost Sessions This Week;
• Total Time in Ghost;
• recent Ghost sessions.

Ghost Activity is not sent to our servers.

The app currently retains the most recent 500 individual session records locally. Lifetime totals are retained separately on the device.

When the session-history limit is exceeded, older individual session records may be removed from local storage. Lifetime totals are maintained separately.

Some locally stored app data may be included in your Apple device backup if you have iCloud Backup enabled. Apple controls that backup infrastructure; Ghost cannot access your iCloud backups.

5. Ghost card verification

If you use a physical Ghost card or another card-based entitlement, we may ask you for your email address and a six-digit verification code.

Your email and code are temporarily handled by the app to complete verification and are sent to our Supabase backend.

The app does not write your email address or verification code to persistent local storage.

Our backend may store:

• your normalised email address;
• a hashed version of your email address;
• card purchase or entitlement information;
• entitlement status;
• relevant timestamps;
• payment-provider identifiers where applicable;
• support or manual access grants where applicable.

Supabase Auth may also create an authentication user record associated with your email when a verification code is requested.

6. Your Ghost entitlement

After successful card verification, Ghost receives a signed entitlement token.

The token contains:

• a one-way hash of your email address;
• confirmation that the entitlement is a Ghost card entitlement;
• issue, refresh and expiry timestamps.

It does not contain your raw email address, name, selected apps, Ghost Activity history or payment-card information.

The token is stored securely in the iOS Keychain.

Ghost may periodically send that token to the Ghost backend when it needs to refresh or revalidate your entitlement.

The Keychain item is eligible for Apple's iCloud Keychain synchronisation. If you use iCloud Keychain, Apple may securely synchronise the entitlement between your devices. Ghost cannot remotely access your iCloud Keychain.

7. Digital purchases through Apple

If you purchase digital Ghost access through the App Store:

• Apple processes your payment;
• Ghost does not receive your bank or payment-card details;
• Ghost does not send your StoreKit purchase history to its backend.

The app receives only the StoreKit information needed to determine whether the relevant Ghost entitlement is valid.

Your App Store transaction history remains with Apple under Apple's own terms and privacy practices.

8. Physical Ghost purchases

At the date of this policy, tapghost.com accepts reservations rather than paid physical-card orders.

If direct physical Ghost card purchases or paid pre-orders are enabled later, payment may be processed by a payment provider such as Stripe.

Ghost will not receive your full payment-card details. The payment provider processes those details and Ghost may receive information needed to identify and administer the transaction, such as payment, charge or checkout identifiers, amount, currency, product and transaction status.

We will update this policy if our payment arrangements materially change.

9. Information we do not collect through the Ghost app

The current Ghost app does not collect or access:

• advertising identifiers;
• device fingerprinting identifiers;
• precise or approximate location;
• contacts;
• photos;
• camera;
• microphone;
• calendar or reminders;
• health or fitness information;
• clipboard contents;
• behavioural advertising data.

Ghost does not include advertising, behavioural analytics, cross-app tracking or user-profiling SDKs.

We do not sell personal information.

We do not share personal information for behavioural advertising.

10. Why we use your information

We use personal information only where we have an appropriate legal basis.

Reservations and product-interest information

We process information you provide when reserving Ghost because of our legitimate interests in administering requested reservations, understanding demand for Ghost and planning our products.

Purchases and entitlements

Where information is required to supply a product, administer a purchase or provide a Ghost entitlement, we process it because it is necessary to take steps at your request or perform our contract with you.

Security and fraud prevention

We process limited technical and security information where necessary for our legitimate interests in protecting Ghost, preventing abuse and maintaining the integrity of our systems.

Legal and accounting obligations

Where law requires us to retain transaction, tax, accounting or other records, we process and retain the relevant information because it is necessary to comply with our legal obligations.

Support

We process information you provide in support communications where necessary to provide or administer Ghost and because of our legitimate interests in responding to users and resolving problems with the service.

Marketing

Where you separately choose to receive Ghost marketing emails, we rely on your consent.

You may withdraw marketing consent at any time.

Communications that are necessary to administer a reservation, order, entitlement or support request are separate from optional marketing.

11. Who we use to provide Ghost

Depending on how you use Ghost, information may be processed by service providers including:

Apple — App Store purchases, StoreKit, Family Controls, Managed Settings, device backups and iCloud Keychain.

Supabase — backend infrastructure, authentication, entitlement verification and database services.

Lovable — website hosting and website reservation infrastructure.

Cloudflare — website delivery, DNS, security and abuse prevention.

Google Workspace — customer and support email.

Stripe — if and when direct payments for physical Ghost products are enabled.

These organisations process information in accordance with the roles, agreements and legal obligations that apply to the relevant service.

12. International processing

Some service providers operate internationally and may process information outside the United Kingdom.

Where UK data-protection law requires safeguards for an international transfer of personal information, we rely on an appropriate lawful transfer mechanism applicable to the relevant provider or processing activity.

13. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected and for applicable legal, accounting, security or dispute-resolution requirements.

Ghost app verification and authentication

When an email address is entered for Ghost card or entitlement verification, Supabase Auth may create an authentication record before the verification code is successfully completed.

Unconfirmed authentication records become eligible for deletion once they are more than 24 hours old and are removed by our automated nightly retention process.

Confirmed authentication records become eligible for deletion after more than 30 days without relevant sign-in or verification activity and are removed by the same automated process.

Authentication sessions are configured with a maximum 24-hour time window and are normally cleared immediately after successful Ghost verification.

Deleting an authentication record does not by itself remove a valid Ghost entitlement. Ghost entitlements are administered separately as described elsewhere in this policy.

Temporary access grants

Temporary access grants with an expiry date become eligible for deletion 30 days after they expire.

Access grants without an expiry date, such as certain support or administrative grants, may be retained for as long as they remain necessary for the purpose for which they were created.

Card purchases and entitlements

Card purchase and entitlement records are not automatically deleted on a fixed short-term schedule. They may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to provide and restore the entitlement, administer customer support, prevent fraud, handle refunds, chargebacks or disputes, and meet legal, tax or accounting obligations.

Where you make a valid erasure request, we will delete or minimise personal information unless we have an overriding lawful reason to retain it.

App Review and security records

Limited records of Ghost App Review access attempts and related security checks may be retained for up to 12 months and are then removed by our automated retention process.

Ghost Activity

Ghost Activity and individual Ghost session history remain on your device and are not sent to Ghost's servers.

The app currently retains up to the most recent 500 individual Ghost session records locally. Lifetime totals are maintained separately on the device.

Website reservations and marketing

Reservation information is retained while your Ghost reservation or interest remains relevant, unless you ask us to remove it sooner or we need to retain limited information for another lawful reason.

Marketing-consent records may be retained for as long as necessary to demonstrate or administer your marketing preferences. If you withdraw consent, we may retain limited suppression information so we can respect that request.

Support, financial and infrastructure records

Purchase and financial records may be retained where required by tax, accounting or other law.

Support correspondence may be retained where reasonably necessary to deal with the request and maintain an appropriate record of the interaction.

Hosting and infrastructure providers may separately retain technical logs in accordance with their own retention arrangements.

14. Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures designed to protect information.

These include encrypted network connections, access-controlled backend infrastructure, Apple's Keychain for card entitlements and cryptographically signed entitlement tokens.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security.

15. Your rights

Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law may give you rights to:

• request access to personal information we hold about you;
• ask us to correct inaccurate information;
• ask us to erase personal information;
• ask us to restrict certain processing;
• object to certain processing;
• receive certain information in a portable format;
• withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

These rights are not absolute and may depend on the lawful basis for processing and any legal obligations requiring us to retain information.

You can object at any time to direct marketing and, in appropriate circumstances, to processing based on our legitimate interests.

To make a request, email hello@tapghost.com and use the subject line:

Privacy Request

We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

16. Deleting Ghost data

Most Ghost behavioural data exists only on your device.

Deleting the Ghost app removes locally stored Ghost Activity and Family Controls selection data belonging to the app.

A Ghost entitlement stored in Apple's Keychain may remain or synchronise through your Apple account depending on your Keychain settings.

Deleting the app does not automatically delete backend information such as reservation, entitlement, support or purchase records.

To request deletion of backend personal information, contact hello@tapghost.com.

Where we are legally required to retain certain financial, security or other records, we may retain the minimum information required for that purpose.

17. Automated decision-making

Ghost does not currently make solely automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

18. Complaints

If you have concerns about how we handle your personal information, contact us first at:

hello@tapghost.com

You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office.

19. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Ghost develops, including where products, features, providers or legal requirements change.

The latest version will always be available at tapghost.com/privacy, with the date of the latest update shown at the top.