GHOST SCOPE

Summary

GHOST SCOPE has no account system and no analytics. We operate no servers and receive nothing from the app. Nothing it records — camera frames, coordinates, photos, or saved sessions — is ever sent anywhere.

The app can read your device's location, but only if you allow it. Location is shown on screen and kept on your device with the records you choose to save.

The app shows banner ads from Google AdMob on the home, Records, and Settings screens. AdMob, not us, receives your device's advertising ID and technical information about your device in order to select ads. The camera and Ghost Box screens show no ads. See Advertising below.

The app in one line

GHOST SCOPE analyses the live camera image for motion and unusual patterns and draws what it finds on screen, and generates a radio-scan style soundscape. It is an entertainment app. It does not detect ghosts or any paranormal phenomenon.

What we collect

Nothing. We operate no servers and receive no data from the app. There is no way for us to identify you or your device. Everything described below stays on your device, except what the AdMob library collects for advertising, which goes to Google and is described under Advertising.

Camera

The app requests the CAMERA permission because analysing the camera image is its main function.

• Camera frames are processed in memory on your device and discarded immediately.
• Frames are never written to storage, never uploaded, and never shared.
• The Ghost Box mode does not use the camera at all and never asks for the permission.

You can revoke camera access at any time in the Android system settings. The Ghost Box will keep working; the camera features will not.

Location

The app declares ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION and ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION. Both are optional.

• The app asks for location only when you tap the coordinate line on the Ghost Camera or Ghost Box screen. It does not ask on first launch.
• Location is read only while one of those screens is open. The app never reads your location in the background.
• It is used for two things: showing the coordinates on screen, and storing them with records you choose to save.
• Coordinates are read through Android's own location service. GHOST SCOPE never transmits them. They go to the screen and, if you save a record, to the app's own storage on your device.
• If you decline, both features work exactly as before. Records are simply saved without coordinates.

You can revoke location access at any time in the Android system settings.

Photos you choose to save

When you press the capture button, the app saves a single image to your device's own photo gallery, under Pictures/Ghost. This happens only when you press that button. The image stays on your device and is yours to keep, share, or delete. The app does not read your existing photos.

Coordinates inside the photo file. If you have allowed location and left Include location in photos switched on (it is on by default, in Settings), the coordinates are written into the photo's own EXIF metadata. That means if you send the photo to someone, the place it was taken travels with it. Switch that setting off to keep saved photos free of coordinates — records inside the app keep their coordinates either way.

Records kept on your device

The Records screen lists photos you captured and Ghost Box sessions you chose to save. Each entry holds the time, the coordinates if there were any, and — for a session — the words that were spoken.

• This list lives in the app's own private storage. Other apps cannot read it.
• It is removed when you uninstall the app.
• Records has two views: a list of everything, and a grid of just the photos.
• Deleting an entry from the list removes the record only; the photo stays in your gallery. Deleting a photo from the photo view removes both the photo and its record, and asks you to confirm first.
• Deleting everything from the Records screen removes every record. Photos already in your gallery stay where they are.

Settings stored on your device

The app stores a few small values in its own private storage: whether you have seen the introduction screen, your chosen detection sensitivity, the Ghost Box scan speed and volume, and whether to include location in saved photos. These never leave your device and are removed when you uninstall the app.

Speech synthesis

The Ghost Box speaks short word fragments. To produce them, the app asks the text-to-speech engine already installed on your device to synthesise a fixed list of ordinary words, and caches the resulting audio in its own private storage. The word list is built into the app and does not change based on anything you do.

The text-to-speech engine is separate software provided by your device manufacturer or by Google, and it is governed by its own privacy policy. Some engines synthesise speech over the network. GHOST SCOPE sends it only the fixed word list built into the app — nothing about you, and nothing you typed — but we cannot control how a separate speech engine behaves. If this concerns you, use an offline voice or do not use the Ghost Box.

Advertising

The app shows a banner ad at the bottom of the home, Records, and Settings screens, served by Google AdMob. The camera and Ghost Box screens never show ads: a bright ad in a dark room would work against the reason you opened them.

To select and measure ads, the AdMob library collects your device's advertising ID, your IP address, and technical information about your device and the app (such as device model, operating system version, and language), and may use them to show personalised ads. This data goes directly to Google and is processed under Google's own privacy policy, as described in how Google uses information from apps that use its services. We receive nothing ourselves apart from aggregate ad revenue reports.

AdMob is given nothing that GHOST SCOPE records: no camera frames, no coordinates, no photos, and no saved sessions.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, the app asks for your consent before any ad is requested, using Google's consent form. You can change your choice at any time from Settings → Ad privacy choices. Elsewhere, the app does not show this form and the choices below apply.

You can reset or delete your advertising ID, or opt out of personalised ads, in your device's settings under Google → Ads (or Privacy → Ads, depending on the device).

Network access

The app holds the INTERNET and ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE permissions for the AdMob library, which uses them to request ads. GHOST SCOPE's own code does not use them. It sends no camera frames, no coordinates, no photos, and no saved records — there is no server for them to go to.

The app asks the Google Play Store app — separate software already on your device — whether a newer version of GHOST SCOPE exists, so it can tell you to update. GHOST SCOPE itself makes no network connection for this; the Play Store app does that work, under Google's own privacy policy.

The app contains no analytics library and no crash reporting library.

Permissions the app declares:

Children

The app is intended for a general audience and is not directed at children. We collect no data from anyone, including children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated text will be published at this address and the date above will be revised.

Contact

For questions about this policy, please use the developer contact details shown on the Google Play listing for GHOST SCOPE.