TapShare — Privacy Policy
The short version. TapShare has no servers, no accounts and no analytics. The contact details you enter stay on your own phone. They travel to another phone only when you start a share, and only after both people tap Accept. We never receive your data, because there is nowhere for it to be sent.
1. Who is responsible
TapShare is published by an independent developer. For any privacy question, contact krishnakumarikajal@gmail.com.
2. What the app stores, and where
| Information | Why | Where it is kept |
|---|---|---|
| Your display name, phone number, email address and optional note | This is the contact card you choose to share | On your device only, in the app's private storage |
| Your "Always Ready" on/off preference | To remember your setting between launches | On your device only |
| A local device identifier (derived from Android ID) | So two phones can agree which one initiates the connection, and avoid connecting to themselves | On your device only |
There is no TapShare account, no cloud backup performed by us, and no server that receives any of this.
3. What leaves your phone
Two things, both under your control:
- Your contact card — sent as a vCard directly to one other phone, over Google Nearby Connections (Bluetooth / Wi-Fi), by NFC tap, or displayed as a QR code for the other person to scan. It goes only to the device you are sharing with. The receiving person must tap Accept before it is saved into their phone book, and you see the same prompt for anything arriving at yours.
- Your display name, while Always Ready is on — broadcast to nearby devices running TapShare so they can identify you before connecting. Your phone number, email and note are not broadcast; they are only sent after a connection is established. Turning Always Ready off stops this broadcast entirely.
Nothing is transmitted to the developer or to any third party for advertising, profiling or analytics.
4. Data we do not collect
- We do not read your existing contacts. The app only writes a new contact that you have accepted.
- We do not collect your location. Legacy Bluetooth location permissions are declared for Android 12 and below only, because older Android versions required them for Bluetooth scanning; the app does not request, derive or store your location.
- No advertising identifiers, no crash-reporting SDK, no analytics SDK, no tracking pixels.
- No photos or files are read. The camera is used only to decode a QR code in real time.
5. Permissions and what each is for
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Bluetooth (advertise, connect, scan) and Nearby Wi-Fi Devices | To discover and connect to the other phone |
| Contacts — write | To save a contact you have accepted into your phone book |
| Camera | Only while you are scanning a QR code |
| NFC | Only for the optional tap-to-start shortcut |
| Notifications | The Always Ready indicator and incoming contact alerts |
| Foreground service (connected device) | Keeps the nearby session alive while Always Ready is on, with a visible persistent notification |
| Internet | Required by Google Play services for Nearby Connections. TapShare itself makes no network calls to any server of ours. |
6. Third-party services
TapShare uses Google Play services — Nearby Connections to move data between the two phones, and the open-source ZXing library to generate and read QR codes on-device. ZXing sends nothing anywhere. Google's handling of Play services data is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.
7. Children
TapShare is intended for users aged 18 and over. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from children.
8. Retention and deletion
Because everything is stored locally, you are in full control. Clearing the app's storage in Android Settings, or uninstalling TapShare, permanently removes the contact card and all preferences. Contacts you accepted and saved live in your phone book and can be deleted there like any other contact. There is no server-side copy for us to delete, and no deletion request to file.
9. Security
Transfers over Nearby Connections are encrypted in transit by the platform. Your contact card is held in the app's private, sandboxed storage, which other apps cannot read. Because a share requires physical proximity plus an explicit Accept on both phones, a transfer cannot happen without you noticing it.
10. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be published at this same address with a new "last updated" date. Material changes affecting how data is handled will also be described in the app's release notes on Google Play.
11. Contact
Questions, or a privacy concern: krishnakumarikajal@gmail.com