Privacy Policy
Effective September 9, 2026
This policy is written and maintained in English, which is its authoritative version.
ImpulseShield is a product of Augodore Studios, built around a simple idea: your data is yours. This policy explains what the app does — and, more importantly, what it doesn't do — with your information.
What the app stores
The items, prices, notes, categories, settings, savings history, and savings goals you create live on your device. We have no accounts, logins, or profiles, and we operate no server that receives this data. The app contains no third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking SDKs. Two parts of the app do involve the network, both described below: optional iCloud sync (through Apple) and an optional price lookup when you share a link.
iCloud sync
If you are signed into iCloud and have it enabled, ImpulseShield uses Apple's CloudKit to sync your data across your own devices and back it up. This data is stored in your private iCloud database, governed by Apple's Privacy Policy. We cannot see, access, or retrieve it. When Family Mode arrives, items and goals you add to a household will instead live in a shared iCloud area that your household members can read — the next section explains exactly what that covers — but it will stay inside Apple's iCloud, and we still cannot see, access, or retrieve any of it. To keep your devices up to date, Apple may deliver silent background sync notifications through its own push service; these are part of how CloudKit works and are not something we send or see. If you are not signed into iCloud, the app simply stores everything locally on your device.
Family Mode & households
Family Mode, when it arrives, is an extension of that same iCloud story: instead of syncing only to your own devices, you can share a household with people you invite, so you can weigh purchases and save toward goals together. Here is exactly what that shares — and what it doesn't.
When you add something to a household — an item (its name, price, category, any notes, and the decision you reach on it) or a savings goal (its target and how far along you are) — it becomes visible to the other members of that household. Your personal items and goals are never swept in: a given item or goal lives in exactly one place, either private to you or in one household, and it never silently crosses from one to the other. The household itself also carries a name, and optionally a picture, that you choose when you set it up; these are stored alongside the shared items so everyone sees the same household, and you can change them at any time.
Because Apple runs the sharing, the members of a household can see each other's name and Apple Account identity, the way you would on a shared album or a shared note. This works through Apple's CloudKit sharing (CKShare) — the same mechanism behind Apple's invitations — and the invites themselves are Apple-hosted share links on icloud.com. The shared data lives in the household organizer's own iCloud, not on any server of ours.
If you leave a household, or the organizer removes you, your access to that household's shared items and goals ends; items already in the household stay with the household. And to be completely clear: Augodore can't see any of this. A household is shared between you and the people you invited, through Apple — full stop. We run no server that receives it and we have no way to read it.
Choosing who to invite
When you invite someone to a household, ImpulseShield can open your device's standard contact picker so you can tap a person instead of typing their details. That picker is run by the system, not by us: it shows outside the app, we never see your contacts list, and the only thing the app receives is the single person you choose — used then and there to address the invitation, which Apple delivers. We don't store your contacts, and none of your address book is sent to us. You can always skip the picker and enter an email or phone number by hand.
Fetching prices from links you share
When you share a product link into ImpulseShield (for example, from Safari or a shopping app), the app makes a single, best-effort request to that web page so it can read the item's title and price and fill them in for you — the same thing your browser does when you open the link. This request goes directly to the retailer's website (such as an online store you chose to share from), not to any server of ours, so that site sees the request and your device's IP address, just as it would for any ordinary visit. We do not receive, log, or store anything from this lookup; the result simply prefills fields you can edit or clear. The request is optional and time-limited — if the page is slow or unreachable, the app gives up and you can still type the details in yourself. Aside from this lookup and the in-app Resources browser described below, the app makes no other network connections of its own.
Purchases
ImpulseShield offers an optional Pro unlock — a one-time in-app purchase, processed entirely by Apple through the App Store. (When Family Mode arrives in a future update, a Family Mode upgrade and an “Everything” bundle that combines the two will join it, on the same pay-once terms.) ImpulseShield never uses subscriptions. Apple handles the payment; we never see or receive your name, payment card, or billing details. The app receives only Apple's confirmation that a purchase was verified, so it can unlock the relevant features. Verification happens on your device, and the Store and Settings screens include a Restore Purchases option, as the App Store requires. Prices are always shown in your local currency on the App Store.
Notifications
If you allow it, ImpulseShield can send you notifications of two kinds. Most are local reminders — for example, a nudge when a cooling-off wait is up — scheduled and delivered entirely on your device by the system. The other kind will appear only once Family Mode arrives and you use it: when someone in your household acts on a shared item or goal, Apple can deliver a notification to the rest of the household through CloudKit's push service, so everyone stays in sync. Either way, these are not push messages from us — we don't send them and we receive nothing when one fires. You can turn notifications off any time in your device's Settings.
Analytics & diagnostics
ImpulseShield itself collects and stores no personal data. The app contains no third-party analytics, no advertising, and no tracking technologies; we do not use cookies in the app, we do not access the advertising identifier (IDFA), and we use no tools that follow you across apps or websites. We run no analytics servers of our own, so there is no record of your in-app activity for us to receive.
There is one optional exception, and it belongs to Apple rather than to us. Every iPhone, iPad, and Mac has a setting called Share With App Developers (in Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements). If you turn it on, Apple may include your device in the usage and diagnostic reports it prepares for developers — for example, how often the app is opened, session length, and crash and performance data. Apple gathers this on our behalf and shares it back with us only in aggregated, anonymized form, using privacy techniques that keep individual users unidentifiable. We can see that the app was launched or crashed a certain number of times; we never receive anything that identifies you or reveals what you logged. This sharing is off unless you choose to enable it, you can turn it off at any time in that same Settings screen, and it is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
Email and messages you send us on this website
The app itself sends us nothing — but this website lets you contact us, and when you do, we keep what you submit:
- Notify-me / waitlist forms (for example, to hear when the app launches or when Family Mode arrives): we store the email address you type, which list you joined, and the date, so we can email you about that one update.
- Contact and bug-report form (reachable from the app's Settings and from this site): we store the email address and message you submit, along with any device note and language you include, so we can reply and fix problems.
This data is stored on our own server, in a local database; we use it only to respond to you and never sell or rent it. When a message comes in, we send ourselves an alert through a push-notification service (Pushover) so we notice it — for contact and bug-report messages, that alert includes your email address; for waitlist sign-ups it does not. The site is served through Cloudflare's network, which routes the traffic and can see your IP address as part of delivering the page; our own server uses your IP address only momentarily, in memory, to rate-limit form submissions against spam, and does not store it. Ask us at privacy@impulseshield.app any time to have your email and messages deleted.
How long we keep it
We hold on to the website data above only as long as it's useful:
- Waitlist emails: kept until we've sent you the update you signed up for, then deleted within about 30 days — or sooner if you ask.
- Contact messages: kept for at least 12 months after we reply, and sometimes longer, so we can pick a conversation back up if you write again.
- Bug reports: kept until the bug is fixed, then deleted.
- IP addresses: never stored — held in memory for a few moments to rate-limit spam, then gone. Anything our spam checks reject isn't stored at all.
How this website is measured and protected
This website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a privacy-friendly, cookieless page counter. When a page loads, your browser sends Cloudflare the address of the page, the page that referred you, your browser and device type, how quickly the page loaded, and a rough country worked out from your IP address. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and builds no profile of you — we only see roughly how many people read which pages. The contact form is additionally protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which quietly checks that you're a person and not a spam bot; while the form is open, your browser exchanges some technical signals (and your IP address) with Cloudflare to do that. Both are operated by Cloudflare under its own privacy policy, and you can block the page counter with any content blocker without affecting how the site works.
One connection point between the app and this website: the app's Resources section shows these same guide pages inside the app, so when you read a guide there, your device loads it from impulseshield.app and the cookieless page counter above runs just as it would in a browser. Aside from the optional price lookup described earlier, that's the only web content the app loads on its own.
Where this data lives
We're based in the United States, so any email or message you send through this website is stored and read here. Cloudflare, which delivers the site and runs its spam checks, is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework; our own server and Pushover, which delivers our alerts, are also in the US. If you're writing from the EU, the UK, or Switzerland, your message crosses the Atlantic because you asked us to reply to it, and you can ask us to delete it at any time.
Data sharing
We do not sell, rent, or share your information, and the app has no advertising or analytics partners. We don't collect your in-app activity in the first place. (Family Mode sharing, described above, is something you initiate between yourself and the people you invite, through Apple — it is not sharing by us, and we never see it.) The Apple services above (App Store, iCloud, and — if you opt in — App Analytics) are operated by Apple under Apple's Privacy Policy; the retailer page you ask the app to read, and the Cloudflare and Pushover services that run this website, see only what is described in their sections above.
Your control and data deletion
You are always in control of your data:
- Delete individual items at any time from within the app.
- Deleting the app removes the data stored on that device.
- Data synced to iCloud can be managed or removed in your device's Settings under your Apple ID → iCloud, or via iCloud storage management.
- In-app purchases are managed through your Apple Account; refunds are requested from Apple.
- To remove an email or message you sent us on this website, contact us and we'll delete it.
Your rights
Because the app keeps nothing about you, this mostly matters for the email and messages you send through this website.
Why we're allowed to keep it: your contact or bug-report message, because you asked us to reply; your waitlist email, because you consented — and you can withdraw that consent any time by replying “stop” or emailing us; and the site's spam checks and rate-limiting, out of our legitimate interest in keeping the site running.
What you can ask us to do: tell you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, pause our use of it, hand it to you as a plain file, or object to our using it altogether. Email privacy@impulseshield.app. We do no automated decision-making or profiling of any kind.
If you think we've got it wrong: if you're in the EU, the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, you also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority. We'd rather you told us first, but that's your call.
Children
ImpulseShield is a general-audience app about spending, and it isn't aimed at children under 13. More to the point, it collects no personal information from anyone — child or adult — because it has no accounts and no servers. This website's contact and waitlist forms are meant for adults; if you're under 16, please have a parent write to us instead. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, email privacy@impulseshield.app and we'll delete it.
When Family Mode arrives, it will let a parent bring children into a household. A child can join only through an Apple Account, and Apple allows under-13s to have one only when a parent creates it through Family Sharing and consents. Whatever a child adds to a household lives in the organizer's iCloud through Apple, not with us — we never see it, never collect it, and never contact children. The household organizer, normally a parent, controls who's in the household and can remove anyone at any time. These Apple services carry their own age and account requirements, governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
Who we are
ImpulseShield is made by Porter Washington, an independent developer based in York, Pennsylvania, USA, working under the name Augodore Studios. That's the “we” throughout this policy — and, in the language of European privacy law, the data controller for the little this website collects. Augodore Studios is a working name rather than a registered company; the person responsible is Porter Washington. For anything privacy-related, write to privacy@impulseshield.app — we answer within a month, and never charge for it.
Do Not Track and California
Because this site doesn't track you, there's nothing for a browser's Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off — we treat everyone as though it were on. We don't sell your personal information and we don't “share” it for cross-context behavioral advertising, in the sense California law gives those words, and we haven't in the past twelve months. Californians can exercise the rights listed above at the same email address.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we'll update the effective date above, post the revised version on this page, and note what changed. Material changes will be reflected here before they take effect, and we'll surface them inside the app as well.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Reach out at privacy@impulseshield.app.