Privacy Policy

Barkain ("we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website barkain.app and use the Barkain mobile application.

Information We Collect

Information You Provide

When you create an account, we collect your email address and authentication credentials through our third-party authentication provider, Clerk. If you choose to set up a discount profile, we collect the identity categories you select (such as military, student, or senior status) and the credit card product names you add (for example, "Chase Sapphire Preferred"). We do not collect or store credit card numbers, CVVs, expiration dates, or any payment card data.

Information Collected Automatically

When you use Barkain, we collect product search queries and barcode scans, price comparison results viewed, affiliate link clicks, device type and operating system version, and app performance and crash diagnostics.

Receipt Scanning

If you use the receipt scanning feature, optical character recognition (OCR) is performed on your device. Only the extracted text data (store name, item names, prices) is sent to our servers. We do not store the original receipt images.

How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to provide and improve the Barkain service, including generating personalized price comparisons and recommendations, matching you with identity-based discounts you qualify for, optimizing credit card reward suggestions, tracking your savings over time, and improving our algorithms and product experience.

Affiliate Links and Commissions

Barkain earns commissions when you purchase products through affiliate links in our app and on our website. We participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, the eBay Partner Network, and the CJ Affiliate program (connecting us to retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Target). When you tap a product link, we log the click for attribution purposes. Affiliate commissions do not affect the prices you pay and do not influence our price comparison rankings, which are always sorted by the lowest total cost to you.

Data Sharing

We do not sell your personal information. We share data only with our authentication provider (Clerk) for account management, cloud infrastructure providers (AWS, Railway) for hosting, and affiliate networks (Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, CJ Affiliate) in the form of anonymized click and conversion data as required by their programs. We may also disclose information if required by law or to protect our rights.

Data Security

We protect your data with TLS 1.3 encryption for all data in transit, AES-256 encryption for data at rest in our databases, and secure environment variable management for API keys and credentials. No system is perfectly secure, but we implement industry-standard protections appropriate to the sensitivity of the data we handle.

Your Rights

You may request access to the personal data we hold about you, request deletion of your account and all associated data, opt out of any future data monetization programs (we do not currently sell data), and update or correct your profile information at any time through the app. California residents have additional rights under the CCPA. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@barkain.app.

Children's Privacy

Barkain is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have collected such information, please contact us immediately.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date.

Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us at privacy@barkain.app.