Privacy Policy
BefBuy helps you decide whether to buy something: you ask, your circle or strangers vote COP, WAIT or DROP with a reason, and BefBuy counts the money you keep. This policy explains what BefBuy collects, why, and what you can do about it. BefBuy is run by FANGLAB PTE. LTD., a company in Singapore ("we", "us").
The short version. We collect what BefBuy needs to work and nothing we can avoid. No ads, no advertising identifiers, no selling or renting your data, and no deals with stores: BefBuy makes $0 when you buy. Your hourly pay never leaves your phone.
1. What we collect
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| How you sign in: your Apple, Google or Facebook account id and the email address and name your provider shares, a one-way code made from your TikTok account id if you sign in with TikTok, or the email address you get sign-in codes at | When you sign in, or add or change your sign-in email | To keep your account and send your sign-in codes. We don't show your email or real name to anyone. |
| The name and avatar you use in BefBuy | At sign-up (we suggest one) and when you change it | Shown to your circles next to your asks and reasons. Never shown in Everyone. |
| Your Everyone name, and whether you stay anonymous | At sign-up (it starts as the name we suggest) and when you change it | Shown to other BefBuy users next to your reasons in Everyone, once our moderation has checked it. With "Stay anonymous" on (it starts on if you're 16 or 17), your reasons there show as "Anonymous" instead. |
| A profile photo, if you add one | When you add or change it | Shown to your circles in place of your avatar, once our moderation has checked it. Never shown in Everyone or on befbuy.com's guest pages. |
| Your age group: whether you're 16–17 or 18 and over, from the birth month you enter or the age range your app store reports (Apple Declared Age Range, Google Play Age Signals) | At sign-up, and the store's range at each launch | To apply the minimum age, and to start "Stay anonymous" on for 16- and 17-year-olds. We keep the result, not your birth month, and use it for nothing else. |
| Asks: photos, what the item is, price, store, link, category and the reasons you give | When you ask | To show your ask to the audience you chose (a circle or Everyone) and to keep your decisions. |
| Votes, reasons and flowers you give | When you vote | To show them on the ask and count the verdict. |
| Decisions, Kept, goals and check-in answers | When you record them | To show what you kept, and to remind you when a WAIT ends or a check-in is due. |
| Time zone, country or region, language and currency | At each launch | For times, the minimum age where you live, prices and Kept in your currency. |
| A push notification token and your notification settings | If you allow notifications | To send the notifications you've left on. |
| Reports and blocks you make | When you make them | To keep BefBuy safe and hide people you've blocked. |
| Purchase records: product, dates and status, never card details | When you subscribe to Plus or tip | To turn Plus on and keep required records. |
| An app-integrity check (Firebase App Check) | On each request | So only the real BefBuy app and website can reach our servers. |
Voting from a link without an account
If you vote on befbuy.com from a link a friend shared, your browser gets an anonymous id, and we keep the name you type and your vote. To limit abuse we use a one-way code made from your IP address that changes every day; we never store the address itself.
Share links
A link you share from BefBuy can end in a short tag for where it went, like ?s=ig for an Instagram Story. For each tag and day we count how many links were shared and opened, and the votes and sign-ups that came from them. These are totals: they aren't linked to you or to anyone who opens the link. To count a sign-up, the tag waits in your browser tab (or in the app until it closes) and is sent once, when the account is made; it isn't kept with the account.
What we don't collect
No contacts, no location (we remove location data from every photo), no browsing history, no advertising identifiers, no analytics or advertising SDKs. Your hourly pay, if you set it, stays on your phone.
The app includes Meta's Facebook SDK only so you can sign in with Facebook and share straight to an Instagram Story. We've turned off its app events and its advertising ID collection, and on iPhone, Facebook sign-in uses Meta's Limited Login, which doesn't track you. When the app opens, the SDK fetches its settings from Meta, so Meta's servers see your IP address, as any server does.
On befbuy.com you can also sign in with TikTok. TikTok's page asks you to share your basic profile with BefBuy. We take only your TikTok account id, keep a one-way code made from it so you can sign in again, and don't keep your TikTok name, photo or the access TikTok gives us. TikTok shares no email with us. befbuy.com includes no TikTok software. The app includes TikTok's sharing kit, which does nothing until you tap TikTok in the share panel: then it hands your card to the TikTok app on your phone, and TikTok tells BefBuy only whether it was shared. On an iPhone the card is saved to your photos first, since TikTok takes it from there.
2. The AI
BefBuy uses Anthropic's Claude models to read what you share (a photo, screenshot, link or text) and fill in the item and price, to give a quick take and a one-line verdict summary, to give Plus members a second opinion, and to check photos, asks, reasons and names against our rules before they're shown. What you share is sent to Anthropic for that purpose only and, under Anthropic's commercial terms, isn't used to train its models. Second opinions may search the web for the item; your name and account are never part of a search.
On iPhone and Android, photos are checked for faces on your phone. In Everyone, you're asked to blur anyone who isn't you. On your phone or on befbuy.com, you can also blur any part of a photo before you post it. The blur is made on your device. The copy from before the blur is deleted as soon as the blurred one is up, and after 7 days at the latest.
3. Who sees what
- Circle asks are seen by the members of the circles you send them to, and by anyone you share the ask's link with. They see your BefBuy name and avatar.
- Everyone asks are seen by other BefBuy users as "Asked anonymously". No name is shown.
- Your reasons show with your BefBuy name and avatar in circles. In Everyone they show with your Everyone name and avatar, or as "Anonymous". Your BefBuy name and profile photo never show in Everyone.
- Link previews: when you share an ask, the preview a chat app shows has the item, price and first photo, never who asked.
- Our moderators see reported content and who posted it.
4. Who processes it for us
- Google Firebase and Google Cloud: sign-in, database, file storage, servers, notifications and App Check. Data is stored in the United States.
- Anthropic: the AI described above.
- Resend: sends your sign-in codes by email, and a note to your old address if your sign-in email changes. Processed in the United States.
- RevenueCat: purchase status for Plus and tips, under your BefBuy account id.
- Apple and Google: sign-in, payments, app distribution and age ranges.
- Meta: Facebook sign-in, if you use it, and the Instagram Stories you share to. Meta handles what it receives under its own privacy policy.
- TikTok: TikTok sign-in on befbuy.com, and sharing a card to TikTok from the app, if you use them. TikTok handles what it receives under its own privacy policy.
- Cloudflare: hosts befbuy.com.
We share data with no one else unless the law requires it.
5. How long we keep it
- Your account and what you've added are kept while your account exists.
- Original uploads are deleted after 7 days; the photos on an ask stay until the ask or your account is deleted. A profile photo stays until you remove or replace it, or delete your account.
- A sign-in code is kept only as a one-way code, never the code itself, and is deleted once used or within a day. The record of when codes went to an address is deleted within a day.
- Internal event records and AI usage records are deleted after 90 days. Cached AI reads of a photo or link are deleted after 30 days.
- Server logs are deleted after 30 days.
- Database backups are kept for 7 days, so anything deleted is gone from them within a week.
- Reports and moderation decisions are kept as long as needed to keep BefBuy safe and to handle appeals.
- Purchase records are kept as long as financial record-keeping law requires.
6. Deleting your account
In the app or on befbuy.com: Me → Settings → Privacy and safety → Delete account. How deletion works. Your asks, photos, decisions, Kept, goals and Activity are deleted. Votes on open asks are taken back. Votes on closed asks stay as "Deleted account" with your reasons removed, so other people's verdicts don't change. Deleting doesn't cancel Plus: cancel it in your App Store or Google Play subscriptions, or, if you subscribed on befbuy.com, on BefBuy Plus → Manage subscription or from the link in your receipt email.
7. Your rights
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, UK GDPR, the CCPA and other US state laws, Canada's PIPEDA, Australia's Privacy Act or Singapore's PDPA), you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your data, or to object to how it's used. Email [email protected] from the email address on your BefBuy account and we'll answer within 30 days. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
8. Teens
BefBuy is for people 16 and over. For 16- and 17-year-olds, "Stay anonymous" starts on; everything else works as it does for adults. If you believe someone under the minimum age has an account, tell us and we'll delete it.
9. Security
Everything is encrypted in transit. Votes, verdicts and Kept are counted on our servers, not on your phone. Only the BefBuy app and befbuy.com can reach our servers.
10. Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we'll say so in the app before the change takes effect.
11. Contact
FANGLAB PTE. LTD., 160 Robinson Road, #14-04, Singapore Business Federation Center, Singapore 068914. Privacy questions and requests: [email protected].