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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 8 August 2026

Hysa Tech ("we", "our", or "us") operates Dowse: Hidden Camera Detector (the "App"). This Privacy Policy explains what the App collects, what it deliberately does not collect, and who else is involved. Dowse is a privacy tool, so it would be absurd for it to quietly take more than it needs. By installing or using the App, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the App.

1. The Short Version

  • There is no account. We never ask for your name, your email, or a password to use the App.
  • Everything you scan stays on your phone. The devices found on a Wi-Fi network, the Bluetooth devices around you, your sweep reports, and anything the camera sees are processed on the device and are never sent to us.
  • Your movement history never leaves the device. The approximate places used by Tracker Watch are stored on that phone only and are excluded from iCloud sync.
  • We do receive subscription and advertising attribution data through Apple, RevenueCat, and Meta, described in section 4. That is the only data that leaves your phone because of us.
  • You can erase everything the App has stored at any time from Settings, without contacting anyone.

2. Information We Do Not Collect

We want to be specific rather than reassuring. Dowse does not collect, transmit, or store on our servers any of the following:

  • Your name, email address, phone number, or any account credentials.
  • The results of any sweep: the devices found on a network, their addresses or host names, the Bluetooth devices near you, or the verdicts and findings in your reports.
  • Photographs, video, or camera frames from the lens check or the night vision check.
  • Your precise location, or any location data at all.
  • The names you give to devices, or the names you give to places.
  • Your contacts, photo library, calendar, or health data.

We do not operate a server that receives your sweeps, because the App does not have one. There is nothing for us to look at.

3. Information That Stays On Your Device

The App creates and keeps the following data locally so that it can do its job. Except where noted below for iCloud, this data does not leave your phone.

3.1 Sweep Reports and Your Trip Log

  • The place name you type for each sweep, such as "Lisbon Airbnb", along with the date and how long the sweep took.
  • Counts and findings from each pass: how many devices answered on the network, how many looked like cameras, how many Bluetooth devices and trackers were seen, and which items on the look-around checklist you ticked.
  • What the sweep could not check, including whether a permission was refused or the network blocked the scan.

You can share an individual report yourself using the share button. If you do, the content goes wherever you choose to send it, and that transfer is yours rather than ours.

3.2 Device Names You Create

When you name a Bluetooth or network device, for example "Bedroom speaker", the nickname and icon are stored on your phone so the device is recognisable next time.

3.3 Tracker Watch and Approximate Location

Tracker Watch answers one question: is the same unknown tracker turning up near you in genuinely different places? To tell that apart from a device that simply lives in your building, it needs a rough sense of place, and it is built to need as little as possible.

  • Location is requested at the approximate accuracy level, and only from the Watch screen, where you can see what it is for.
  • Each position is immediately rounded to a grid cell of roughly 110 metres, and only that rounded value is kept. The exact coordinate is discarded and never written down.
  • These rounded cells, and the times a device was seen in them, are stored in a file that is deliberately excluded from iCloud sync. This history stays on the one phone that created it.
  • Nothing about your location is transmitted to us or to any third party, ever.

3.4 Camera Use

The App uses the camera for two checks, both of which run entirely on the device:

  • The lens check strobes your torch and watches for the pinpoint flash that a camera lens reflects straight back. When something answers, the App keeps that single frame on your phone so you can look at it. You can delete it, and it is never uploaded.
  • The night vision check shows you the live camera feed so you can spot the infrared light a hidden camera emits. Frames are displayed and discarded. Nothing is recorded.

3.5 Bluetooth and Local Network Scanning

Bluetooth signal strengths and advertisement data, and the responses of devices on the Wi-Fi network you are joined to, are read and evaluated on your phone in real time. The App sends read-only probes to devices on your current network in order to tell a camera apart from a printer. It does not attempt to log in to anything, change anything, or store anything from those devices beyond what appears in your own report.

3.6 iCloud Sync

So that your history survives a lost phone or a reinstall, your sweep reports, device names, and onboarding answers are mirrored into your own iCloud account using Apple's key-value storage. This is your iCloud, governed by your agreement with Apple. We have no access to it and cannot read it. As noted in section 3.3, the Tracker Watch place history is deliberately never included. If you disable iCloud for Dowse in your iOS settings, the App simply keeps everything locally.

4. Information Collected By Our Providers

Selling a subscription and knowing which advert brought someone to the App both require data to leave the device. This section covers all of it.

4.1 An Anonymous Device Identifier

The first time you open the App, it generates a random identifier that is not derived from you or your hardware, for example "dowse-3f2a...". It is stored in the iOS Keychain and is used to attach your subscription to this device so that your purchase can be restored later. Because the Keychain survives deleting an app, this identifier, and a flag recording that the free sweep and free hunt have been used, persist if you delete and reinstall Dowse. That is deliberate: it is what stops the free allowance from being collected again and again, and it is the same mechanism that lets a paying customer reinstall without losing anything.

4.2 Purchases and Subscriptions

Payments are handled by Apple. We never see your card details, and Apple does not give them to us. We use RevenueCat to manage entitlements, which receives:

  • The anonymous identifier described above.
  • Your purchase and subscription status, including which plan you have, whether a subscription renewed, lapsed, or was refunded.
  • Device and app information such as your device model, iOS version, app version, country, and IP address.
  • The advertising identifiers described in section 4.3, where you have permitted them.

RevenueCat acts as our processor for this data. See the RevenueCat privacy policy.

4.3 Advertising Attribution

We advertise Dowse, and we need to know which adverts actually work. The App includes the Meta (Facebook) SDK, and RevenueCat forwards subscription events to Meta from its servers. Between them they receive:

  • App events: that the App was installed and opened, and that a subscription started, renewed, or was cancelled. The contents of your sweeps are never part of an event.
  • Device identifiers: the vendor identifier, an anonymous Meta identifier, your IP address, and, only if you allow it, the advertising identifier (IDFA).

Because this is tracking as Apple defines it, the App asks for your permission through the App Tracking Transparency prompt at the end of onboarding. If you decline, the advertising identifier is not collected and events are marked accordingly. Declining does not limit the App in any way: every feature behaves identically. You can change your answer at any time in iOS Settings under Privacy and Security, then Tracking.

We also use Apple Ads Attribution, which tells us whether an install came from an Apple search advert. This is provided by Apple in an aggregated form and does not identify you.

4.4 Support Emails

If you contact support from inside the App, your email includes basic technical details such as your app version, iOS version, device model, and whether you have a subscription, so that we can help without a round of questions. Your sweep contents are not attached. We keep support correspondence only as long as needed to resolve your issue and keep a record of it.

5. There Are No Adverts Inside the App

Dowse shows no advertising and contains no advertising network. We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to anyone, and we never will. A privacy product funded by surveillance would be a contradiction, which is why the App is funded by subscriptions instead.

6. Permissions and Why They Are Needed

  • Bluetooth: to measure the signal strength of nearby devices, flag trackers, and guide you to a lost item. Without it, the radio pass and the hunt cannot work.
  • Local Network: to see which devices are connected to the Wi-Fi you are on, which is the only way to catch a camera that streams video. Without it, the App tells you plainly that this pass did not run rather than reporting a clean room.
  • Camera: for the lens check and the night vision check, as described in section 3.4.
  • Location (approximate): only for Tracker Watch, as described in section 3.3. Decline it and the rest of the App works normally.
  • Tracking: only for advertising attribution, as described in section 4.3.

Every one of these can be refused at install time or revoked later in iOS Settings. Refusing a permission never unlocks or locks a paid feature.

7. Your Rights and Choices

7.1 Deleting Everything, Yourself

In the App, open Settings and choose Delete all my data. This erases your sweep history, the names you gave devices, and everything Tracker Watch has recorded, both on the phone and in your iCloud mirror. It happens immediately and does not require contacting us. The anonymous identifier and the record that the free allowance was used remain, as explained in section 4.1; they contain nothing about you or about any place you have swept.

7.2 Statutory Rights

Depending on where you live, including under the GDPR in the European Economic Area and the UK, and under the CCPA and CPRA in California, you have the right to access, correct, export, or delete personal data held about you, to object to or restrict certain processing, to withdraw consent, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. Since almost all data lives on your own device, you can exercise most of these rights instantly using section 7.1. For the subscription and attribution records held by our providers, contact us at [email protected] and we will action your request, normally within 30 days. Please include the approximate date of purchase so we can locate the record, since we have no name or email on file to search by.

Where we rely on a legal basis under the GDPR, it is the performance of our contract with you for delivering and restoring your subscription, your consent for advertising attribution, and our legitimate interest in keeping the free allowance from being abused and in answering support requests.

7.3 Managing Your Subscription

Subscriptions are managed by Apple, not by us. You can view, change, or cancel a subscription at any time in the App Store under your Apple Account. Cancelling stops future renewals and your access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for. Refunds are handled by Apple.

8. Data Retention

  • On your device and in your iCloud: kept until you delete it, either through Settings in the App or by deleting the App and turning off its iCloud storage.
  • Subscription records: kept by RevenueCat and Apple for as long as needed to provide the service and to meet accounting and tax obligations.
  • Attribution events: retained by Meta according to its own retention schedule, which we do not control.

9. International Transfers

Our providers, including Apple, RevenueCat, and Meta, process data on infrastructure that may be located outside your country, including in the United States. Where such transfers occur, they rely on appropriate safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission or other legally recognised mechanisms. The data that stays on your device does not cross any border unless you carry it there.

10. Children's Privacy

Dowse is not directed at children and is not intended for use by anyone under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Security

Data on your device is protected by the iOS sandbox and by device encryption, and the anonymous identifier is held in the iOS Keychain. All connections to our providers use HTTPS. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, but the strongest protection here is structural rather than technical: the sensitive material never leaves your phone, so there is no database of your sweeps for anyone to breach.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top and, where the change affects how your data is handled, note it in the App. Continued use of the App after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests about this Privacy Policy or how Dowse handles data, please contact us: