Companion Next privacy policy
Privacy starts with less data. What you read, save, tick or check stays on your phone. The sections below say what goes online, and when. The same words are in the app, under Settings, Data & privacy.
Saved on your device
City and prayer choices, reminder settings, reading size, your Quran bookmark, recent verse, saved library items, adhkar counters and your prayer log stay in local app storage. Device backups may also include app data, depending on your phone settings.
Remove a bookmark or saved item using its reading control. Reset adhkar counts in the library. Manage prayer reminders in prayer settings. To keep a copy of all of it in a file you choose, or bring one back, use Backup & restore in Settings.
Prayer tracker
The prayers you tick and any make-up counts are kept in the app's storage on your phone. They are not uploaded, though a device backup may include them, as above. Nothing is recorded unless you record it.
Your location
Location is only used if you choose Use my location. The app asks for approximate location, never precise or background location, rounds it to about a kilometre and keeps it on your device to work out prayer times and the Qibla. While the app is open it checks again now and then, so the times follow you when you travel.
Your phone's map service turns that point into a place name. City search looks in the app's own list of world cities first; only when that finds nothing, and you have allowed location, are the words you type sent to the same service. Pick a city from the list if you would rather not share either.
When you go online
Playing Quran recitation connects to the recording provider unless it is downloaded. Previewing an athan that is not on your phone, or downloading one, connects to Cloudflare, our audio host. Downloading a Quran translation connects to QuranEnc.com or Tanzil.net. Opening a source connects to that website. Looking up a barcode that is not in the app's food catalogue sends the barcode number to Open Food Facts, and the product's photo loads from there.
The phone's barcode and label reader (Google ML Kit) may send Google statistics about how it performs, never the pictures. Those providers receive normal connection information, including your IP address. The Arabic Quran text, the bundled translations and library items are included in the app.
Questions you ask
When you press Ask, the app sends your question to its answer server, run on Cloudflare, with the app's language, the IDs of any passages it found, its version and Ask's random ID. The server sends your question and those passages to OpenAI, which writes the answer. When the passages do not answer it, OpenAI may search a list of approved Islamic websites (such as quran.com and sunnah.com); the search goes from OpenAI, not from your phone.
The server does not keep your questions or the answers; it keeps only a one-way scrambled form of the random ID and each day's count, to limit how many questions one phone can ask. Cloudflare receives normal connection information, including your IP address; OpenAI and the websites do not.
A question the app recognises as a crisis, such as thoughts of suicide or violence at home, is not sent; the app shows where to find help instead. It looks for particular wording and can miss some. Opening a web source under an answer connects your phone to that website.
If you report an answer, the report keeps your question, the answer, its sources, your reason and note, the app's version and the time, with the scrambled ID, so the answer can be checked.
Ask's random ID
Ask makes this random ID on your phone and keeps it in secure storage. It contains no name, email or religious profile. You can forget it under Data & privacy; a new one is made the next time you ask, report something, or add or send a place.
Places you add
When you add a mosque or halal place, the app keeps it on your phone, and nothing is sent for now. Once sharing places with others starts, the places you added are sent to the app's server, so that others using the app can find them.
Read on your phone
Barcodes and ingredient-label photos are read on your phone; no picture is kept or sent.
Removing your data
Apart from answers you report, everything the app keeps is on your phone. Clearing the app's storage or uninstalling it removes it; Backup & restore lets you keep a copy first. If you reported an answer and want the report removed, write to the address below with what you asked and roughly when.
Changes
When the app changes what it keeps or sends, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves on.
Contact
Byte to Bit Tech, support@bytetobittech.com