Privacy Policy
This policy covers the Kin Android application (io.github.reaemanz.kin) and this website. It describes what the application actually does, feature by feature, rather than reserving every right a policy could reserve.
In short. Kin is local-first. Your activities, routes, step history and goals are stored on your phone. Creating an account is optional, and until you do, nothing you record is sent anywhere. When you do sign in, only the information that is social by nature leaves the device: your name, your step totals, what you post, and who you are connected to. Your GPS routes do not, unless you choose to share one: by attaching it to a post, by creating a segment, or by turning on Beacon for an activity. Each is off until you turn it on.
What stays on your device
Kin maintains its own database on the phone. Uninstalling the application deletes it. It holds:
- Recorded activities, including distance, duration, pace, calories and elevation
- GPS routes, meaning the path you actually moved along
- Daily and weekly step history
- Your goals, appearance settings, language and units
- Any activity photograph you take, unless you choose to share it
Permissions and their purpose
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Physical activity | Counting steps using the phone's own step sensor. |
| Precise location | Recording a route while you run, walk or ride, and sending your position to a Beacon if you turned one on for that activity. Used only while an activity is being tracked, with an ongoing notification displayed throughout. |
| Camera | Taking a photograph to attach to an activity, only when you open the camera yourself. |
| Notifications | Reminders, milestones and the tracking notification. |
| Health Connect | Reading steps, distance, calories, heart rate and workouts already recorded by other applications or a watch. Read-only, and only with your explicit grant. Steps are added to your daily step total, so that steps your watch or your phone's own health app counted are included, even on days you don't open Kin. If you allow it, Kin also reads daily step totals from before you installed it (up to a year back) and, about once an hour, while Kin is closed; no other kind of data is read that way; if you have an account, that total is synced as described below. Heart rate is shown as your latest reading and, after an activity, as your average, maximum and time in each heart-rate zone. Distance, calories, heart rate and workouts are only shown on your phone and are never uploaded. |
Location is never collected in the background, and never while you are not tracking an activity. Any of these permissions can be revoked in Android Settings at any time; the features that depend on them stop working, and nothing else changes.
If you create an account
An account is optional and exists for one reason: the social features cannot function without a server to pass information between people. Signing in uses Google Sign-In, which provides Kin with your name, email address and account identifier.
Once you are signed in, the following is stored on Kin's backend:
- Your profile, meaning name, email address, chosen avatar colour and invite code
- Your daily and weekly step totals, including steps read from Health Connect, so that leaderboards and challenges can be calculated
- Feed posts you publish, meaning the activity type, its title and summary, and a photograph if you attach one
- Kudos and comments you leave on posts
- Your connections, meaning friends, the groups you belong to, and a pairing if you have one
- Direct messages you send, stored so that they can be delivered
- Live distance and pace during a shared run session, for the duration of that session
- A route on a post, only if you have turned on route sharing, and only for activities you choose to post
- Segments you create, meaning the stretch of route you marked and the name you gave it, so friends can be timed on it, plus your best time on each segment for its leaderboard
- Beacon, only for an activity you start with Beacon switched on: your position, at most every 30 seconds, and your distance, while that activity is recording
A Beacon can only be viewed through the link you send, which carries a long random code; there is no way to look one up by name or browse them. It ends when you finish the activity, shows as ended if it stops updating for an hour, and is no longer shown at all after a day.
That is the complete list. Apart from the three optional cases above, route geometry, elevation traces and activities you have not posted are not part of it.
Advertising
The free version of Kin displays advertisements through Google AdMob. AdMob may use your device's advertising identifier and similar identifiers to select and measure advertisements. That processing is Google's and is described in the Google privacy and terms. The advertising identifier can be reset or deleted in Android Settings. Kin Premium removes advertisements.
Kin does not sell your data, and does not provide your health, step or location data to advertisers. Data read from Health Connect is never used for advertising.
Purchases
Kin Premium is billed through Google Play. Payment details are handled by Google and never reach Kin, which is informed only whether a subscription is active.
Children
Kin is not directed at children under 13, and accounts are not knowingly created for them. If you believe a child has provided us with data, contact us and it will be deleted.
Retention and deletion
Data held on the device remains until you delete the activity or uninstall the application. Account data is retained until you delete it. You can do that yourself from Settings › Delete account inside the app, which removes your profile, posts, comments, kudos, messages, connections and step totals immediately — see how to delete your account for exactly what goes and what stays. If you can no longer sign in, write to privacy@kinsteps.app from the address you signed in with instead.
Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to request a copy of what is held about you, to have it corrected, or to object to its processing. The same address handles those requests.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or why, the date at the top of the page changes with it, and material changes are surfaced in the application.