Privacy Policy

Draft prepared: September 21, 2026

This policy describes how Doomstep handles information in its iPhone app and website. Doomstep turns steps into screen time for apps you select. The operator and privacy contact are listed below.

Steps, Health, and app selection

With your permission, Doomstep reads step counts from iPhone Motion and Apple Health to count walks, show history, suggest a goal, and calculate earned minutes. Doomstep does not write to Apple Health or read your messages, contacts, precise location, or the content inside your selected apps.

Step history and the walking-to-minutes calculation are handled on your device. Apple’s Screen Time picker gives Doomstep app-selection tokens for applying restrictions. Your quiz choices, goal, permission choices, earned minutes, and local progress are stored on your device.

If you choose a pact with another person, Doomstep sends your shared progress to its service and makes it available to your pact partner. This can include your nickname, daily step count, goal, earned and banked minutes, streak, pact activity, and the time the progress was updated. Joining a pact is optional. Leaving a pact stops future sharing but does not automatically erase previously shared history or copies another person retained.

Walks, workouts, receipts, and photos

Individual walks and workouts keep their activity type, start, pause and finish times, iPhone step counts, earned screen time when recorded, names and optional photos on your device. They are separate from account progress backup. Doomstep does not record a GPS route for a walk or workout. Photos selected from your library or taken with the camera are saved as resized copies without the original location metadata. You can remove these copies or delete an activity in Move → Your activities.

Sharing a receipt or photo is optional. The system share sheet sends only the image you choose to another app. Saving an image to Photos requires permission to add photos; deleting the walk later does not delete images you already saved or shared elsewhere.

Accounts and subscriptions

If you turn on progress backup, Doomstep stores your recorded daily steps, the goal for each day, earned minutes, enrollment date, weekly aims, milestones and keepsakes with your account. This lets you restore your history after reinstalling. Backup does not store your photos, app-selection tokens, location or a transferable spending balance. You can remove the account backup in Progress. A shared Climb also shows your chosen weekly aim and recorded results to your partner. Both people must allow sharing before joint keepsakes can be exported.

With backup enabled, basic app milestone events are saved to our own service to understand first rewards, repeated walking, and software reports of unlock and relock success or failure. These events do not include selected app names, photos, locations or measured screen-time reductions. Accepted pact invitations are recorded by the service.

When you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive a provider identifier and any name or email address that the provider supplies. We use this information to create and secure your account and associate it with your subscription and pact. Apple may supply a private relay email address.

Apple processes in-app payments. Doomstep receives signed transaction identifiers, product and subscription status, renewal or expiration information, and an account token to verify access. Doomstep does not receive your full payment-card number. If a web payment option is offered, its payment provider processes payment details under its own privacy notice.

Service information

Our service providers process requests needed to run the app and website. These requests can include IP addresses, timestamps, request metadata, authentication and error information. We use this information to provide the service, prevent abuse, secure accounts, and investigate failures. If you contact support, we also receive the information you choose to include.

Leaderboards

Joining a private leaderboard or the public leaderboard is optional and separate from progress backup. A leaderboard stores your chosen nickname, submitted daily steps, active days, weekly totals and rank, update times, and cheers. Private leaderboard information is visible to its members. Your public leaderboard nickname and results are visible to other people who view that leaderboard. Do not use a nickname that reveals information you do not want to share.

Leaving a leaderboard removes your membership and associated scores and cheers from that leaderboard. The service removes daily leaderboard observations after 21 days, cheers after 14 days, and retained weekly leaderboard results after eight weeks through scheduled cleanup.

If you enable notifications, Doomstep stores your notification preferences and may register a device push token to deliver reminders and pact updates. You can turn notifications off in iPhone Settings.

How information is shared

Information is shared with infrastructure and service providers that help us host the service, authenticate accounts, verify purchases, and deliver enabled features. Apple and Google process their sign-in services under their own policies. Your pact partner can see the progress you choose to share through a pact.

We do not sell personal information or use Apple Health or Motion data for advertising. The current app and landing site do not include advertising trackers or third-party marketing analytics. We may disclose information when required by law, to protect rights and safety, or as part of a business transfer with appropriate notice and protection.

Storage and retention

Local settings and history remain on your device until removed or reset. Resetting the app or uninstalling it does not by itself delete an account, cancel a subscription, or erase server-side pact records. Server-side account, subscription, and pact information is retained as needed to provide those features, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, and meet legal obligations. Service providers may process information outside your country.

We use access controls, protected connections, and device security features to protect information. No service can promise absolute security. Cloudflare hosts our website, API, and account database. Its service backups may retain deleted records temporarily for recovery.

In Doomstep Settings, choose Delete account to permanently remove your account, sign-in sessions, purchase-verification links, backed-up progress, push tokens, leaderboard data, and your shared pact records. Shared agreements end and joint keepsakes are removed; another person’s account and their own progress remain. For Apple accounts, we revoke the Sign in with Apple authorization before confirming deletion. Device-only walks and photos remain on your iPhone and can be removed in Move. Images already saved to Photos or shared elsewhere are not removed. Account deletion does not cancel an Apple subscription.

Your choices and rights

You can change Motion, Health, Screen Time, and notification permissions in iPhone Settings. Revoking a permission can stop the related feature. You can change your goal in Doomstep and leave an optional pact. Manage or cancel Apple subscriptions in Settings under your Apple Account’s Subscriptions.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your information, object to certain processing, withdraw consent, or complain to your privacy regulator. Contact the privacy address below to make a request. We may need to verify your identity before acting. If you cannot access your account, you can also contact us to request deletion.

Children

Doomstep is not designed for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided information, contact us so that we can investigate and remove it.

Changes

We will update this page when practices change and provide additional notice or seek consent where required. The date at the top identifies the current version.

Contact

Operator: Eric Deon Johnson
doomstep.app@gmail.com