Privacy Policy

Who we are

Lightcode Astrology ("the app") is an iPhone app made by Allen Ayler ("we", "us"). This policy explains what the app does with your information, and also covers this website. If you have a question, write to us at support@lightcodeastrology.com.

Information you give the app

Birth details

If you choose to enter them, the app keeps your birth date, birth time and birthplace (the place name, its coordinates and time zone), and an optional name for the profile. It uses them for one thing: to calculate your natal chart, so it can show transits to your natal planets. You can skip this step and use the app without them.

The details are saved in the app's private storage on your iPhone, together with the calculated chart (planet positions and houses). If you leave the birth form unfinished, what you typed is kept as a draft so you can pick up where you left off. They are protected by iOS file protection, which keeps them locked after a restart until you first unlock your iPhone. The app never writes your birth details into its logs or into links.

Notes and reminders

Notes you write on a day, the times they were made or changed, and any reminder you set are saved in the app's private storage on your iPhone, with the same file protection.

Reminders are local notifications that iOS schedules on your iPhone. Nothing is sent through a server, and the app does not use push notifications. The app asks for permission to show notifications only when you first switch on a reminder. When a reminder goes off, iOS shows the date and the text of your note, which can appear on your Lock Screen. To hide it there, change Show Previews for Lightcode in the iPhone's Settings, under Notifications.

Settings

Your choices in the app (for example transit-to-natal or transit-to-transit mode, the colour theme and whether sound is on) are saved on your iPhone. The app plays its own ambient sound; it never uses the microphone.

Location

The Clock tab draws a wheel of the current sky. To place its houses, it needs to know roughly where you are. That is the only reason the app uses location. Your birthplace is never used for this.

• When: iOS asks for permission the first time you open the Clock and it needs houses, never when the app starts. The app asks only for access while you are using it, never in the background.
• Approximate: the app asks for approximate location by default. It takes one reading when you open the Clock, and may take another if you move a long way while the Clock is open.
• Rounded: every reading is rounded to about 1 km (0.01 degrees) before the app uses it.
• Stays on your iPhone: the app saves only the latest rounded position, so the Clock has houses straight away next time. (The one backup copy the app keeps of its settings file may still hold the position before it.) There is no location history, and the app never sends your location anywhere. The reading itself comes from Apple's Location Services on your iPhone.
• Your choice: if you say no, you can pick a city for the Clock instead. You can change the permission at any time in the iPhone's Settings, under Privacy & Security, Location Services.

Place search

When you type a birthplace, or a city for the Clock, the app first searches a list of about 171,000 places that is built into the app. That search happens entirely on your iPhone and sends nothing.

If the place you want isn't there, you can tap Search Apple Maps. Only then does the app send what you typed to Apple's Apple Maps service, and Apple sends back matching places. As with any internet request, Apple also receives technical information such as your IP address. Apple handles this under the Apple Privacy Policy; we don't receive your search. The app tells you this in the search window: "Searching Apple Maps sends what you type to Apple."

If you pick a result, its name, coordinates and time zone are saved on your iPhone like any other place. You can also type a place's coordinates and time zone by hand; those stay on your iPhone too.

Purchases and subscriptions

Subscriptions are sold and handled by Apple through the App Store. Apple processes the payment and manages your Apple ID and billing. We never receive your payment details, and Apple does not give us your name or email address. We see only the combined sales and usage figures Apple reports to every developer.

To know whether your subscription is active, the app checks with Apple directly from your iPhone. It keeps a small note of the result on your iPhone (your subscription status, the plan, its expiry date and when it was last checked), so the app keeps working when you are offline. There is no server of ours in between, and no receipt is sent to us.

What we don't do

• No accounts and no sign-in.
• No servers of our own. The app doesn't send your information to us, and we don't store it anywhere.
• No advertising and no advertising identifier. We don't track you across other companies' apps or websites.
• No analytics, no crash-reporting tools and no third-party SDKs or libraries from other companies inside the app.
• No selling or sharing of your personal information.
• No iCloud sync. Your data isn't copied to any cloud service by the app.
• No access to your camera, microphone, photos, contacts, calendars, health data, Bluetooth or motion sensors.

The app writes short technical messages to the iPhone's own on-device diagnostic log to help find problems. They never include your birth details, the text of your notes, what you search for or your location, and they stay on your iPhone unless you choose to share diagnostic information from it. If you have turned on sharing with app developers in the iPhone's Settings, Apple may pass crash reports to us under Apple's own terms.

How long it's kept, and how to delete it

Everything the app stores stays on your iPhone until you remove it. Because we don't have a copy, we can't see it or delete it for you; you are in control.

• Delete everything: delete the app from your iPhone. This removes your birth details, chart, notes, reminders, settings and saved location.
• Notes: deleting a note removes it from the app, but its text can stay in the app's files until you delete the app. The app also keeps the previous version of each file, and sets aside any file it cannot read instead of deleting it, so that nothing is lost by accident.
• Birth details: clearing a field in the birth form turns your profile back into a draft and removes the calculated chart. Anything still typed in the form stays on your iPhone.
• Backups: the app's data is included in your iPhone's iCloud Backup or computer backup, if you use one. Those copies are kept according to your backup settings and, for iCloud, Apple's policies. You can manage them in the iPhone's Settings.

This website

This website has no cookies of its own, no analytics, no scripts and no content from other sites. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes the technical information needed to deliver the pages and keep the site secure, such as your IP address. Cloudflare handles this under the Cloudflare Privacy Policy.

If you email us

If you write to support@lightcodeastrology.com, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to include. We use it only to reply to you, and we delete it when it is no longer needed. You don't need to send us your birth details for help with the app.

Children

Lightcode Astrology is not directed at children under 13. The app doesn't send us personal information from anyone, and we don't knowingly collect it from children. If you believe a child has emailed us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If the app starts to handle information differently, we will update this page and the effective date at the top before that version of the app is released.

Contact

Allen Ayler
support@lightcodeastrology.com