Privacy policy

Controller

The controller for this app within the meaning of the GDPR is:

Dominik Graham Pritchett
Galgengraben 2
90574 Roßtal
Germany

Web: pool-buddy.de
E-mail: info@pool-buddy.de

Last updated: August 2026

What data is stored?

Pool Buddy stores the pool and measurement data you enter yourself locally on your device (browser local storage). It is not automatically uploaded. A PoolLab screenshot is only transferred if you deliberately submit a review report as described below.

No transfer of your pool data

Your pool data is normally not transmitted to any server, not stored in a Pool Buddy cloud and not passed on to third parties. The only exception for PoolLab screenshots is when you deliberately choose “Wrong values? Send for review” in the review screen and explicitly confirm the transfer; details are provided in PoolLab review reports.

Pool data is not uploaded to Pool Buddy servers and is not stored in a Pool Buddy cloud. Bluetooth PoolLab imports are processed locally. With the optional PoolLab screenshot import, the selected image is analysed locally in the browser and is not automatically uploaded to Pool Buddy, Water-i.d. or any image-recognition provider. A transfer to Pool Buddy only occurs if you deliberately submit a review report as described below. Separately from this, the general usage events described below are recorded via Umami on public information pages and in selected app flows. Further transfers only occur for feedback messages you deliberately send via the contact form, a deliberately triggered Premium purchase via Stripe, and the optional weather feature, which transmits coordinates to Open-Meteo only after your explicit consent.

Contact form & feedback

If you send a message via the feedback form in the app, it is transmitted to the operator by e-mail. The following is transmitted: the category of your request, your message and an anonymised IP hash (the last 12 characters of a SHA-256 hash, which cannot be reversed).

For bug reports you may voluntarily provide your e-mail address so that we can reply. This address is used solely to answer your report, is not stored for any other purpose and is deleted once the matter is closed. Providing it is optional — without an e-mail address the report is processed anonymously.

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of a contract) or Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in communication). You can request information, correction or deletion of your data at any time: info@pool-buddy.de

Hosting & server logs

The website and the app are hosted by IONOS SE, Elgendorfer Straße 57, 56410 Montabaur, Germany. A data processing agreement pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR exists between the operator and IONOS.

When the website is accessed, the hosting provider briefly stores technical access data in what are known as server logs: IP address of the requesting device, date and time, URL accessed, referrer, user agent (browser/operating system) and HTTP status code.

This data is technically necessary in order to deliver the website and to fend off attacks. It is not combined with other data sources.

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in the secure and stable operation of the website). Retention period: a maximum of 14 days, after which IONOS deletes it automatically.

Third-party services

Fonts, icons, CSS, Pool Buddy's own app scripts and the PoolLab screenshot recognition logic are stored locally. Pool Buddy loads the external Umami Analytics script for the general usage events described below. The optional PoolLab screenshot import does not require an OCR API, language model or connection to an image-recognition service; analysis runs entirely on the device. Weather data, feedback and purchases are only transmitted to the named external services following the deliberate actions described in the relevant sections.

No advertising networks, no social media trackers, no Google Analytics, no Firebase, no Sentry.

Camera features: barcode scan & water colour (optional, beta)

Pool Buddy can optionally use your device's camera to recognise product barcodes (in "Enter water values") and to give a rough estimate of your water colour (in "Diagnosis"). These features are disabled by default and must first be turned on under Settings → Camera & scanner; your browser additionally asks for camera permission separately the first time you scan.

What happens when you use these features?

• Processed exclusively on your device: the camera image or photo is analysed entirely locally in the browser — barcode recognition uses the browser's native BarcodeDetector API, or on devices without it (e.g. iOS Safari) a locally bundled WASM library; colour analysis uses canvas-based pixel evaluation. There is no facial recognition or any other biometric evaluation.
• No transmission: neither the camera image nor any data derived from it is sent to Pool Buddy, to any server, or to third parties. No cloud service or external provider is involved in this feature.
• Sole exception — product report with photo: if, after a scan, you deliberately send us a product report including a photo, the information in the "Contact form & feedback" section above applies (only with your active action, never an automatic upload of camera images).
• No persistent storage: camera images are not saved on the device — they are only held in memory for the duration of the analysis.

Legal basis and withdrawal

Legal basis: because camera data is processed exclusively on your device and never enters our area of responsibility, no processing of personal data by us as the operator takes place — a GDPR legal basis under Art. 6 GDPR therefore does not apply here. Activating the feature in the app settings, as well as granting camera permission via your browser/operating system, remain entirely under your control.

Withdrawal: you can disable the feature again at any time under Settings → Camera & scanner. You can additionally withdraw the camera permission itself at any time via your browser's or operating system's site/app permissions.

Weather feature (optional)

Pool Buddy can warn you about heat or heavy rain at your pool location. This feature is disabled by default and is only activated after your explicit consent in the settings.

What happens when the weather feature is enabled?

• Postcode resolved locally: your postcode is converted into coordinates exclusively on your device. A local postcode directory (based on GeoNames, CC BY 4.0) is included in the app for this purpose. Your postcode does not leave your device.
• Weather request to Open-Meteo: only the anonymous coordinates (latitude/longitude of your postcode, not your device location) are transmitted to Open-Meteo in order to retrieve the forecast. Open-Meteo briefly stores your IP address in server logs (see the provider's privacy policy).
• Provider: Open-Meteo GmbH, Herrenschwendi 4, 6438 Ibach, Switzerland. Website: open-meteo.com. Privacy: open-meteo.com/en/terms
• Data transfer to Switzerland: an adequacy decision of the EU Commission exists for Switzerland (Art. 45 GDPR). An additional data processing agreement is not required.

Legal basis and withdrawal

Legal basis: your consent pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR. Without active consent neither the postcode is processed nor a weather request made.

Withdrawal: you can withdraw your consent at any time under Settings → Weather notices → “Withdraw consent”. The stored postcode, the coordinates and the local weather cache are deleted immediately. The withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out up to that point.

Postcode directory attribution

The local postcode directory is based on data from GeoNames, published under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence.

Pool Buddy Premium & payment processing via Stripe

Pool Buddy Premium is an optional, paid add-on (7-day forecast, inventory management, annual costs). Payment is handled by the payment service provider Stripe – Pool Buddy never receives payment data, never sees card numbers and stores none.

How the purchase works

• Redirect to Stripe Checkout: when you click a purchase button, our server creates a payment session at Stripe and redirects you to checkout.stripe.com. From that point on, Stripe’s privacy policy applies to the payment. We only transmit which product is being bought – no personal data about you.
• What Stripe collects: payment data, e-mail address, name and billing address, plus technical data for fraud prevention (e.g. IP address). This data sits with Stripe, not with us.
• What we store after the purchase: Stripe notifies our server about the completed payment. We store the Stripe session ID, the purchased product, the timestamp and your e-mail address only as a SHA-256 hash – never in clear text. The clear-text address is used transiently, solely to send the activation link.
• Activation link: you receive a personalised link by e-mail. Of the token it contains we again store only the SHA-256 hash – never the token itself. Clicking the link makes our server issue a digitally signed licence.
• Verification on your device: the licence is then checked locally on your device via its signature; no server call is required. The unlocked status lives only in your browser (localStorage). Only for the revocation check after a withdrawal does the app occasionally query the status of the licence ID.
• Provider: Stripe Payments Europe, Limited, 1 Grand Canal Street Lower, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, D02 H210, Ireland. Privacy: stripe.com/privacy
• Data transfer to the USA: Stripe may transfer data to Stripe, Inc. in the USA. The basis is the EU Commission’s adequacy decision on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (Art. 45 GDPR) and, in addition, the EU Commission’s standard contractual clauses (Art. 46 GDPR).
• Data processing agreement: a data processing agreement pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR is in place with Stripe.

Legal basis

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of the purchase contract for the Premium unlock). Using Premium is entirely voluntary — the free core version of Pool Buddy works fully independently of it.

Withdrawal function

Since 19 June 2026 we provide an electronic withdrawal function for purchases of Pool Buddy Premium under German law (§ 356a BGB) (withdraw from contract, see also the withdrawal notice). If you use this function, we process the following data:

What data

• Required: name and e-mail address, so that we can match your withdrawal and send you an acknowledgement of receipt.
• Optional: order reference/licence ID, the affected product (Season/one-time), and a free-text message — these fields are never mandatory.
• Technical data for abuse prevention: a server-generated timestamp of receipt, a hashed IP address to limit repeated attempts (rate limiting), and a random, session-bound client token to prevent duplicate submissions. This data is not combined with analytics tools.

Purpose

Processing your withdrawal, evidencing timely receipt, and — for the technical abuse-prevention data — protecting the function against automated duplicate or spam submissions.

Legal basis

Art. 6 (1) (c) GDPR (legal obligation to enable and document withdrawal under §§ 355, 356a BGB) for name, e-mail address, timestamp, and the withdrawal statement itself; Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in abuse prevention) for the IP hash and client token.

Recipients

No data is passed on to third parties. The acknowledgement of receipt and the internal notification are sent exclusively via our existing hosting provider's e-mail delivery. We do not transmit any personal withdrawal data to analytics tools (e.g. Umami) for this function — only anonymous, non-personal count events are recorded there (page view, form started, form submitted).

Retention period

We retain withdrawal statements in accordance with the statutory German commercial and tax retention obligations for business records (§ 257 HGB, § 147 AO) — generally up to 6 years, and up to 10 years for records with the character of accounting vouchers, counted from the end of the relevant calendar year. This period follows the statutory retention obligation and is not an arbitrarily chosen figure.

Your rights (GDPR)

Because all pool data is stored only on your device, you have full control:

• Access & export: you can see all stored values directly in the app (history, settings).
• Rectification: you can change settings at any time.
• Erasure: delete all app data via your device settings (clear app data / uninstall the app).
• Objection: you can uninstall the app at any time — all data is removed in the process.
• Complaint to a supervisory authority: you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR). The competent authority for the operator is the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (BayLDA), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, lda.bayern.de.

Because the actual pool data is stored only on your device, a request for access to us in practice only concerns feedback messages, the Umami statistics, your e-mail address in case of a Premium purchase via Stripe, or — if the weather feature is enabled — the coordinates transmitted to Open-Meteo.

Deleting data

You can remove all stored data in two ways:

• Individual measurements: in the history (feature coming in a later version)
• All data at once: your device settings → Apps → Pool Buddy → Clear data
• Uninstall the app: removes all local data completely

Children and young people

Pool Buddy is aimed at pool owners aged 16 and over. Since no personal pool data is collected or transmitted, there are no particular risks in this respect.

Changes to this policy

In the event of significant changes (for example if future versions add optional cloud features) we will update this privacy policy and point this out to you in the app.

You can always find the current version under Settings → Privacy.

Disclaimer

Pool Buddy provides non-binding guide values and general guidance on pool care only. The app does not replace professional advice from a pool expert or chemical manufacturer.

All recommendations, dosage instructions and steps in the app are based on general empirical values and are provided without warranty. Factors such as water quality, pool material, ambient temperature, the products used and individual circumstances can considerably affect the amount of chemicals actually required.

The user bears sole responsibility for the independent use of chemicals and for observing the safety and dosage instructions of the respective manufacturers. Pool Buddy accepts no liability whatsoever for personal injury, property damage or consequential damage arising from the use or non-use of the recommendations contained in the app.

Always observe the safety data sheets and product information for the chemicals used and keep them out of the reach of children.

Contact

If you have questions about data protection you can reach us at:

info@pool-buddy.de