Privacy Policy
Camstalgia is a camera app for iPhone. Until the update that renames it, the App Store lists it as Throwback: Old Phone Camera, and your iPhone shows it as Throwback. This policy covers the app and this website.
Summary
The app collects no data about you. There is no account, no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and the app has no servers. Your photos and videos stay on your iPhone, and in your own iCloud if you use iCloud Photos or iCloud Backup, unless you share them. This website asks for your email address only if you request the subscriber gift (see below).
What the app asks for, and why
- Camera: to take photos and videos. Every picture is developed on your iPhone.
- Microphone: only while the camera is in video mode, to record the sound of your videos (slow motion and time-lapse are silent). Without it, videos are silent.
- Photos (add only): to save what you take to your photo library. The app can’t see the rest of your library.
- Location (optional, only while you use the app): to tag photos and videos with where they were taken, as phones did from 2008. The 2007 phone and Expert mode never tag.
What is kept on your iPhone
- The roll: every photo and video is also kept inside the app, with a small note of which phone look it used, front or back camera, the kind of shot and, if tagged, where it was taken. Your albums, favourites, hidden items and edits are kept there too. An edited photo keeps its original, so you can go back to it.
- What the roll works out by itself: with a phone from 2016 or later, the roll recognises what is in your photos (like “beach” or “dog”) for search, and finds faces to group photos of the same person under People. For that it keeps a numeric summary of each face. Apple’s built-in image analysis does this on your iPhone. It is never sent anywhere and is used for nothing else.
- Your settings: the phone you picked, Creative or Technical, your other choices, and whether you are subscribed, so the app also opens offline.
- The free-photo counter: how many of your 10 free photos or videos you have used, and whether the subscription screen has appeared. It is kept in your iPhone’s Keychain, which stays after an app is deleted, so reinstalling doesn’t restart the free photos. It holds only those two things.
What leaves your iPhone
Only these, and only to Apple:
- Place names: for tagged photos, the roll sends the location, rounded to about a kilometre, to Apple’s map service to get the name of the town for Places, Memories and search.
- The Places map is drawn by Apple Maps.
- Purchases go through the App Store. The app only asks the App Store whether your subscription is active.
Apple handles this under Apple’s Privacy Policy. No other company gets anything: the app contains no third-party code.
Things you do yourself
- Sharing: sharing or copying a photo sends it where you choose, with its location tag if it has one.
- QR codes (phones from 2017): tapping a code’s web address opens it in your browser.
- iCloud Photos: copies saved to your photo library sync to your iCloud if you have turned iCloud Photos on. That is Apple’s service; we never see it.
- Backups: like any app’s files, the roll is part of your iPhone backups (iCloud Backup or your computer), if you use them.
- Emailing us: if you write to us, we get your email address and what you send. We use it only to answer you, never share it, and delete it when it is no longer needed to help you, or sooner if you ask.
Purchases
Your first 10 photos or videos are free. After that, “All Phones” is a monthly or yearly subscription, with no free trial, renewing until you cancel. Apple handles every purchase. We never see your payment details or your Apple Account. The app only checks on your iPhone whether your Apple Account has the subscription. Cancel any time in Settings › your name › Subscriptions.
Subscriber gift and news emails (this website)
On this website you can ask for a subscriber gift: a personal App Store code for Camstalgia, sent by email. It is a welcome gift for joining emails from Sebastian Škoić s.p. about Camstalgia and our other apps, so you only get it if you agree to receive them. When you ask for it, we collect your email address, language, a record of your consent (when you gave it and which wording you agreed to), delivery and unsubscribe status, and the App Store code assigned to you. To prevent abuse and give each address the gift only once, we also keep keyed hashes (scrambled fingerprints) of your email and IP addresses.
We use this to send you the gift email, then occasional news and promo codes for Camstalgia and our other apps. Cloudflare runs this website and the form and stores the record, Brevo sends the emails and keeps the mailing list, and Cloudflare Turnstile checks that the request comes from a person. Apple processes the code when you redeem it.
- Legal basis. Your consent for the emails (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). For the abuse checks (the hashes and the security check), our legitimate interest in handing out the gift fairly (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
- Withdrawing consent. You can withdraw it at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email or by writing to us. This doesn’t affect emails already sent, and a code you already received stays valid.
- How long we keep it. We keep your record while you are subscribed. When you unsubscribe, we remove your address from the mailing list and keep only the record of your request, so your unsubscribe is respected and the address can’t claim the gift again. You can ask us to delete it at any time.
This website
This website has no analytics, no ads and no tracking cookies. It remembers the language you pick, in your own browser only. Cloudflare hosts it and, like any web host, processes technical data such as your IP address to deliver the pages.
Changing your mind
Turn any permission off at any time in the Settings app, under Throwback (on iOS 18 or later: Apps › Throwback). Without Location, new photos aren’t tagged. Without Photos, new pictures are kept only in the app’s roll, which comes with All Phones. Photos already in your library keep their location tag; you can change it in the Photos app.
How long things are kept, and deleting them
- The app sends us nothing, so we keep nothing from it.
- On your iPhone, everything stays until you delete it. With the phones up to 2013, deleting in the roll removes an item at once. From the 2014 phone on, it goes to Recently Deleted first and is removed for good after 30 days (the next time you open the roll), or straight away if you delete it there.
- When a photo is removed for good, its content labels and face summary are removed too, and so is its place name unless another photo was taken there.
- Deleting in the roll leaves the copy in your photo library. Delete that in the Photos app.
- Without an active subscription, the roll can’t be opened, so the way to delete what is in it is to delete the app.
- Deleting the app deletes the roll, everything the roll worked out (place names, labels, face summaries) and your settings. Only the free-photo counter stays, in the Keychain, until the iPhone is erased (it also comes back if you restore the iPhone from a backup).
Children
The app collects no data from anyone, including children. The subscriber gift on this website is only for people aged 16 or older: if you are under 16, please do not sign up. If we learn that someone under 16 has signed up, we delete their email address.
Your rights
Email support@camstalgia.com to access, correct or delete the email records we hold, restrict or object to their use, or receive them in a portable format. You can withdraw your email consent at any time, as described above. You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU or EEA country where you live or work, or in the UK to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Data handled by Apple, such as purchase records, is governed by Apple’s policies.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update the effective date above and highlight material changes on this page before they take effect.
Contact
Questions? Email support@camstalgia.com.