# Maska Privacy Policy

Last updated October 26, 2026. Web page: https://shisheng.dev/maska/privacy

## In short

- **No data collected.** Maska has no accounts, analytics, advertising or tracking, and no servers run by us.
- **Your photos stay on your device.** Text recognition, detection and redaction all run on your iPhone or iPad.
- **Copies without photo information.** Redacted copies carry no location, camera details or capture time unless you turn that off.
- **Originals stay as they are.** Maska saves a new copy, and changes or deletes an original only when you choose to.

Maska does not collect, store, or share any personal data. There are no accounts, no analytics, no
advertising, and no servers operated by us. Maska reads and redacts your screenshots and photos on
your device, and they leave it only when you save, copy or share them yourself.

## Who we are

Maska is an independent app for iPhone and iPad that redacts private information in screenshots and
photos. "We" and "us" in this policy mean its developer.

## Photos you open

You can use Maska with or without access to your photo library.

- **With access.** If you allow it, Maska shows your screenshots, albums and photos so you can pick
  one, and opens a screenshot you have just taken. iOS lets you allow access to all your photos or
  only to the ones you choose, and you can change this at any time in Settings. Maska reads a photo
  only to show it, to preview it when you touch and hold it, or to open it.
- **Without access.** Pick a Photo opens the system photo picker, which gives Maska only the photos
  you select.

You can also open an image from the Files app, by pasting it, by dragging it into Maska, from "Redact
with Maska" in the share sheet of Photos and other apps, or from a Maska action in Shortcuts. In each
case Maska receives only that image.

If the original of a photo is stored in iCloud, iOS downloads it from iCloud Photos for Maska. That
download is handled by Apple under Apple's privacy policy.

## Finding private information

Maska looks for private information with Apple's Vision framework, on your device. It recognizes the
text in the image and checks it for formats such as phone numbers, email addresses, ID and card
numbers, and verification codes. It also finds faces, barcodes and QR codes, and objects such as
receipts and screens.

Face detection finds where faces are; it does not identify who anyone is. Maska never guesses names:
it redacts the names, words and patterns you add to your Always Redact list.

What Maska recognizes in an image is kept in memory while the image is open and is discarded when you
close it.

## Saving, copying and sharing

- **Save** adds a redacted copy to your photo library. Saving needs only add-only access, which lets
  Maska add photos without seeing anything already in your library.
- **Copy** puts the redacted image on the clipboard.
- **Share** hands the redacted image to the destination you choose in the iOS share sheet.
- **Edit Original** saves the redaction as an edit of the photo in your library. Photos keeps the
  original, and you can revert to it in Photos.
- **Save and Delete Original** saves a redacted copy, then asks iOS to delete the original. iOS asks
  you to confirm, and the original stays in Recently Deleted for a time.

Images being saved or shared are written to a temporary folder first, which is cleared at the next
export, and iOS removes temporary files on its own.

## Photo information in copies

By default, a redacted copy contains only its pixels. It carries no location, camera details, capture
time or other photo information, and none of the hidden image data some photos contain, such as depth
maps, which could show the unredacted original.

If you turn off Remove EXIF in Settings, Maska keeps only the original's capture time, camera and
exposure settings, and location. Hidden image data is always removed.

## What Maska keeps

Between launches Maska keeps only its settings, such as your Always Redact words and patterns, the
mask style you last chose and which tips you have seen, and a list of the redacted copies it has
saved, so the library can mark them. The list holds the identifiers iOS gives those photos, not the
photos. On iOS 27 and later, saved copies also carry the keyword "Maska" in Photos.

Settings are kept in a container shared with the "Redact with Maska" extension, so both use the same
settings. Images and edits are not kept: when you close an image, Maska discards it, unless you save
it or have set Maska to save when you leave the editor.

While Maska is in the background, it covers its window, so the app switcher never shows an image you
have not redacted yet.

## No network, no tracking

Maska makes no network connections of its own. It contains no analytics, advertising, crash-reporting
or other third-party code, and it does not track you across apps or websites.

## Diagnostics

If you have chosen to share analytics with app developers in your device settings, Apple may provide
us with crash reports and aggregated usage statistics under Apple's own privacy terms. These never
include your photos.

## Children

Maska is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from anyone,
including children.

## Your rights

Because Maska holds no personal data about you, there is nothing for us to access, correct, export,
or delete. Deleting Maska from your device removes everything it stored, except the redacted copies
you saved to your photo library.

## This website

shisheng.dev is a static website hosted by Cloudflare. It sets no cookies and loads no fonts,
advertising or other third-party resources besides Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits
without cookies, local storage or any identifier that follows you across sites. It records the page
you visit, the page that linked to it, your browser, operating system and country, and how fast the
page loaded. Cloudflare also processes standard request data such as IP addresses to deliver and
protect the site.

## Changes to this policy

If the way Maska handles data ever changes, we will update this page and the date at the top.
Continued use of Maska after a change means you accept the updated policy.

## Contact

For any question about privacy, write to [support@shisheng.dev](mailto:support@shisheng.dev).
