Privacy Policy

Contents

• 1. Data stored on your device
• 2. Analytics (Mixpanel)
• 3. Optional account & sync (Supabase)
• 4. Reports, blocks and the Terms
• 5. Supervisor / protector emails
• 6. Physical (NFC) unlock
• 7. QR code generation
• 8. Our website (install / uninstall)
• 9. Browser permissions
• 10. What we do NOT collect
• 11. Third-party processors
• 12. Legal basis
• 13. Data retention
• 14. Your rights & choices
• 15. Security
• 16. Children’s privacy
• 17. Changes to this policy
• 18. Contact & open source

1. Data stored on your device

Most of what you do with Impulse is stored only on your device and is used solely to enforce the rules you configure, show your statistics, and remember your settings.

App On iOS

The app uses Apple’s official FamilyControls, DeviceActivity and ManagedSettings frameworks with individual authorization. The apps and websites you choose to restrict are stored as opaque, system-managed tokens that are not readable by us and never transmitted to any server — not even the names of the apps you block leave your device. Your schedules, limits, preferences, app-lock PIN, streaks and Screen Time report are stored locally (SwiftData, AsyncStorage and the system keychain) and are deleted when you uninstall the app.

Widget In the browser

The extension stores your data with Chrome’s chrome.storage.local (and chrome.storage.sync for the optional password lock). This includes:

• Blocking rules: the sites/URLs you block, schedules, difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard, Physical) and rule names.
• Impulse controls & limits: per-site open/time/scroll limits and impulse-countdown settings.
• Screen-time data: time spent per site and visit/open counts, tracked locally to power the statistics views and heatmaps.
• Preferences: Quick Focus settings, theme and locale.
• Password protection (optional): a salted SHA-256 hash of your password (never the plaintext).
• Verified protector emails, physical-card bindings and emergency-escape state are kept locally for the features described below.
• A random installation ID used to group analytics events (see below).

2. Analytics (Mixpanel, EU)

Both products send product-usage analytics to Mixpanel, hosted in the European Union (api-eu.mixpanel.com), to understand which features are used and improve Impulse.

App The app sends usage events (which screens you open and which features you use, with counts and settings such as a rule’s difficulty) linked to an identifier of your device that Apple or Google gives to the app’s developer. Events never include which apps or websites you block or use, their names or their package names, or how much time you spend on them.

Widget Extension events are tied to a random installation ID (a UUID generated in your browser), not by itself tied to your name or email.

• Event names describing interactions (onboarding steps, creating a rule, activating Quick Focus, reaching a limit, completing/failing an unlock challenge, viewing stats, joining a squad).
• Standard technical properties: app/extension version, a generic browser/OS label and timestamps.
• Aggregate profile counts such as number of controls/blocking periods/squads, whether you are signed in, locale and theme.

Widget Analytics never include the content of your blocks or which apps you use. Some extension events include a Domain / Site property with the address of a site where the extension acted (for example when a limit is reached or a warning is shown); in a small number of events this may include the page path, not only the domain. Some events also include names you chose (a control’s or squad’s name). When you sign in or register, the event includes only the domain part of your email (e.g. gmail.com), not your full email. Analytics are governed by Mixpanel’s privacy policy.

3. Optional account & sync (Supabase, EU)

Accounts, authentication, sync and shared groups are handled by Supabase, hosted in the European Union (eu-central-1). None of this data leaves your device unless you choose to use these features.

App On first launch an anonymous identifier is generated to save your progress. You are only asked to create a permanent account (email + password) if you choose to create or join a group or challenge.

Widget The extension offers an optional account so you can sync across devices and back up your statistics. Sign-in uses your email address plus a one-time code (OTP) emailed by Supabase (you can set a password afterwards).

When you use these features, we process, on Supabase:

• Account & authentication: email, encrypted password, optional display name, plan, and a user/device identifier to sync your progress.
• Widget Rule & settings sync: your blocking periods and impulse controls, including the site URLs/hostnames you configured and the rule names you gave them.
• Widget Daily statistics backup: once a day the extension uploads the previous day’s aggregated per-site stats — for both configured and other visited (“uncontrolled”) sites: hostname, time spent, visit counts, blocks triggered, challenges completed/failed, session durations and hourly breakdowns.
• Groups / squads: nickname and group role, streaks and compliance status, a verification status (✅/⚠️), the group rules you create (app/site names you type manually) and a timestamped violation log to compute streaks and rankings. We never share your list of blocked apps — only your verification status.

App Public challenges. If you join a public challenge, anyone who opens it in the app, with or without an account, sees your leaderboard name, your streak, the percentage of days you kept the rules over the last 30 days and whether the challenge’s rules are set up on your phone. They never see which apps you use or for how long. Choose a leaderboard name that doesn’t identify you if you don’t want to be recognised. In a private challenge, only its members see this.

4. Reports, blocks and the Terms of Use

App Public challenges are moderated as the Terms of Use describe. To make that work, we process:

• Reports. If you report a challenge we store the challenge, the reason, any details you add, the date and your user ID. Our team gets an email with the challenge, the reason and how many people have reported it, never who reported it. The challenge is hidden from you at once, and from everyone after three different people report it.
• Blocking. If you block the person who created a challenge, we store who blocked whom, the challenge where it happened and the date, so their challenges and their name stop appearing for you. They are not told.
• Word filter. Challenge names, descriptions and leaderboard names are checked against a list of offensive words when they are saved; text that matches is not stored.
• Terms of Use. When you accept them, we store the version and the date in your account.
• Limits on verification codes. To stop abuse, we count the code emails each account asks for and each address receives: your user ID, a one-way hash of the address and the time. These records are kept for 2 days.

5. Supervisor / protector emails & verification

For “Hard” difficulty and Supervision mode, Impulse can involve a supervisor / accountability partner (“protector”) identified by an email address. Before an email can be saved as a protector, its owner must prove control of the inbox by entering a code we send them.

• Widget Verification and unlock codes are handled by a serverless Supabase Edge Function (supervisor-code). The server generates the code, stores only a hashed version, emails it, and enforces limits (code expires in ~5 minutes, max 3 attempts, single-use). The extension never receives the code — it only forwards what you type back.
• App Emails we send. We send emails through Resend: the sign-in code when you create an account or sign in, the verification codes for turning off a protected rule (to the address you choose), and the notices that go with them. Codes are created and checked on our servers; they expire after about 5 minutes and can be used once. The email addresses you enter for these codes are stored with the code request and with your rule.
• App If you create a challenge with a Hard rule, the email address you enter to receive its codes is sent to the phone of everyone who joins the challenge, because their phone asks for the code to be sent there. It is not shown before joining.
• Emergency escape (72h): Hard rules include a single-use emergency unlock that takes effect after 72 hours (it degrades the rule to Easy). When you request it, we email a heads-up to the configured protector(s); this sends the protector’s email address to our backend.

If you only use “Easy” or “Medium” difficulty and don’t use Supervision, no email data is sent by this feature.

6. Physical (NFC) unlock

The “Physical” difficulty lets you require tapping a physical NFC card/tag to unlock a rule. This requires an account.

• App The NFC card is paired and scanned using the mobile app, which performs the live NFC read on your phone.
• Widget The browser extension does not read NFC hardware and requests no NFC permission. It only checks your account status, lists your linked cards (returning the card labels you set and a masked form of your email) and requests/verifies a short unlock code generated when the card is scanned on your phone. This is handled by a Supabase Edge Function (physical-unlock); which card unlocks which rule is stored only locally and is not synced.

If you never use “Physical” difficulty, none of this is sent.

7. QR code generation

Widget When you open the “get the mobile app” screen, the extension renders a QR code by loading an image from api.qrserver.com, passing only the public App Store link as the data to encode. No personal or browsing data is sent — only that static, public URL (plus the IP/user-agent metadata inherent to any image request).

8. Our website (install / uninstall)

Widget The extension opens a page on impulsecontrolapp.com in two situations: an onboarding page on install, and an uninstall page (via chrome.runtime.setUninstallURL) that may offer a feedback survey. As with any website visit, this exposes your IP address and user-agent to our web server; no blocking rules, statistics or account data are attached to these navigations.

Any request to an external service inherently exposes your device’s IP address and browser user-agent to that service, as with any normal web request.

9. Browser permissions

Widget The extension declares the following Chrome permissions:

10. What we do NOT collect

• We do not collect your location, contacts, photos or messages.
• We do not read page content, form inputs or passwords, and we do not log your general browsing history for advertising.
• App We do not log which apps you actually use; we only manage the ones you choose to restrict, and that selection stays on your device as opaque tokens.
• We do not sell your data or use it to build advertising profiles.

11. Third-party processors

These providers process data only to provide the features above. We do not sell your personal data.

12. Legal basis

Where applicable law (e.g. the EU/EEA GDPR) requires it, we process your data based on performance of a contract (delivering the service you request, such as accounts, challenges and sync), our legitimate interest in keeping Impulse secure, moderating public content and improving it (including usage analytics), and your consent where the law requires it. You can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us.

13. Data retention

• Local data stays on your device until you delete it or uninstall the app/extension. Widget Some local counters are pruned automatically after a rolling window (about 14 days for certain metrics).
• Account & sync data in Supabase is retained while your account exists. When you request deletion, we remove the server-side copy.
• Reports are kept while the challenge or your account exists. Blocks are kept until you unblock the person or delete your account. The verification-code counter is kept for 2 days, even if you delete your account sooner. When you delete your account, your reports, blocks and Terms acceptance are deleted with it.
• Analytics sent to Mixpanel is retained according to Mixpanel’s policies and our account configuration.
• Verification codes are short-lived server-side (~5 minutes) and single-use.

You can request deletion of your account or of specific data at any time on our account & data deletion page.

14. Your rights & choices

Depending on where you live (e.g. the EU/EEA under GDPR), you may have the right to access, correct, export, delete or port your data, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. You can:

• View your data — your rules, limits and statistics are visible in the app/extension interface.
• Widget Export your data as a JSON file from Settings.
• Delete local data by uninstalling the app or extension.
• Delete account data or specific data via our deletion page.
• Contact us at hello@impulsecontrolapp.com to exercise any of these rights.

App Deleting your account. In the app: Settings › Account › Delete my account. This deletes your account and everything linked to it on our servers straight away: your email, your challenge memberships, streaks and missed days, your reports and blocks, your NFC cards and your settings backup. The challenges you created are deleted for everyone who joined them. Your personal rules live on your phone; delete them in the app or uninstall it. You can also ask us by email at hello@impulsecontrolapp.com (subject “Account deletion request - Impulse”, from the address of your account). Analytics events stay with Mixpanel under its retention policy; ask us and we will request their deletion.

15. Security

• Encrypted transport: all external communication uses HTTPS/TLS.
• Local storage: your password, if set, is stored only as a salted SHA-256 hash, never in plaintext.
• Authenticated backend: account, sync, group, supervisor and physical-unlock requests are authenticated with your Supabase session and protected by Row-Level Security.
• Restricted connections: the extension’s content security policy limits outbound connections to the specific services listed here.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure; we cannot guarantee absolute security.

16. Children’s privacy

Impulse requires users to be at least 13. To create an account you must also have reached the age your country sets for consenting to the processing of your data (14 in Spain; up to 16 in other European Union countries) or have permission from a parent or legal guardian, as the Terms of Use explain. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children below these ages. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in functionality or legal requirements. Material changes will be reflected by updating the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, through the app or extension.

18. Contact & open source

Data controller: Pablo Granados, NIF 76659189M, Calle Profesor Sainz Cantero, 2, Granada (Spain). For any privacy question or request, contact us at hello@impulsecontrolapp.com.

Widget The extension’s source code is available for review on GitHub.