The Pile — Privacy Policy

Effective date: 3 July 2026

App: The Pile (package org.vyakunin.the_pile)

Developer: Vladimir Yakunin · Contact: vyakunin@gmail.com

Short version: The Pile is a private, on-device document vault. Your documents, the text extracted from them, and everything the app derives stay on your phone and, only if you turn it on, in your own Google Drive. Nothing is ever sent to us or to any third party. We operate no servers and run no analytics.

1. Who we are

The Pile ("the app", "we") is developed and published by Vladimir Yakunin as an individual developer. This policy explains what the app does with your information. If any behaviour of the app contradicts this policy, that is a bug — please report it to vyakunin@gmail.com.

2. Our core commitment

The Pile is built so that your document content never reaches any endpoint that is not owned by you. Concretely, the app never:

sends document content, extracted text, parsed fields, or search embeddings to any server we control — because we run none;
uses a cloud OCR, embedding, translation, or large-language-model service;
includes third-party analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting SDKs;
accesses any part of your Google Drive other than the app's own hidden application-data folder.

3. What the app stores, and where

Location	What is stored	Who can read it
Encrypted database on your device	Document metadata, extracted fields, OCR text, and search embeddings	Only this app, using a key held in your device's hardware-backed keystore
Encrypted files in app-private storage on your device	The original PDFs and images you add	Only this app
Your own Google Drive — hidden app folder (opt-in)	Encrypted backups of your documents and their metadata	Only this app, holding your passphrase-derived key. (If you explicitly choose the "open blobs" mode, the original files are stored in your Drive un-encrypted; metadata stays encrypted regardless.)

Google Drive backup is opt-in. A fully local, no-cloud mode is always available and fully supported.

4. Google Drive access

If you enable backup/sync, the app asks for the Google drive.appdata permission. This grants access only to a private application-data folder that other apps — and the Drive web/mobile UI — cannot see. The app cannot read, list, or modify any of your other Drive files. Sign-in uses Google OAuth (accounts.google.com); we never see or store your Google password.

5. Device permissions

Camera — only when you choose to photograph a document. Images are processed on-device and stored in your encrypted vault.
Files / storage — only to import documents you pick and to store the encrypted vault.
Network — used solely to talk to Google Drive (Drive API and Google OAuth) when you have enabled sync. No other network destination is contacted.

6. On-device processing

Text recognition (OCR) runs entirely on your device via Google ML Kit; it makes no network calls.
Search embeddings are computed by a model bundled inside the app, on your device.
Field extraction uses on-device heuristics only — no cloud service and no language model.

7. How your information is protected

The on-device database and file blobs are encrypted with a 256-bit key stored in your device's hardware-backed keystore (Android Keystore / StrongBox where available). Google Drive backups are encrypted with a separate key derived from your passphrase using Argon2id; that key is never written to disk and is held in memory only while the app is in the foreground. If your phone is lost, the vault cannot be read without your biometric or passphrase.

8. Data sharing and selling

We do not share, sell, rent, or transfer your data to anyone. There is no third party to share it with — the app has no backend. The only network destination is your own Google Drive, at your choice.

9. Data retention and deletion

Your data lives on your device (and, if you enabled it, in your own Drive) for as long as you keep it. You are always in control: delete a document in the app to remove it, or uninstall the app to remove the local vault. If you used Drive backup, delete the app's data from your Google Drive to remove the cloud copy. Because we hold none of your data, there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf.

10. Children

The Pile is a general-purpose document utility and is not directed at children. It collects no personal information for us regardless of the user's age.

11. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update the effective date above and post the revised policy at this URL. Material changes will be reflected in the app's release notes.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy or the app's privacy practices: vyakunin@gmail.com.