Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 2, 2026
sceen (“sceen”, “we”, “us”) is an app for ranking films and sharing those rankings with people you choose to follow. This policy explains what we collect, why, who else receives it, and how to get it deleted. It covers the sceen app and this website.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.
Information we collect
Account information
When you create an account we store your email address, username, display name, and optionally a first and last name, a short bio, and an avatar image. Your account also records whether you have set your profile to private.
Your avatar
If you set an avatar from a photo on your device, sceen asks your permission at that moment and iOS shows you the request. We receive only the single image you pick. sceen does not browse, index, or read anything else in your photo library, and it cannot see a photo you did not choose.
The image is stored with your account and is visible to anyone who can see your profile — so, if your account is public, to anyone. We resize and re-encode it so it displays properly, and use it for nothing else. Removing or replacing your avatar removes it from your account, and deleting your account deletes it along with everything else, on the timeline set out below.
Sign-in information
You can sign in with an emailed link, with Apple, or with Google. When you use Apple or Google we receive an identifier for your account with that provider, and the email address that provider chooses to share. If you use Sign in with Apple and select “Hide My Email”, we receive only Apple’s relay address and never your real one.
For Sign in with Apple we also store a token from Apple, encrypted, for one purpose: so that when you delete your account we can tell Apple to revoke sceen’s access. It is used for nothing else.
What you create in the app
Your rankings, watchlist, the accounts you follow and who follows you, and any posts, replies, or likes you add. This is the substance of the service and is stored on our servers so it can sync across your devices and reach the people who follow you.
Phone number and contacts (optional)
Both are optional, stay off until you turn them on, and exist only to help you find people you know on sceen. They currently work with US and Canadian phone numbers.
Your phone number. If you choose to link a number so friends can find you, we send one text message containing a one-time code to confirm the number is yours. Once you confirm it, we store the number encrypted, together with a fingerprint of it made with a secret key (used to match it against other people’s saved numbers) and the time you confirmed it. We use it so that people who already have your number can find your account in Find friends. It is not shown on your profile or in search, and it is not a way to sign in. You can stop people finding you by it, or remove it, in Settings under Friend discovery.
Your contacts. If you choose to connect contacts, iOS asks your permission first, and you can share all of them or only ones you select. We receive the phone numbers of those contacts — not their names, photos, or anything else in your address book, which stay on your device. We convert each number into a fingerprint made with a secret key and keep only the fingerprints, including those of people who are not on sceen, so we can show you matches now and when they join later. The numbers themselves exist on our servers only for the moment it takes to do that. This protects the stored data if a database were ever exposed; it does not mean we cannot see the numbers you send us while we process them. We keep the fingerprints until you remove that device’s connection, choose Disconnect all, or delete your account. Signing out of sceen or deleting the app does not delete them — disconnecting does. Nothing is followed automatically: matches appear as profiles you can choose to follow, and private accounts still decide who may follow them.
Verification and abuse records. To stop the verification feature being used to harass people or to guess numbers, we keep limited records of verification and number-change activity, such as how many texts were requested and that a number was recently linked. These are kept as secret-key fingerprints rather than readable numbers, and are removed on a schedule: delivery records after about a day, and number-change history for up to 365 days.
Diagnostic information
If the app crashes, Firebase Crashlytics sends us a crash report containing your device model, operating system version, and technical details about the failure. This helps us fix defects. It is not used to identify or profile you.
Technical information
When the app or this site contacts our servers, those servers see your IP address, as any web server does. We use it for one purpose: to limit how many sign-in attempts or verification texts can come from one place, which is what stops someone brute-forcing their way into accounts or using sceen to send unwanted texts. It is held only for as long as that check needs it and is never written to your account record. Our hosting and network providers keep their own short-lived request logs, which include IP addresses.
This website sets a cookie from Cloudflare that distinguishes real visitors from bots. It carries no information about you and is not used for analytics or advertising. We set no other cookies, and there is no analytics on this site.
Because we do not track you across other sites in the first place, there is nothing for a “Do Not Track” signal to switch off, and we do not respond to those signals differently.
What we do not collect
We do not collect your precise location or advertising identifiers, and sceen contains no third-party advertising or tracking SDKs. We collect the phone numbers in your contacts only if you choose to connect them, as described above, and never their names, photos, or other details. Beyond an avatar you choose yourself, sceen does not read your photo library.
How we use information
- To operate your account and keep you signed in.
- To store and sync your rankings, watchlist, and social connections.
- To show your activity to the people you have allowed to see it.
- To send transactional email — sign-in links, and notice that a deletion is scheduled — and, if you ask to link a phone number, one text message with a verification code. We do not send marketing email or marketing texts.
- To find friends: to match the numbers in contacts you have connected against people who have chosen to be findable by their number, and, if you have chosen that, to let people who have your number find your account.
- To diagnose crashes and fix defects.
- To protect the service against abuse and to comply with law.
Legal bases (EEA and UK)
Where the GDPR applies, we rely on: performance of a contract for operating your account and delivering the service; legitimate interests for security, abuse prevention, and fixing defects; and legal obligation where the law requires us to retain or disclose something. We rely on consent for the optional phone-number and contact features: you give it by choosing to link a number or connect contacts, and you can withdraw it at any time by removing the number or disconnecting your contacts in Settings. Withdrawing does not affect what we did before. We do not rely on consent for anything else.
Who else receives your information
Each provider receives only the specific items its job requires, and nothing beyond them. In most cases that is a single field:
| Provider | What it receives | What it does not receive |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | Your account and its contents — this is where the database itself runs | — |
| Resend | Your email address, and the text of that one message — a sign-in link or a deletion notice | Your rankings, watchlist, profile, or who you follow |
| Telnyx | Your phone number, and the text of that one message — a one-time code and when it expires — only if you ask to link a number | The numbers in your contacts, your rankings, watchlist, profile, or who you follow |
| Apple | The sign-in exchange itself, and a revoke request when you delete your account | Anything you do in sceen |
| The sign-in exchange itself | Anything you do in sceen | |
| Firebase Crashlytics | A crash report: device model, OS version, and where the code failed | Your name, email, rankings, or account contents |
| TMDB | Which titles your device looks up, and the IP address it looks them up from | Your name, email, account, or rankings |
So, concretely: when we email you a sign-in link, Resend is told your address and the words in that email. It is not told what you have ranked, what is on your watchlist, or who follows you — it has no way to reach any of it. A verification text works the same way: Telnyx, and the mobile carriers that deliver it, see the number you entered and the message, as they would for any text, and nothing else about you.
Other people see what you choose to share with them: your profile, and the rankings and activity you publish, subject to whether your account is private and who follows you.
sceen has user search, so your username and display name can be found by someone typing them in, and your profile is reachable that way. If you would rather your rankings and activity were visible only to people you approve, set your account to private in Settings — your profile remains findable, but what sits behind it does not.
If you link a phone number and have chosen to be findable by it, anyone who has connected a contact list containing your number can find your profile — display name, username, and avatar — in Find friends, and can ask to follow you. sceen does not show them your number. If you turn this off, your account stops appearing right away, although results someone has already loaded may stay on their screen until they refresh. Connecting your own contacts does not make you findable, and being findable does not share your contacts.
Film and television information comes from TMDB, and your device fetches it from TMDB directly rather than through our servers. TMDB therefore sees those requests — which titles were looked up, and the IP address they came from — in the same way any website you visit does. We do not send TMDB your name, your email, your account, or your rankings, and TMDB handles what it sees under its own privacy policy.
We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of sceen or its users.
We do not sell or broker your information
We have never sold your personal information, and we do not intend to. Specifically, and including the twelve months preceding the date at the top of this page:
- We do not sell personal information — meaning we do not disclose it to anyone in exchange for money or for anything else of value.
- We do not rent, trade, or broker it, and we do not supply it to data brokers, list vendors, or people-search services.
- We do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. sceen carries no advertising, and no advertising or tracking SDKs are built into the app.
- We do not use your information, or content you create, to build advertising profiles or to train machine-learning models for anyone else.
- No mobile information will be sold or shared with third parties for promotional or marketing purposes. This includes phone numbers and text-message opt-in data.
The providers listed above are a different thing, and worth being precise about. Google Cloud, Resend, Telnyx, and Firebase Crashlytics act as our service providers: they process data only to perform the job we have engaged them for, under contract, and may not use it for their own purposes. That is not a sale, and we receive nothing of value for it.
Apple and Google are not service providers in this sense. When you choose to sign in with one of them, you are authenticating with that company directly, and it handles that interaction under its own privacy policy. We receive the result; we do not send them anything about your activity in sceen.
If this ever changes, we will say so on this page and give notice in the app before it takes effect — never quietly.
Where your information is stored
sceen’s servers and databases are hosted in the United States. If you use sceen from outside the United States, your information is transferred there and handled under this policy. For transfers out of the EEA or UK we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.
How long we keep it, and deleting your account
We keep your account and what you have created in it for as long as your account exists. We do not expire it for inactivity, and there is no separate clock running on your rankings or your lists — they are there until you remove them or delete the account.
You can delete your account from Settings inside the app. When you do:
- Your account is scheduled for deletion in 7 days, and we email you to confirm that.
- During those 7 days you can cancel simply by signing in again.
- After 7 days your account and its contents are permanently deleted from our database. This cannot be undone.
- If you signed in with Apple, we ask Apple at that same point to revoke sceen’s access, so sceen disappears from your Apple ID settings.
Friend-discovery data is handled sooner. As soon as you request deletion, your account stops appearing in friend discovery and the contact fingerprints you shared are deleted; cancelling deletion does not reconnect your contacts or make you findable again. Your linked phone number is kept, encrypted and not findable, through the 7-day window and is deleted with the account. A limited record that a number was recently linked, kept as a fingerprint without your account, can outlast the account for up to 180 days so that numbers cannot be passed between accounts in rapid succession.
Some content may remain visible to others in a de-identified form where it forms part of a conversation another person took part in. Our database keeps seven days of rolling backups, so a deleted account can persist in those until they age out, after which it is gone from them too. Crash reports are retained by Crashlytics on its own schedule and are not linked to your account.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can access and correct your profile in the app, and delete your account outright from Settings.
EEA and UK. You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to our processing of your information, the right to data portability, and the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.
California. You have the right to know what we collect and why, to request deletion, to request correction, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. You also have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information — but as set out above, we do neither, so there is nothing to opt out of and no “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link to offer.
To exercise any of these, email privacy@sceenapp.com. We will respond within the time your local law requires.
Children
sceen is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Where local law sets a higher age for consent to online services — 16 in some European countries — that age applies instead. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will delete it.
Security
Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit. Apple refresh tokens and linked phone numbers are encrypted at rest with authenticated encryption, and the numbers in your contacts are stored only as secret-key fingerprints. Access to production data is restricted. No service can promise perfect security, but we treat your data as if it were our own.
If a breach ever affects your personal information, we will tell you and notify the relevant authorities within the time the law requires, and we will say what happened rather than the minimum we can get away with.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page, and for significant changes we will tell you in the app or by email.
Contact
Questions or requests: privacy@sceenapp.com.
sceen is a sole proprietorship operated by Zachary Nehrenberg.
This app uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.