What stays on your device
Everything FlickStack learns about you is kept locally on your phone: your swipes, star ratings, watchlist and the taste profile built from them. It’s stored in an on-device database (Android Room) and in a local backup file inside the app’s private storage, so the app can restore your data if the database is ever damaged.
We, the makers of FlickStack, can’t see this data. It doesn’t leave your phone unless you use one of the optional features below.
Optional: Google sign-in and Drive backup
You can sign in with Google to back up your FlickStack data to your own Google Drive and restore it on another phone. Sign-in is used only for this.
- FlickStack asks for the
drive.filepermission, which means the app can only see and manage files it created itself. It can’t read anything else in your Drive. - The backup goes directly from your phone to your Google Drive. It does not pass through our server.
- Your email address is shown in the app so you know which account is connected. It is not sent to our server.
Google’s own privacy policy applies to your Google account and Drive.
Optional: share anonymous swipes
The public leaderboard on huvsh.com is built from people who chose to contribute. This setting is off by default. You can turn it on, or off again, at any time from the app menu under “Share anonymous swipes”.
While it’s on, each swipe, and each answer to a check-in card, sends the following to https://huvsh.com/api/swipes:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Title details | The title’s ID, name, year, type (movie, series, game or upcoming), genres and poster URL, so it can be shown on the leaderboard. For movies and series this includes the title’s TMDB ID, which our server uses to look up its public ratings (IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB) for the FS Score. The app doesn’t send rating numbers itself. |
| Your swipe | Whether it was a want, pass or seen, and the strength or star level. |
| Check-in answers | A few weeks after you want something, FlickStack may ask whether you watched it. If sharing is on, your answer (watched, still want, or gone off it) is sent too, so the leaderboard can show how many people really watched what they wanted. |
| Two rough numbers | A genre-affinity number and your total swipe count, used to weight each vote so the leaderboard reflects real interest. |
What is never sent: your name, email address, Google account, advertising ID, device ID, or any other identifier. There’s no account, so shared swipes can’t be tied back to you.
Like any website, our server sees your IP address when the request arrives. It’s used only briefly to limit abuse (rate limiting) and is not stored.
Swipes and check-in answers are combined into anonymous counts per title, such as how many people wanted it, the average rating and the share who later watched it.
Services FlickStack talks to
To show you cards, FlickStack needs information about movies, series and games. Here’s where it comes from:
- TMDB (The Movie Database). Titles, posters, trailers and streaming availability come from TMDB. Requests go through our proxy at huvsh.com, which keeps our API key off your phone. The proxy only forwards what’s needed for the lookup, such as a title ID or search term.
- OMDb. Extra ratings (such as critic scores) are fetched from OMDb through the same proxy.
- YouTube. Trailers play in YouTube’s embedded player. When you play one, YouTube’s terms and Google’s privacy policy apply to that playback.
- Streaming services. “Where to watch” information is provided by JustWatch via TMDB. Tapping a service opens that service’s app or website, and its own privacy policy applies from there.
Letterboxd and IMDb imports
If you import a Letterboxd or IMDb export file, it’s read and processed on your phone only. The file isn’t uploaded anywhere. FlickStack may look up the titles it contains through the TMDB proxy described above, the same way it does for any card.
Deleting your data
- Reset my taste in the app menu erases all of your local FlickStack data: swipes, ratings, watchlist and taste profile.
- Uninstalling FlickStack removes everything it stored on your phone.
- Drive backups live in your own Google Drive. You can delete them there at any time, and you can remove FlickStack’s access from your Google account settings.
- Leaderboard counts are anonymous totals. Because nothing identifying is sent, they can’t be linked back to a person, and so can’t be singled out for deletion. Turning sharing off stops any further swipes from being sent.
Children
FlickStack isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from them.
Ads and selling data
FlickStack shows no ads. We don’t sell, rent or trade any data, and we don’t use it for advertising.
Changes to this policy
If we change how FlickStack handles data, we’ll update this page and the effective date at the top.
Contact
Questions or requests? Email admin@huvsh.com.