Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 29, 2026

1. Overview

SplitRick is a mobile application that helps friends and groups track shared expenses, settle balances, and record payments. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use SplitRick, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have over your data.

We designed SplitRick to collect as little as possible: a phone number for authentication, a display name and optional profile photo for identification within your groups, and the expense data you and your group members enter. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not build behavioral profiles of our users. The app may show in-app ads served by a third-party mobile advertising provider; we do not share your SplitRick account information with that provider. See Section 7 for the details of how advertising works. SplitRick also offers an optional paid subscription, SplitRick Divide, which removes in-app ads and unlocks premium features; how purchases are handled is described in Section 8.

SplitRick is offered only to users in the United States. The service is not directed to, and is not intended for, users outside the United States.

2. Who we are

SplitRick is independently operated by Richard Kyte, based in Arlington, Virginia, United States. For all purposes under this policy, "SplitRick," "we," "us," and "our" refer to this operator. The terms "you" and "your" refer to the person using the SplitRick mobile application or this website.

You can reach us at SplitRickUS@gmail.com for any privacy-related question, request, or complaint.

3. Information we collect

3.1 Information you provide directly

• Phone number. Required at sign-up. Used to send you a one-time passcode (OTP) so you can authenticate, and to uniquely identify your account.
• Display name. Your first and last name (or whatever name you choose to display). Shown to people in groups you join so they can recognize you.
• Profile photo. Optional. If you choose to upload one, it is stored in our encrypted cloud storage and delivered through a content delivery network. Shown to group members alongside your name.
• Group content. When you create a group, join a group, add a transaction, record a payment, or invite someone, the content of those actions is stored on our servers. This includes group names, optional group photos, transaction descriptions, amounts, categories, dates, who paid, and how the expense was split.
• Communications. If you email us, we receive your message, your email address, and any information you choose to include.

3.2 Information collected automatically

• Authentication metadata. After a successful OTP verification, our authentication system issues short-lived session tokens that are stored on your device and used to authorize requests to our servers.
• Device push token. If you grant the notification permission, the operating system gives us a push token that lets us deliver notifications to your specific device. You can revoke this at any time in your device's Settings.
• Diagnostic and connection data. Our servers record standard operational logs containing things like timestamps, coarse network information, request paths, response codes, and user-agent strings. These logs are used to operate the service, investigate abuse, and debug failures. They are not used to build advertising profiles.

3.3 Information we do not collect

• We do not request access to your contacts, photo library (other than the specific image you pick to upload), camera, microphone, location, calendar, or motion sensors.
• We do not collect payment card numbers, bank account information, or actual money movements. SplitRick records who owes whom — it is not a payment processor.

If we have integrated a mobile advertising provider, the ad provider's SDK on your device may receive standard device-level information (described in Section 7). That information is processed by the ad provider under its own policies; we do not link it to your SplitRick account on our servers.

4. How we use information

We use the information described above to:

• Authenticate you on each app launch and on sensitive actions (via short-lived session tokens).
• Show your name, photo, and balances to people in groups you have joined.
• Sync your group memberships, transactions, balances, and recent activity across your devices in real time.
• Send the push notifications you have opted into (for example, when someone adds an expense or records a payment in one of your groups).
• Detect and prevent abuse, fraud, and violations of our Terms.
• Diagnose crashes and performance issues.
• Respond to your support, deletion, and access requests.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not provide your SplitRick account information to advertisers or data brokers. We do not build behavioral profiles of you. See Section 7 for how third-party advertising works in the app.

5. Sharing within groups

SplitRick is inherently social: when you take an action inside a group, other members of that group see it. Specifically:

• Your display name and profile photo are visible to every current member of any group you have joined.
• Every transaction you add, edit, or delete is visible to every current and future member of that group, including the description, amount, category, date, payer, and split breakdown.
• Every payment you record is visible to the same group.
• Your balance in a group is visible to other group members.
• If you create or accept a group invite link, anyone who has that link can use it to join until you regenerate or revoke it.

If you leave a group, your historical activity in that group (the transactions you added, paid for, or were part of) remains visible to the remaining members so that the group's books stay consistent. Your name continues to appear on those historical rows. Future members of a group can see your past activity in that group.

6. Third-party processors

SplitRick relies on a small number of reputable cloud and platform vendors to operate. These vendors process your information solely to provide their services to us, under the terms of their own privacy and security commitments:

• Our cloud hosting provider — Hosts the backend infrastructure that powers authentication, the application API, the database, image storage and delivery, push notification fan-out, and operational logging. Data centers used to operate SplitRick are located in the United States.
• The mobile operating system platform — Provides the push notification system used to deliver notifications to your device. If you installed SplitRick from a mobile app store, the store's own terms and privacy practices also apply to that distribution relationship.

We do not share your information with any other third party for their own purposes. We will only disclose information to law enforcement or other authorities when we are legally required to do so, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent harm.

7. Advertising

SplitRick may include in-app advertising served by a third-party mobile advertising provider. This section describes how that works and what data is — and is not — involved.

Subscribers don't see ads. If you subscribe to SplitRick Divide (see Section 8), in-app advertising is removed and ads are not shown to you.

We do not share your SplitRick account data with the ad provider. We do not transmit your phone number, name, profile photo, group memberships, transactions, balances, group content, or any other data that lives on our servers to the ad provider for advertising, analytics, profiling, or any other purpose. Your in-app activity in SplitRick (the groups you are in, the expenses you record, who you owe) is not used to target ads.

What the ad provider sees on its own. When the ad SDK runs on your device to fetch and display an ad, the ad provider may receive standard mobile-advertising information directly from your device, such as:

• A non-identifying advertising identifier (the operating system's per-app or per-device ad ID), if you have permitted such tracking through your device's permission prompts.
• Coarse device and app context (device model, operating system version, app version, screen size, language, and similar non-identifying technical fields).
• The IP address used to make the ad request.
• Interactions with the ad itself (impressions, clicks, completions).

This information is processed by the ad provider under its own privacy policy, not ours. We do not receive a copy of it linked back to your SplitRick account.

Your controls. On iOS, you control whether apps can request the advertising identifier through the App Tracking Transparency permission prompt. You can change this at any time in your device's Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking. You can also reset or limit ad tracking at the operating-system level. If you deny tracking, the ad provider may show non-personalized ads instead of personalized ones.

Children. Per our age policy, SplitRick is not directed to users under 13, and we do not knowingly serve personalized advertising to anyone under 13.

8. Subscriptions & purchases

SplitRick offers an optional paid subscription called SplitRick Divide. Purchasing is entirely optional — the core expense-splitting features work without it. Subscriptions are sold and processed through the Apple App Store, and that affects what purchase data we do and don't receive:

• We never receive your payment details. Your payment is charged to your Apple App Store account. Apple processes the transaction; we do not receive or store your payment card number, billing address, or any financial account information.
• Entitlement, not billing data. Whether you currently hold an active subscription is determined on your device through the App Store. We use that signal only to remove ads and unlock premium features — we do not receive your purchase history or renewal dates.
• No ads for subscribers. While your subscription is active, in-app advertising is removed (see Section 7).

Managing, changing, or cancelling your subscription is handled in your device's App Store account settings; see our Terms of Service for the billing and auto-renewal terms.

9. Signing in & one-time passcodes

SplitRick uses one-time passcodes (OTPs) only to verify your identity at sign-in and account recovery. The passcode is sent to the phone number on your account. We do not send marketing or promotional messages, and we do not share your phone number with marketing partners.

If you cannot receive the passcode, you will not be able to complete sign-in, because the OTP is how we confirm it is really you.

10. Push notifications

If you grant the notification permission, we may send you push notifications for events like new transactions, payments recorded against your balance, group invitations, and other activity in your groups. You can disable push notifications entirely in your device's Settings, or selectively in the SplitRick Account tab's notification preferences.

11. Data retention & deletion

We retain your account and content for as long as your account is active or as long as we need to in order to provide the service. Specifically:

• Your account record (phone number, display name, profile photo reference, notification preferences) is retained while your account exists.
• Groups you belong to retain your activity (transactions, balances, payments) for as long as the group exists. Group owners can delete groups they administer.
• Server logs are retained for a limited operational window and are then rotated or aggregated into anonymized metrics.

You can request deletion of your SplitRick account at any time by emailing SplitRickUS@gmail.com from the address associated with your account, or by using any in-app account deletion control we provide. When you delete your account:

• Your profile (name, photo, phone number, notification preferences, device tokens) is removed from active systems.
• Your historical contributions inside groups (transactions you added, payments you recorded, balances you participated in) remain visible to those groups so the books stay consistent, but they are no longer linked to a live identity. Your display name continues to appear on those historical records.
• Residual copies may persist for a short period in encrypted backups before being overwritten on our normal backup cycle.

12. Your rights & choices

Depending on where you live, you may have legal rights with respect to your personal information, including the right to access, correct, delete, or port your data, and the right to object to or restrict certain processing.

• Access & correction. You can review and edit your display name and profile photo from the Account tab in the app. To request a copy of other information we hold about you, email SplitRickUS@gmail.com.
• Deletion. Request deletion of your account at any time (see above).
• Push notifications. Disable in your device's Settings or in the Account tab's notification preferences.
• California residents have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA / CPRA), including the right to know what personal information is collected, the right to delete, and the right to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined under California law.

You can exercise any of these rights by emailing us. We will respond within the time limits required by applicable law.

13. Security

We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect your information:

• All traffic between the SplitRick app and our backend travels over HTTPS / TLS.
• Authentication is handled by a managed identity provider; we never see or store your one-time passcode, and we do not use passwords.
• Profile photos, group images, and the underlying database are encrypted at rest.
• Per-user access controls are enforced server-side — we do not rely on client-side enforcement.
• We log access to sensitive operations and monitor for unusual patterns.

No system is perfectly secure. If you become aware of a vulnerability or believe your account has been accessed without your permission, please email us immediately at SplitRickUS@gmail.com.

14. Children's privacy

SplitRick is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in the service, our practices, or applicable law. When we make a material change, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you in the app or by email. Your continued use of SplitRick after the effective date of an updated policy means you accept the updated terms; if you do not, you can stop using SplitRick and request account deletion at any time.

16. Contact

For privacy questions, access requests, deletion requests, or any other matter covered by this policy, please contact us at SplitRickUS@gmail.com.