IBEX
Ibex counts the days you spend in each country so you can stay on the right side of visa and tax rules. That record is among the most sensitive things an app can hold, so the short version is this: your travel record stays on your device and in your own iCloud. Ibex has no account system and no servers of its own, and we never see your history.
What Ibex stores, and where
Everything Ibex knows about you — your stays, the evidence behind them, your counters, your permits, and the questions you have answered — is stored in a database on your device.
If you are signed in to iCloud, that database also syncs through your own private iCloud account, so your devices agree with each other. This uses Apple's CloudKit private database. We cannot read anything in it. Apple's handling of your iCloud data is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
You can export your entire record at any time as a readable JSON file (Settings → Backup), and you can delete everything by deleting the app.
Location
If you turn on automatic tracking, Ibex asks for background location access and uses two low-power system services: visit monitoring (which notices when you settle somewhere new) and significant-change monitoring (which notices when you move a long distance, such as crossing a border). Ibex never uses continuous GPS.
Those coordinates are used to work out which country you are in, and are then stored on your device as evidence for a day in your record. They are not sent to us, because there is no “us” to send them to.
One exception worth naming plainly: to turn a coordinate into a country name and local time zone, Ibex asks Apple's geocoding service — the same service Maps uses. That request sends the coordinate to Apple. It does not include your name, your record, or anything identifying you. This is the only time a location leaves your device, and it happens for roughly one point per place you stay, not continuously.
You can use Ibex with location access switched off entirely. Time-zone changes and photo or Google Timeline imports still work.
Photos
If you ask Ibex to rebuild your history from your photo library, it reads only two pieces of metadata from each photo: when it was taken and where it was taken. It never reads, displays, copies, modifies, or uploads the images themselves. Photo coordinates are resolved to countries the same way described above, and only the resulting day-and-country conclusions are kept.
iOS requires the general photo-library permission to read this metadata; Ibex only ever reads.
Google Timeline imports
If you import a Google Timeline or Takeout file that you exported yourself, Ibex parses it entirely on your device, matching coordinates to countries against map data bundled inside the app. Nothing in that file is uploaded, and no Google account is connected.
Analytics
Ibex sends a small number of anonymous, aggregate usage counts through TelemetryDeck, a privacy-focused analytics service. This is on by default and you can switch it off at any time in Settings → Analytics. Switching it off stops everything described here.
The complete list of events is shown inside the app, word for word, and is limited to:
| Event | What it carries |
|---|---|
onboarding.fork / onboarding.completed | which of the two starting paths you chose |
import.outcome | found / empty / denied |
paywall.seen / paywall.trial / paywall.purchased | which feature opened the paywall; which product |
counter.created | which preset (or “custom”) |
triage.opened / triage.closed | how many questions, as coarse buckets |
poster.shared / trip.planned | that it happened — nothing else |
record.heartbeat | at most weekly: how many days and countries your record holds, as coarse buckets (for example “fewer than 1,000”) |
These events never contain country names, dates, coordinates, stays, permits, or any part of your travel record. Alongside them the service records ordinary technical context — device model, operating-system version, app version, language, and the calendar date — plus a random identifier generated by this installation of the app, used to avoid double-counting the same device. That identifier is not your device's identifier, is not shared with any other app, and disappears when you delete Ibex. Ibex deliberately strips the time zone, region, and locale that the analytics service would otherwise attach, because in an app about borders even those reveal too much.
Ibex does not use advertising, attribution, or tracking SDKs, and does not track you across apps or websites.
Purchases
Subscriptions and the lifetime purchase are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. Ibex never sees or stores your payment details. It only asks Apple whether this Apple Account currently has an active entitlement.
Notifications
Alerts about approaching limits and visa deadlines are scheduled and delivered locally on your device, calculated from your own record. No notification is sent from a server, and no notification content leaves your device.
Visa and tax rule data
Ibex ships with a small set of rule tables copied from official government sources, each carrying the source link and the date it was verified. This data travels inside the app; checking a rule sends nothing anywhere. Rules change, and your own visa or permit is always the authority — Ibex is not tax, legal, or immigration advice.
Children
Ibex is a compliance tool for adult travellers and is not directed at children.
Your control
- Turn analytics off — Settings → Analytics.
- Turn location off — iOS Settings → Ibex → Location. The app keeps working.
- Export everything — Settings → Backup writes your whole record to a JSON file you own.
- Delete everything — delete the app; to remove synced copies, delete Ibex's data from iCloud in iOS Settings.
Because Ibex holds no data about you on any server we control, there is nothing for us to hand over, sell, or lose in a breach. Requests to access or erase personal data are satisfied by the controls above, which operate entirely on your own devices.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what leaves your device, the change will be described in the app's release notes, and this page's date will be updated.
Contact
Questions about privacy in Ibex: rekafellow.co@outlook.com