Privacy
What we hold, and what we do with it.
A receipt is a detailed record of your life — where you were, when, and what you bought. This page is written to be read, not to be scrolled past.
Effective 21 September 2026
1. Who we are
ExpenseGauge is operated by Mohsen Firoozbakht, based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. In this policy, "we" means that operator and "you" means the person using the service.
We are responsible for the personal information described here, including where it is handled by the service providers named in section 6.
2. What we collect
| What | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Your email address | You, when you sign in. It is how we identify your account and send you a login code. |
| Your display name, if you set one | You. It appears on pictures you share with other people. |
| Receipt images | You, when you photograph or upload a receipt. |
| What is printed on those receipts | Read from the image: the shop, the date, each line, quantities, prices, tax, discounts and the total. |
| Your categories, ceilings and corrections | You, as you use the service. Your corrections are what teach it. |
| A linked Telegram account | Only if you choose to link one. You do not have to. |
| Payment status | Our payment processor tells us whether a subscription is active. We never see your card number. |
| Technical records | Ordinary server logs: the address your request came from, the time, and what was asked for. |
We do not buy information about you from anyone, and we do not connect your account to data from other services.
3. Why we collect it
- To run the service you asked for: reading receipts, filing items, keeping your books and telling you how the month is going.
- To sign you in and keep you signed in.
- To learn from your corrections, so that a shop or a product you have already filed once is recognised the next time. This learning stays inside your own account.
- To take payment, if you subscribe.
- To keep the service secure, diagnose faults, and meet our legal obligations.
We do not use your receipts to advertise to you, we do not sell them, and we do not share them with anyone except the service providers listed in section 6, who act on our instructions.
4. How we use AI
Some features of the app use Google's Gemini API, which we use as a paid service. We send it only what a feature needs, and under Google's terms for paid services none of it is used to train Google's AI.
5. Where it is stored
Your account, your receipts and their images are stored on a server in Helsinki, Finland, rented from Hetzner Online GmbH. Backups are stored in the same way.
Because we are in Canada, our provider is in Finland and Germany, and our processors operate in other countries including the United States, your information crosses borders and may be accessible to the courts and authorities of those countries under their own laws. Using the service means accepting that.
6. Who else is involved
| Who | What they do |
|---|---|
| Hetzner Online GmbH | Hosts the server your data sits on. |
| Provides the AI used by some features (Gemini, paid service), as described in section 4. | |
| Stripe | Takes payment. Your card details go to Stripe and never reach us. |
| Our email provider | Delivers your six-digit login codes and service notices. |
| Telegram | Only if you link a Telegram account, and only for the messages you ask for. |
Nobody on this list is permitted to use your information for their own purposes.
8. How long we keep it
Your books are kept for as long as your account exists, because a spending history that quietly expires is not a spending history.
When you delete a receipt or an item it leaves your books at once and stops appearing anywhere in the service. We keep a hidden copy so that a deletion made by mistake can be undone. That copy is not read, not counted, and not used for anything else.
To have it gone from the server entirely, ask us. Write to the address in section 13, or send the request from inside the app. We erase that account's receipts, their images and its books within 30 days, and we tell you when it is done. We do not ask you why.
Backup copies taken before your request age out within a further 14 days.
We keep only what the law requires us to keep — records of payments, for as long as tax law requires.
Server logs are kept for up to 90 days.
9. Your rights
Under Canadian privacy law you may:
- ask what we hold about you and get a copy of it;
- ask us to correct anything that is wrong;
- withdraw your consent and close your account;
- ask us to erase what we hold, subject to what the law requires us to keep.
You do not need to ask us for a copy: the service exports your entire books in a plain format at any time.
Erasure is done on request rather than by a button you might press by accident. Write to us at hello@expensegauge.com, or send the request from inside the app, and say what you want erased — one receipt, or the whole account. We answer within 30 days and confirm when it is done.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to your provincial privacy commissioner.
10. Security
Traffic between you and the service is encrypted. There is no password to steal, because there are no passwords: you sign in with a code sent to your email, which means the security of your account rests on the security of your mailbox.
No service can promise it will never be broken into. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will tell you and report it as the law requires.
11. Children
ExpenseGauge is not intended for children. Do not create an account if you are under 16.
12. Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the service before the change takes effect, and the date at the top will change. Continuing to use the service after that means accepting the new version.
13. Contact
Questions about this policy, or about what we hold: