Working draft
This version is a draft. Region-specific disclosures required in the EU, the UK, and California — the identity of the data controller, the legal basis for each purpose, retention periods, the safeguards covering transfers to RevenueCat in the United States, the right to complain to a supervisory authority, and a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” statement — will be added before public launch.
Why the app asks for each permission
Camera — required. Android treats a USB endoscope as a camera. That is why the app asks for camera permission even when you have plugged a scope into a cable: Android will not let any app open a USB camera without it. It is the same permission for both. Magic Endoscope does not use your phone’s own front or rear camera. It shows the picture from your endoscope and saves the photos and videos you take. That picture is processed on your phone and goes nowhere else.
Location — optional, off until you switch it on. Used to print the place where a capture was taken onto the picture. To turn coordinates into a place name, your phone sends them to Google — repeatedly while the camera screen is open, not only when you take a picture. Read this before you switch it on — the stamp cannot be removed afterwards.
Internet and Wi-Fi access. Used to find your Wi-Fi camera and stream from it, to check whether you have bought Pro, and to make sure camera traffic goes over Wi-Fi rather than your mobile data. One of these permissions is called multicast — it is simply how your phone calls out “is there a camera on this network?” and listens for an answer. The app does not read the name of your Wi-Fi network.
In-app billing. Added automatically by Google Play’s billing library so you can buy and restore Pro. You are never prompted for it.
If you say no to a permission
- Camera — the app cannot show a picture. This is the one permission it cannot work without. Nothing is sent anywhere as a result; the app simply has nothing to show.
- Location — captures are saved without a location stamp. Everything else works normally.
The app will not keep nagging you, and it will not lock unrelated features behind a permission you refused. You can change your mind at any time in your phone’s settings, under Apps → Magic Endoscope → Permissions.
Your photos and videos
Captures are saved to your phone. They are never uploaded to us, and we operate no server that could receive them. We cannot see them. If you share a capture, that happens through your phone’s own Share button and is governed by whichever app or service you choose.
Where they are saved. By default, into a MagicEndoscope folder in your phone’s normal Photos and Videos storage. In Settings you can instead choose an SD card, or pick any folder yourself. If you pick a folder, Android gives the app ongoing permission to read and write that folder and everything in it, until you change the setting. The app uses that access only to save your captures and to list them in its own gallery.
What it cannot see. The app declares no general storage permission. Apart from a folder you choose yourself, it can only see the media it created.
Captions. You can attach a short text note to a photo. The note is saved on your phone next to the photo, in Android’s media database. It is never sent to us. Like the photo, it is readable by other apps that can see your media, and it is not removed when you uninstall.
Recordings are silent. The app records video with no sound. It does not use your microphone and does not ask for microphone permission.
If you uninstall, your captures stay on your phone. Android treats saved photos and videos as your media, not as app data, so removing the app does not delete them.
Before you turn on location stamping
Magic Endoscope can print where a photo or video was taken onto the picture itself. It can print a general place — a town or a region. It can also print exact coordinates, which pin the spot to within a few metres. Both are off until you turn them on. Before you do, understand what it means.
Read this before switching it on
The stamp is part of the picture, like writing on a photo with a marker. It is not a hidden tag that a phone, a website, or a messaging app can strip out.
You cannot remove it later. Turning the setting off afterwards does not clean the captures you already took. Uploading the file somewhere that “removes location information” will not remove it either. The only way to get rid of it is to crop that part of the picture away, and only if the stamp sits near an edge. On video, the stamp is on every single frame.
Anyone you send the file to can read it. A town name tells them roughly where you were. Exact coordinates tell them the address — anyone can paste two numbers into a map and be standing outside the building in seconds. If you photograph a job inside a customer’s home, a picture you send to that customer, to a supplier, to a group chat, or attached to a quote carries that location to everyone who sees it.
The setting stays on until you turn it off. Switch stamping on for one job and it will still be on at the next one.
If you have already stamped a capture by mistake, the file cannot be fixed — delete it and take it again.
If you are unsure, leave it off. You can switch it on for a single job — to prove where an inspection was carried out, say — and switch it off when you are done.
How location works when you do switch it on
Approximate by default. The app asks only for approximate location and prints a general place name, such as a town or a region.
Exact coordinates must be switched on separately. Only then does the app ask for precise location and print exact latitude and longitude. This is the setting to think hardest about: a town name is vague enough to be harmless, but coordinates are your customer’s address, permanently written into a file you are about to send. Only switch it on when you specifically need to prove exactly where an inspection happened.
The place name is looked up by Google, not by us. Your phone has to turn coordinates into a name like Leeds or Bavaria. It does that with a service built into Android, which on most phones means sending the coordinates to Google to ask what place they are.
This happens even when you are not taking pictures. While location stamping is on and the camera screen is open, the app refreshes that name about once a minute, whether or not you capture anything — so coordinates are sent each time it refreshes. We never see any of it, and we keep no record of it. Google’s handling of that lookup is governed by Google’s own privacy policy.
The app reads a saved position, not a live fix. It asks Android for the last known location. It does not follow you in the background or when the camera screen is closed.
One thing the toggle does not do. Switching exact coordinates back off stops exact coordinates being printed on your captures. It does not withdraw the precise-location permission you already granted, so the position the app reads — and sends for the place-name lookup — may still be precise. To change that, set the app’s location permission back to Approximate under Apps → Magic Endoscope → Permissions → Location in your phone’s settings.
We do not transmit your location to ourselves, do not keep a location history, and do not use location for anything except drawing that stamp.
Wi-Fi cameras and your local network
To find a Wi-Fi endoscope, the app checks a small set of addresses on the Wi-Fi network your phone is currently joined to — usually the camera’s own hotspot — and then streams video from it. Your phone may warn you that this Wi-Fi has no internet. That is normal: the camera’s hotspot is not connected to anything.
This traffic travels only between your phone and the camera. It never reaches us.
Cheap endoscope cameras cannot encrypt what they send, and no app can add encryption they do not support, so this local video is unencrypted. In practice that means anyone else who has joined that same camera hotspot can see the picture. The hotspot has a short range and normally nobody else is on it, but if you are working somewhere you would not want the picture seen, keep it in mind.
The app only connects to camera addresses it discovered on the Wi-Fi network your phone has joined; there is no way to type in an address of your own. Its unencrypted web requests are additionally restricted in code to private local-network address ranges.
No advertising, no tracking
Magic Endoscope integrates no advertising network, no attribution service, and no product-analytics service, and shows no third-party ads. It does show a promotion for its own Pro upgrade to users on the free tier; that promotion is drawn entirely on your phone and makes no network request.
The purchase library the app uses brings in standard Google Play components, and Google Play Billing sends its own operational information to Google as part of processing payments. Nothing about you is profiled, sold, or shared for advertising, and the app does not read your device’s advertising identifier.
Buying Pro
Payment is handled by Google Play. We never see or store your card details.
Purchases are managed through RevenueCat, which gives your installation a random identifier and uses it to record whether this installation owns Pro. That identifier tells RevenueCat only that some installation bought Pro. It is not linked to your name, your email, or your Google account, and it is not used to advertise to you. RevenueCat also receives standard technical information with those requests: device model, operating system and app version, country, and IP address.
RevenueCat’s privacy policy: revenuecat.com/privacy
Crash reports
This version of Magic Endoscope does not send crash reports. Nothing about crashes leaves your phone.
What is stored on your phone
- Your settings — zoom, overlays, measurement presets, camera controls, resolution.
- A list of the captures the app has saved — file names, sizes, dates and dimensions, not the pictures themselves.
- Daily counters, because the free tier limits how many photos and clips you can take per day.
- A note of whether this installation was seen to own Pro, and when that was last confirmed.
Your settings and the capture list may be included in Android’s standard backup, unless you have turned backup off on your phone. The daily counters and the Pro record are deliberately excluded from backup and from phone-to-phone transfer, so daily limits cannot be reset by restoring a backup.
The daily counters reset each day. The Pro record is kept until you uninstall. Everything in this list is deleted when you uninstall. This applies only to what is on your phone — the purchase record held by RevenueCat and by Google is not affected by uninstalling.
Who else receives anything
| Who | What for | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Google Play | Taking payment | Your payment details, handled by Google |
| RevenueCat | Tracking whether you bought Pro | Random installation ID, purchase status, device and app version, country, IP address |
| Turning coordinates into a place name | Coordinates, only while location stamping is on |
We do not control how these companies handle what they receive. Their own privacy policies apply.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see, correct, delete, or export personal information about you, or to object to how it is used.
We hold no records about you on our own systems. The only records connected to your use of the app are the purchase records held for us by RevenueCat and by Google. Everything else — your captures, settings and counters — is on your own phone, and you can view, export or delete it whenever you like.
For that purchase record, contact us and we will pass your request on to RevenueCat and Google and confirm when they have acted on it, or you can approach them directly. Note that a purchase record is tied only to a random installation identifier, so without that identifier there may be no way to single out your record.
Children
Magic Endoscope is a tool for inspecting pipes, engines, and walls. It is not designed for or directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16. There is no account system and no way for anyone — child or adult — to send us personal information through the app.
Security
Everything that leaves your phone — purchase checks, and the place-name lookup if you have enabled stamping — travels over encrypted connections. Video from a Wi-Fi camera is unencrypted, as explained above, but it never leaves your local network.
Data that should not follow you between installations is excluded from backup. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise absolute security.
Changes to this policy
This policy takes effect on the date shown at the top. If we make a material change — a new kind of information, a new recipient, or a new purpose — we will show a notice inside the app the next time you open it, and we will not start the new processing until you have had that notice. Where a change needs your consent, we will ask for it separately; simply continuing to use the app is not treated as consent. Earlier versions are available on request.
Contact
Magic Endoscope is published by Technomagic Solutions.
If you have a question about this policy, or you want to exercise any of the rights described above, write to support@technomagic-solutions.com. We read everything sent there and will reply.
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