Privacy Policy

Last Updated: October 11, 2026

1. Who we are

This Privacy Policy describes how the Sareh News mobile application and its website and backend services ("Sareh News", "we", "us", "our") handle information about you. The service is operated by Saeid Raei, [postal address]. You can reach us at support@sareh.news.

2. Information we collect

We keep the amount of data small. Here is everything we store about you on our servers:

• Guest session: if you use the app without an account, we create an anonymous guest record with a random numeric ID and the name "Guest". It contains no email address.
• Account information: if you create an account or sign in with Apple, Google or email, we store your name, your email address (with Sign in with Apple this may be Apple's private relay address), and the unique user identifier that Apple or Google gives us for you. For Google Sign-In we also keep the link to your Google profile picture; the app does not display it. For accounts created with an email address and password we store your password only as a salted hash (BCrypt), never in plain text.
• Your interests: the text of the topics you enter to personalise your feed.
• Relevance scores: for each news story we calculate how well it matches your interests and store that number together with your user ID.
• Sign-in tokens: to keep you signed in we store a refresh token on our server. If you use Sign in with Apple, we also store the refresh token that Apple issues to us. We keep it only so we can revoke it at Apple when you delete your account. These tokens are never shown to anyone and are not used for any other purpose.
• Story alerts and push notifications: if you create a story alert, we store its settings (the minimum score you chose, the daily limit, your quiet hours, your time zone and whether it is paused). To send the alert to your phone we store the push token that Apple's or Google's notification system gives your device (and whether it is an iPhone or Android device and the app version), and a short history of the alerts we sent you (which story, when, and its score) so that you are never alerted twice about the same story. The app asks for permission to show notifications only when you create or resume an alert.
• Account dates: when the record was created and when you were last active (updated at most once per hour while you use the app).
• Technical logs: like any web service, our servers and the proxy in front of them record technical request data such as your IP address, the time, the requested address (including any query parameters, such as paging options) and the response status, for security and troubleshooting. Request headers (for example your sign-in token, cookies and browser identifier) are not written to these logs. We do not use these logs for advertising or profiling. How long they are kept is described in section 6.

Some things stay on your device and are never sent to us: your reading position and zoom level, your theme choice, a local copy of your interests, and your sign-in tokens (kept in the iOS Keychain or Android Keystore).

We do not collect your location, contacts, photos, advertising identifier or purchase history, and the app contains no advertising or analytics software.

3. How we use your information

• To provide the service: sign you in, keep your session, and sync your interests across your devices.
• To personalise your feed: we compare the text of the news stories with your interests and rank the stories by relevance. This calculation runs on our own server using a standard text-similarity method. Your interests are not sent to advertisers or to any third-party AI or language-model service.
• To send you the story alerts you set up: when a new story matches your chosen minimum score, we send a notification with the story's headline to your devices.
• To keep the service secure and running: fixing errors, preventing abuse, deleting expired data.

We do not sell your personal data, we do not share it with advertisers, and we do not use it to track you across other companies' apps and websites.

4. News content

Sareh News collects headlines, short summaries and image links from the public RSS feeds of news publishers and shows them in the app. We group reports about the same news from different outlets into a single story; this grouping is automatic and approximate. When you open an article, the page loads from the publisher's own website inside the app (or in your browser). We keep the headlines, summaries and links of past news so that you can scroll back to earlier days. Publishers may use their own cookies and analytics; we do not control that and this policy does not cover those sites.

5. Third parties

• Apple (Sign in with Apple): if you choose it, Apple authenticates you and sends us the data described above. We also contact Apple to exchange the sign-in code for a token and, when you delete your account, to revoke it. See Apple's privacy policy.
• Google (Google Sign-In, Firebase Core): if you choose Google Sign-In, Google authenticates you and sends us your name, email address, ID and profile picture link. The app also includes Google's Firebase libraries (the core library and Firebase Cloud Messaging, see below); we do not use Firebase analytics or crash reporting. See Google's privacy policy.
• Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) and Apple (push notifications): to deliver story alerts we send the notification (the story's headline and a short line about it) and your device's push token to Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging, which acts as our processor; on iPhones it passes the notification to Apple's push notification service. We do not send them your interests. See Google's and Apple's privacy policies.
• Hosting provider: our servers, database and backups are hosted by Hetzner Online GmbH, Germany. The provider processes data on our behalf and may not use it for its own purposes.
• News publishers: when you open an article, your device connects to the publisher's website, which then sees your IP address and device information as for any web visit.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it.

6. How long we keep data

• News headlines, summaries and links: kept, so that you can look back at earlier days. They are public news items from the publishers' feeds and are not linked to you. We do not delete them after a fixed time.
• Your relevance scores: kept for as long as the story exists and your guest session or account exists. They are deleted when you change your interests or reset your data in the app, when a guest session expires (see below) and when you delete your account.
• Story alerts: your alert settings are kept until you delete the alert, delete your account, or your guest session expires. Your device's push token is kept until you sign out in the app on that device, you delete your account, or Google's or Apple's notification system reports that the token is no longer valid. The history of alerts we sent you is deleted after 30 days.
• Guest sessions: deleted automatically, with their interests and scores, after 90 days without use.
• Registered accounts (email, Google or Apple): kept until you delete the account. There is no automatic expiry.
• Backups: we make one database backup per day and keep the newest 7. Data you delete can therefore remain in a backup for up to 7 more days, after which it is overwritten.
• Server logs: kept only in rotating log files of limited size that are overwritten as they fill up, and not archived. Depending on traffic this normally means no more than a few weeks (less when the service is busy); when traffic is very low the files fill more slowly, so entries can then be kept somewhat longer.

7. Your choices: access, deletion and portability

• Delete your account and data in the app: Settings → Delete Account & Data. This works for guests and for registered users. It removes your account record, name, email, identifiers, sign-in tokens, interests and relevance scores from our live database immediately and cannot be undone. For accounts created with Sign in with Apple, we also revoke the token at Apple, so the app disappears from your Apple ID's "Sign in with Apple" list.
• Delete by email: if you cannot use the app, write to support@sareh.news from the email address of the account and we will delete it.
• Reset personalization: Settings → Reset Personalization Scoring clears your interests and relevance scores but keeps your account.
• Change your interests at any time in the app (Settings → My Interests). Changing them discards your old scores.
• Access and portability: you can ask for a copy of the data we hold about you by emailing us; we will send it in a readable format.
• Story alerts: in Settings → Story alerts you can change, pause or delete your alert at any time. Deleting your account also deletes your alert settings, push tokens and alert history. You can also turn off notifications for the app in your phone's system settings.
• Sign out: signing out removes the tokens from your device and stops alerts to that device.

8. Security

We use HTTPS to protect data in transit, store passwords only as salted hashes, keep sign-in tokens on your device in the system's secure storage, and limit access to our servers. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Children

Sareh News is a general news service and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13; if you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we will delete it.

10. Where data is processed

Our servers are located in Germany (European Union). If you use the app from elsewhere, your data is transferred to and stored there.

11. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle data, we will update this page and its "Last Updated" date. If a change is significant we will also tell you in the app.

12. Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, please contact us at: support@sareh.news