BidCap Privacy Policy

BidCap is a price-reference tool for live collectible card auctions. This policy describes what the app does with your data, written to match what the app actually does.

1. Your account

BidCap uses Sign in with Apple. We do not ask for a password, email, phone number or date of birth. Apple gives us an opaque identifier that only works inside BidCap, plus your name if you choose to share it. You also pick a username inside the app. These are stored only on your device.

Only if you turn on cloud card recognition (section 5), the app sends Apple's sign-in token once to BidCap's identification server, which checks it with Apple and returns an access credential for that feature. The server stores only a one-way hash of Apple's identifier and of the credential (never the identifier itself, your name, email or network address). Expired or revoked credentials are deleted after 30 days; signing out revokes the credential and deleting your account deletes them all.

You can sign out or delete your account from Profile. Signing out removes the identifier, name and username from your device; deleting your account also removes the random installation identifier and learned card fingerprints and turns off the optional features in section 5. Your collection and settings stay until you delete the app. To revoke on Apple's side: iOS Settings, your name, Sign-In & Security, Sign in with Apple.

2. Screen reading

To recognize a card while you watch an auction, BidCap uses Apple's screen broadcast extension (ReplayKit). It runs only when you start it, from the app or Control Center, and stops when you stop it. iOS shows the recording indicator the whole time.

Frames are analyzed on your device and discarded. Text and card-art recognition run on the device with a catalog bundled in the app. Frames are not uploaded, except a reduced image of a lot's card (usually one, at most a few per lot) if you turn on the optional AI Maestro (section 5).

What the app keeps on your device from a session: which card it identified, the reference price and limit it computed, and whether you won the lot (your purchase history); up to 20 short fragments of screen text it could not interpret, as a diagnostic; and up to 360 small low-resolution crops (160 pixels wide) of the center of the screen, used to calibrate the detector that tells holo from non-holo cards, continuously overwritten. If you confirm a card with a button, the app also keeps on your device a numeric fingerprint of that card's art (not an image) so it recognizes it next time; you can erase them in Profile. These stored items never leave your device; what is sent during a session is described in sections 4 and 5.

3. Your username on the auction platform

You may enter in Settings the username you use on the auction platform. BidCap uses it for one thing: comparing the on-screen text when a lot closes with your name, to know whether you won. It is stored on your device and never sent. BidCap does not access your account on that platform, does not use its APIs and does not interact with it in any way.

4. What leaves your device by default

• Price lookups. When the app identifies a card, it asks BidCap's price server (api.bidcap.app) for that card's market value, and periodically downloads BidCap's price table from the same server. What is sent is the card's name, number and set (and, when relevant, its edition, language or variant), together with BidCap's own access credential. No identifier of yours is attached. BidCap's server gets prices from price-data providers (such as PriceCharting and PokemonPriceTracker). In a manual search, the text you type may be sent directly to PokemonPriceTracker in the same way.
• Card images. To show a card's art, the app may download its image from a public card-reference site. The request carries the card's identifier, not yours.
• Live Activity updates. So the Dynamic Island can update while you are in another app, iOS requires updates to arrive as push notifications. The app sends the current verdict (identified card name, amounts read from the auction screen and the computed limit), together with the Live Activity push token Apple issues so the notification reaches your device, over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) to a relay server operated by BidCap, which forwards it to Apple's notification service and on to your device. The relay does not store message content; its technical log records the card identifier and delivery result, and the network address of rejected (unauthorized) requests, for diagnostics and security, and is kept for 30 days.
• Learned cards. At the start of a session the app may download, over HTTPS, the list of cards BidCap's server has added to the catalog. Nothing about you is sent.
• Card-art packs. The app may download packs of numeric card-art fingerprints (not photos) from packs.bidcap.app so it can recognize cards on the device. Nothing about you is sent.
• Apple crash diagnostics, only if you enabled "Share with App Developers" in iOS settings. Handled by Apple, anonymous.

5. Optional features (off by default)

Each of these is off until you turn it on in Profile, where it is explained before you enable it. You can turn it off at any time; after that no new data is sent (a request already under way may still complete).

Cloud card recognition

BidCap asks for your permission when you sign in, and you can turn it off at any time in Profile. When it is on, during a live session the app sends a small, straightened crop of the card only (about 320 pixels tall, never the whole screen) over HTTPS to BidCap's own identification server, together with the access credential above, to recognize which card it is. The server compares it with its card catalog and returns the possible matches. Images are not stored; the server's technical log keeps only the lot number, timing, the matched card's identifier and match strength, without images, credentials or network addresses. Prices and your limit are always computed on your device.

AI Maestro (OpenAI)

An assistant that uses OpenAI's API to help identify cards and explain prices. When it is on, BidCap sends over HTTPS to its server, which forwards it to OpenAI for analysis:

• During a live auction: a reduced image of the central part of your screen (the full width and about three quarters of its height, at most 900 pixels on its long side), usually one per lot, only when BidCap could not recognize the card, or to check whether an identified card carries a printed stamp (for example "1st Edition"); for the stamp check, together with the card's name, number and its possible stamped versions. The image may include whatever else is visible in that area of the broadcast, such as chat text.
• In a card's detail screen: the card's data (name, set, number, variant, language, condition, grade, market prices and the recent sales behind them) and, only if you ask how the card fits your collection, a summary of your portfolio (number of copies and total value).
• A random installation identifier created by the app.

Our server keeps only the monthly usage cost, not the images or the questions. OpenAI processes the data under its API terms: it is not used to train its models and may be retained by OpenAI for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring. The AI only suggests: the maximum bid is always computed by BidCap's own rules, and anything the AI identifies is shown as a button for you to confirm.

Help BidCap learn

When a lot closes without an exact identification, BidCap sends over HTTPS to its server the text it read from the card (for example name, HP and number), why it could not identify it, the closing price shown on screen, the date and time, what the art comparator found, internal reading counters, the app build number and a random installation identifier. No images and nothing that identifies you. We use it only to add missing cards and prices to BidCap's catalog. Records are kept for up to 12 months.

6. What stays on your device

Your collection (including CSV imports), purchase history, portfolio value series, cached prices, your limit rules (fees, shipping, margin), learned card fingerprints and the photos you pick from your library to illustrate cards. A thumbnail of each photo is stored in the app's private space; the original is untouched. None of this is uploaded (except as described in section 5, if you turn those features on). Deleting the app deletes it.

7. We do not sell your data

BidCap has no ads, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers, and does not use the advertising identifier. We do not sell data and do not share it with anyone beyond the price providers, Apple and, only if you turn on the AI Maestro, OpenAI, as described above.

8. What BidCap does not do

• It does not bid, click or transact for you. It only shows a number.
• It does not access accounts or credentials of any auction platform.
• It does not use unofficial interfaces or scrape those platforms.
• It does not publish or redistribute seller content.

9. Children

BidCap is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

10. Your choices

• Stop screen reading at any time by stopping the broadcast.
• Turn off Live Activities for BidCap in iOS Settings to stop push updates.
• Turn the optional features in section 5 on or off in Profile.
• Erase learned cards in Profile.
• Delete your account from Profile; delete the app to remove everything else.

11. Changes

If this policy changes, the date above changes with it. Changes that expand what leaves your device will be announced inside the app before they apply.

12. Contact

Questions: cardbidai@gmail.com. BidCap is published by the holder of the Apple developer account shown on the App Store listing.