Breefly - Privacy Policy

Last updated: 08/12/2026

Breefly ("we," "us," or "our") operates the Breefly mobile application (the "App") and the breefly.xyz website. This Privacy Policy describes what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. By using the App or the website, you agree to the practices described here.

1. No Accounts, No Identity

1.1. Breefly has no accounts. We never ask for — and never hold — your name, email address, phone number, or password.

1.2. When you first open the App, it creates a random identifier (a UUID). Everything Breefly stores about your use of the App is keyed to that identifier, and the identifier itself contains nothing about who you are. It is kept on your device and in your own iCloud account so that your devices share one reading identity; we cannot connect it to you.

2. Information We Collect

2.1. Keyed to your anonymous identifier, we store:

- Reading activity: which articles you open, how long you read, and how far you scroll — used to mark stories as read and to rank your feed
- Saved articles: your bookmarks, and the Saved Breef digests generated from them
- Searches: the queries you type in the search tab
- Preferences: followed sources and topics, feed filters, and notification settings
- Push token: if you enable notifications, the device token Apple issues for delivering them
- Device integrity keys: a public key your device generates through Apple's App Attest, used to verify requests come from the genuine app
- Subscription status: whether Breefly+ is active — never payment details, which Apple alone handles

2.2. Technical data: our servers process IP addresses transiently to limit abuse (rate limiting), and collect crash and error diagnostics so we can fix problems. Diagnostic reports are configured to exclude screenshots and IP addresses.

3. How We Use Information

3.1. We use the information above to operate the App: building and personalizing your feed, syncing your saves and history across your devices, delivering the notifications you asked for, generating your Saved Breef, improving the App, and protecting it from misuse.

3.2. We do not sell your information, show ads, or share your information with data brokers or advertisers. Ever.

4. Service Providers

4.1. Breefly runs on a small set of service providers that process data on our behalf:

- Supabase hosts our database and audio storage
- Vercel hosts our servers and website; the website uses Vercel's cookieless, anonymous page analytics
- Sentry receives crash and error diagnostics
- Branch powers shared article links, so a story someone sends you opens to the right place — including right after you first install the App; we use it for link routing, not advertising
- Apple delivers push notifications, syncs your identifier through iCloud, and processes all Breefly+ purchases

4.2. AI providers: Breefly's summaries, story groupings, Breefs, and audio narration are generated by sending published news content to OpenAI and xAI. Only article text goes to them — never your identifier, reading activity, or anything else about you. Summaries generated on your device by Apple Intelligence never leave it.

4.3. The App links to publishers' websites and other third-party services we don't operate. Their content and privacy practices are their own.

4.4. When you open an article, the App loads the publisher's own page on your device, and that request tells them the visit came from Breefly. This also happens when you use the reader view, which fetches their page in order to format the text. The publisher receives what any ordinary web visit gives them — your IP address and browser information — and their own cookies and analytics apply, exactly as if you had followed a link to them from anywhere else. We identify Breefly as the referring site so that publishers can see the readership we send them. We never send them your identifier, your reading history, or anything else about you.

4.5. We keep a daily tally of how many articles are opened per publisher. It is a count only — it is not keyed to your identifier and cannot be traced back to any individual reader.

5. Data Retention

5.1. News articles themselves are purged from our systems on a rolling basis (roughly 45 days, with saved stories kept longer so your library keeps working). Information keyed to your identifier is kept until you delete it. Rate-limiting records expire on their own within days. The per-publisher tally in 4.5 is kept indefinitely, because a count of articles opened is not information about you — it contains nothing that Delete My Data could remove.

6. Your Controls

6.1. In the App's Settings you can Clear Reading History or Delete My Data, which removes everything stored under your identifier from our servers — reading history, saved articles, searches, followed sources and topics, filters, and notification registrations. The bare identifier remains, holding nothing but the date it was created.

6.2. You can also unsave any article, unfollow any source or topic, and turn any notification channel off at any time.

7. Children

7.1. Breefly is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Since Breefly collects no names or contact details, we have no way to identify a user's age; if you believe a child is using the App, the Delete My Data control removes everything stored.

8. Changes to This Privacy Policy

8.1. We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the new version on this page and update the date above; material changes may also be noted in the App.

9. Contact Us

9.1. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or a request about your data, contact us at info@breefly.xyz.

Effective date: 08/12/2026