Argentum News — Privacy Policy

Argentum News (“the app”, “we”, “us”) is a financial news reader with an educational AI assistant, optional user accounts, portfolio and watchlist features, push notifications, and an optional paid subscription. It is published for iPhone (App Store) and Android (Google Play) under the same bundle id com.argentum.news; this policy covers both, and says which platform it means wherever they differ. It explains what data the app handles and your choices. There is no advertising, no ad tracking and no advertising identifiers in the app, and we do not sell your data. We do use a crash- and error-reporting SDK (Sentry) and, for live prices, the app talks directly to two market-data providers — section 4 names every third party and says what each one receives.

1. Information we collect

Account data (if you create an account). You can browse news without an account. There are three ways to sign in, and each one gives us something different:

• Email and password — we receive your email address and a password. Passwords are stored only in hashed form by Supabase, our authentication and database provider; we never see or store them in plain text.
• Continue with Google (iPhone and Android) — Google returns a signed identity token that we verify. From it we keep your Google account identifier, the email address Google asserts, and the name on your Google account.
• Sign in with Apple (iPhone) — Apple returns a signed identity token. Apple also hands your name to the app on the very first authorization and never again, so the app forwards it to us then. We keep your Apple account identifier, the address Apple gives us (which may be a private relay address) and, if Apple provided it, your name.

For the two social options we store the link between your Argentum account and the provider — the provider’s account identifier, not your password — so the same button signs you back in next time. Signing in issues session tokens that the app stores on your device to keep you logged in.

Data you store with your account. When signed in, the following is saved on our servers so it syncs and powers app features:

• Portfolio holdings — the assets you add (symbol, asset type, quantity) and their change history.
• Watchlist — the symbols you track.
• Investor profile — optional settings such as risk tolerance and time horizon, used to tailor educational explanations.
• Preferences — your market filters (Equities, Crypto, Forex, Futures) and your notification settings, saved server-side so they follow your account to another device. Signed out, your filters stay on the phone.
• App usage records — a daily count of AI summaries you used, and which articles you opened a summary for on a given day. This is what enforces the free-tier limit and stops the same article being charged twice.

Live prices. To price your portfolio, your watchlist and the ticker bar, the app queries two market-data providers directly from your device: Yahoo Finance for equities, indexes and FX, and CoinGecko for crypto. That means the symbols you hold, track or look up reach those providers together with your device’s IP address, and Yahoo sets a session cookie that the app stores and returns on later requests. The quantities you own are never sent to them — only the symbols. This happens whether or not you have an account. Section 4 links their policies.

Push notifications. If you are signed in, the app registers a device token with our servers so we can send you notifications — an Apple Push Notification service (APNs) token on iPhone, a Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) token on Android. The token is removed server-side when you log out, and you can turn notifications off at any time in your device’s system settings, or from the app’s notification settings.

Purchases. Subscriptions are processed by Apple’s App Store on iPhone and Google Play Billing on Android, and managed through RevenueCat on both. We receive subscription status and a purchase identifier linked to your account so we can unlock paid features. We never receive or store your payment card details — those stay with Apple or Google.

Diagnostics. When the app hits an error it sends a report to Sentry. Section 4 says exactly what that report contains and what is stripped out of it.

Installation identifier. The app generates a random identifier the first time it runs, stores it on the device, and sends it with requests to our AI service so the free daily allowance can be counted for a phone that has no account. It is not an advertising identifier, it is not shared with advertisers, and deleting and reinstalling the app produces a new one.

On your device only:

• Offline cache — recent news items cached locally so the feed works without a connection.
• Your settings while signed out — market filters, language and watchlist picks made without an account stay on the phone until you sign in. Filters and language do travel with every request to our own feed API, because that is how the feed knows what to return.
• Session tokens, kept in the platform’s encrypted store (the Keychain on iPhone, encrypted preferences on Android). On iPhone, the name and address Apple gives on the very first authorization are cached there too, so they are not lost if that first sign-in call fails; they are sent to us and then stop being needed.

We do not collect your contacts, your precise location, or advertising identifiers. The app asks for no location or contacts permission on either platform. We do receive your name when you sign in with Google or Apple, as described above.

2. The AI assistant (“How does this affect me?”)

When you use the assistant, the app sends the relevant news item, your question, your selected market filters and language, and — if you are signed in — your portfolio holdings (symbol, asset type and quantity), watchlist, and investor profile (risk tolerance and time horizon) to the Argentum Agent Service. This lets the assistant relate the news to your positions. If you are signed out, none of that personal data is available and you get a generic explanation.

The service uses Anthropic’s Claude API to generate a plain-language educational explanation. What reaches Anthropic is narrower than what reaches us: the news item, your question, and your symbols and asset types — never the quantities you own.

The conversation itself is held in server memory only and is dropped after about an hour of inactivity. It is not written to a database and it is not used to train AI models.

An interaction record is kept, and it is not memory-only. Separately from the conversation, each interaction with the assistant writes a row to a table we keep. That row contains: which kind of interaction it was (a summary generated, a summary served from cache, a “how does this affect me?”, a glossary lookup, a follow-up question), a reference to the news item and its headline, the language, your account identifier and/or the installation identifier, the symbols and asset types in your portfolio and watchlist, your risk profile and time horizon, and flags such as whether you typed a custom question. It does not contain the text of your questions, the assistant’s answers, or the quantities you own.

We keep these records to understand which news matters to which kind of reader, and to build the relevance and news-impact models we intend to train later. Today no model is trained on them. Please read the retention section below: this table is append-only, it currently has no expiry, and deleting your account does not remove it.

3. How we use your data

• Provide the app: authentication, syncing your portfolio and watchlist, delivering notifications, unlocking subscriptions.
• Price your portfolio and watchlist, which requires sending those symbols to the market-data providers in section 4.
• Personalize educational explanations, as described above.
• Enforce the free-tier limit on AI summaries.
• Diagnose crashes and errors.
• Build the relevance and news-impact models described in section 2.
• Respond to support and privacy requests.

We do not sell or share your data with advertisers or data brokers, and we do not use it for advertising.

4. Third-party services

These are everyone outside Argentum who receives data, and what each one gets.

• Yahoo Finance — live quotes and charts for equities, indexes and FX. Queried from your device, so it receives the symbols you hold, track or look up, and your IP address; it sets a session cookie the app stores and returns. Never your quantities, your account or your email (privacy policy).
• CoinGecko — live quotes and charts for crypto, also queried from your device, receiving the crypto symbols you hold, track or look up, and your IP address (privacy policy).
• Supabase — authentication and database hosting for account data (privacy policy).
• Render — United States hosting provider for our two backend services (the feed API and the AI agent service). Everything those services process passes through its infrastructure (privacy policy).
• Sentry — crash and error reporting from the app and from our backends. An error report carries the stack trace, the screen, your device model, OS version and app build, error codes, and your Argentum account identifier. It deliberately carries no financial data — no holding, no amount, no portfolio symbol — and no credentials, tokens, email address or name; screenshots and view hierarchies are off, and query strings are stripped from every URL before the report is sent (privacy policy).
• Google — three separate roles: Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers push notifications on Android; Google Play Billing processes Android payments; and Sign in with Google, if you use it, tells Google you are signing in to Argentum and gives us the identity token described in section 1 (Firebase · Google).
• Apple — the App Store processes iPhone payments, APNs delivers push notifications, and Sign in with Apple, if you use it, tells Apple you are signing in to Argentum and gives us the identity token described in section 1 (privacy policy).
• RevenueCat — subscription management on both platforms. It is given your Argentum account identifier so your subscription follows your account (privacy policy).
• Anthropic (Claude API) — generates the educational explanations. Receives the news item, your question, and your symbols and asset types; never your quantities. See Anthropic’s privacy policy.
• Argentum Feed API — our own service; aggregates headlines from public news sources. Feed requests carry your market filters and language, with or without an account.
• Argentum Agent Service — our own service; see section 2 for everything it receives and keeps.
• News publishers — articles come from third parties (e.g. AP, MarketWatch, CoinDesk, The Block); opening a story uses your browser and that publisher’s own policy.

5. Retention

• Account data, portfolio, watchlist, investor profile, preferences, usage records — kept while your account exists; removed when you delete your account (see section 6).
• Push tokens — kept while you are signed in on a device; removed on logout or account deletion.
• AI assistant conversations — server memory only, dropped after about an hour of inactivity. Never written to a database.
• AI interaction records (section 2) — kept indefinitely. This table is append-only, it has no expiry today, and it is not removed when you delete your account. We are describing this rather than promising a window we have not yet built; when we set one, it will be stated here with a new effective date.
• Generated summaries — the AI summary of a news item is cached per article and language so a second reader does not pay for a second generation. It is about the article, not about you, and carries no account identifier.
• Diagnostics — error reports are retained by Sentry under its own retention schedule.
• Purchase records — subscription records held by Apple, Google Play and RevenueCat are governed by their policies and by tax/accounting requirements.
• Device-local data — the offline cache, your signed-out settings and the installation identifier stay on your device until you uninstall the app or clear its storage.

6. Deletion and your rights

• Delete your account and data — in the app, open Settings → Delete account, confirm, and the account and the data listed on our account & data deletion page are removed immediately, not on a 30-day schedule. That page also lists what is not removed, which you should read before you decide.
• Clear local data — deleting the app or clearing its storage removes the offline cache, your signed-out settings and the installation identifier from your device.
• Access, correction, portability — contact us to request a copy or correction of the data linked to your account. We respond consistent with applicable law (including GDPR and CCPA where they apply).
• Notifications — turn push notifications off any time in your device’s system settings (iPhone: Settings → Notifications → Argentum News; Android: Settings → Apps → Argentum News → Notifications), or from the app’s own notification settings.

7. Security

Data is sent over encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS). Your account data — portfolio, watchlist, preferences, usage records — is stored behind per-account database rules and every request for it requires your personal session token; a request without one is refused.

Two paths work differently and you should know it. Our AI service accepts requests with or without a session token: signed in, the app attaches yours and the request is attributed to your account; signed out, the request is anonymous and identified only by the installation identifier. And the market-data providers in section 4 are queried directly by the app, outside our servers entirely, so what they see is governed by their policies and not by ours.

No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we work to protect your information.

8. Children’s privacy

Argentum News is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 where required), and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves; material changes will appear here with a new effective date.

10. Contact

Privacy questions or requests: support@argentumhq.com