Privacy, in plain English
Last changed 22 October 2026.
The short version
Accountabuddie watches what's in front of you so it can tell whether you're working. It does that on your Mac. A few things leave it, listed below, and nothing else does. We don't sell data, we don't run ads, and we can't read your backup.
What stays on your Mac
- Which app and website is in front, every few seconds, and how long you spend there.
- Your tasks, your notes, your day's numbers and history.
- Your API key if you add one, and your account session, both encrypted with the Mac's own keychain.
What leaves your Mac, and why
- A few words from the front window, and its title. On Pro (or the free trial), while watching is on, Accountabuddie reads the text in the window and the title and sends them to our server to judge whether they match your task. Up to about 2,500 characters at a time. It's not kept after the answer comes back. Never a picture, unless you switch pictures on yourself.
- Your score, your standup, and your task name if you choose to share it, to your crew and any communities you join. Your crewmates see these. Nobody else does.
- Things you type into Accountabuddie (notes, standups, replies) so your buddy can learn how you write. Used only for that.
- Your backup, if you make an account or back up: encrypted on your Mac first with a key made from your password. Our server stores the sealed file and can't open it.
- Your voice, only in a voice room you joined, only while you're in it. It goes through Cloudflare to the people in the room and isn't recorded.
What Accountabuddie never reads
Some windows are off limits however you set things up. Nothing about them leaves the Mac, not the title, not a word:
- Password managers, the Mac's Passwords and Keychain, and any sign-in page.
- Banks, cards, money and trading apps, and gov.uk.
- Health: the NHS, GP and hospital portals, therapy, period and pregnancy apps.
- Private or incognito browser windows.
- Any window whose title mentions a password, a code or a bank.
Accountabuddie never records keystrokes in other apps, never reads your files, never uses your camera, and never uses your microphone outside a voice room you joined.
See for yourself
Settings → Privacy in the app shows the last 150 things Accountabuddie sent, exactly as they went: the words, the title, who it went to and what came back.
Your account
An account is a username and a password. We store a salted hash of a value derived from your password, never the password. Your email, if you gave one, is used to stop throwaway sign-ups and for nothing else. Delete your account from Settings and your profile, photo, messages, posts and crew memberships are removed. Your backup is deleted with it.
Where things live
Our server runs on Cloudflare. Judging uses Anthropic's API under their commercial terms, which do not train on the data. Payments, when they open, are handled by a payment provider; we never see card numbers.
Questions
Ask in the app's crew feed or email the address on the download page. If you find a security problem, tell us first and we'll fix it fast.