Privacy Policy

This policy covers the Lighthouse website and the Lighthouse app. It describes what we collect, why we collect it, who else handles it, and what you can ask us to do with it.

The short version

• We collect what the app needs to run: your email address, the budget data you enter, what your subscription is, and basic technical information about the device you use it on.
• Lighthouse is paid for by subscriptions, not by advertising. Your financial data is never used to target ads or to build an advertising profile.
• We do not sell your personal information.
• We never ask for your online banking credentials and we do not connect to your bank.
• Delete your account from inside the app and it goes immediately, along with everything in it. Deletion cannot be undone, so export first.

Information we collect

Account information

Creating an account records your email address, your account preferences, and the authentication information that lets you sign in securely. That is what keeps your budget yours and reachable from more than one device.

Budget data

Using Lighthouse creates financial planning data: income entries, expense entries, categories, budgets and goals, and anything else you choose to record. The app holds your ledger on your own device and syncs it when you reconnect. This data exists for one purpose, which is to run the budgeting features you are using.

Your financial data belongs to you. Lighthouse exists to help you understand it, not to use it.

Subscription information

Subscribing records which plan you are on, whether it is active, when the current period ends, and when your free trial ended. Stripe holds your payment method and the billing details you give it; on our side we keep the identifier that links your account to your Stripe customer record, together with the payment events Stripe sends us. Those events can carry the name, email address and billing address you entered at checkout. We never store a full card number.

Technical information

Like most online services, we collect limited technical information automatically: device type, browser type, IP address, and basic usage data. It tells us the service is up, reachable and fast enough. It tells us nothing about how you spend.

How we use it

We use what we collect to run Lighthouse and to improve it: providing the budgeting service, keeping your account secure, letting you reach your budget from your devices, answering support requests, and understanding which parts of the product need work.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your financial data for advertising or marketing.

Who we share data with

Three service providers handle data on our behalf, each receiving only the minimum needed to do its job.

• Amazon Web Services hosts the application and stores the data required to operate it. See the AWS Privacy Notice.
• Stripe processes subscription payments. Your card details go directly to Stripe, and we never store a full card number. See the Stripe Privacy Policy.
• Sentry receives a report when something in the Lighthouse app fails, so we can see what broke and fix it. A report carries the error itself, where in the app it happened, and the identifier of the account it happened under. It is configured to leave out your IP address. See the Sentry Privacy Policy.

We do not sell personal data to third parties, and we do not share it with anyone else except where the law requires it.

Cookies and analytics

Lighthouse uses cookies and similar technologies only where the service needs them, which in practice means keeping you signed in. This site runs no advertising and no third party tracking. You can control cookies through your browser settings.

Lighthouse runs no product analytics. Nothing in it records which screens you open or which features you use, and the only automatic reporting is the error reporting described above. If we introduce an analytics tool, this policy will say so before it runs.

How long we keep it

We keep your account information and your budget data for as long as your account exists. Deleting your account from inside the app removes them at once, along with your sign-in identity and your customer record at Stripe. The deletion is irreversible and we keep nothing to restore it from, so export anything you want to keep before you start it.

Two things run on their own clock while your account is open:

• The payment events Stripe sends us are kept for 90 days and then erased. The ones belonging to your account go immediately when you delete it, ahead of that schedule.
• The change history that syncs your budget between your devices is kept for 30 days. A device that has been offline longer than that rebuilds its copy from scratch instead of catching up.

Where the law requires us to hold something longer, we hold it, and only for as long as that requirement lasts.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you have the right to see the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, and to have your account and its data deleted. You can also export your budget as CSV from inside the app at any time, without asking us. For anything else, write to the address below and we will act on it.

Age requirement

Lighthouse is for adults. The Terms of Service require you to be at least 18, or the age of legal majority where you live, whichever is higher, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone younger. If you believe someone under that age has given us personal data, write to us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the product or the law changes. The current version is always the one on this page, and the date at the top of it is when that version was published.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about how your data is handled, go to support@lhbudget.com.