ShieldioPrivacy Policy
- Shieldio collects no data. No analytics, advertising, tracking or third-party code, no account, and no server of our own.
- Shieldio can't see what you browse. Safari applies Shieldio's blocking rules itself.
- The only thing it downloads is public filter lists, from their maintainers' websites, with no identifiers and none of your settings. You can turn this off.
- Purchases are handled by Apple. We receive no personal data when you buy Shieldio.
Who we are
Shieldio is made by Johnny Liao, an independent developer ("we", "us"). If you have a question about this policy or your privacy, email wumbusapps@gmail.com.
What the app collects
Nothing. Shieldio doesn't collect, store on a server, sell or share any information about you or about how you use it. In particular, the app has:
- no account or sign-up;
- no analytics, crash-reporting or advertising software, and no third-party code of any kind;
- no tracking across apps or websites, and no use of the advertising identifier;
- no server of our own: the app never connects to us.
The App Store privacy label for Shieldio is "Data Not Collected".
Your browsing
Shieldio is a set of Safari content blockers. It gives Safari a list of rules (which addresses to block and which page elements to hide), and Safari applies them by itself, on your device. Content blockers can't see the pages you visit, what you type, or which rules matched; Safari doesn't tell them. So Shieldio has no browsing history, and nothing about your browsing could ever be sent anywhere.
Filter list downloads: exactly what is sent
To keep blocking up to date, Shieldio downloads new versions of the public filter lists it uses, directly from the websites of the people who maintain them. These are the app's only network requests.
| Server | What it serves |
|---|---|
easylist.to | EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy's Annoyance List and Fanboy's Social List |
secure.fanboy.co.nz | The EasyList Cookie List |
- What a request contains: an ordinary HTTPS request for the list's public file, the same for everyone. It includes the app's name and version (for example "Shieldio/1.0") so the maintainers can see which app is asking, and, if you already have a copy, the version tag the server gave out with it, so an unchanged list isn't downloaded again.
- What it never contains: any identifier for you or your device, your settings, your browsing, or anything else about you. The app keeps no cookies for these servers.
- What those servers see: like any website you visit, they see your IP address, the time of the request and the information above. They're run by the list maintainers, not by us. We have no relationship with them beyond using their public lists, we receive nothing from them, and we can't see their logs.
- When: only after a list has expired (every 4 to 9 days), when you open Shieldio or when iOS lets it refresh in the background, and whenever you tap Check for Updates.
- How to stop it: turn off Automatic Updates in Shieldio. It then makes no network requests unless you tap Check for Updates. Blocking keeps working with the lists already on your device, which include a copy that comes with the app.
You can check all of this yourself: Settings > Privacy & Security > App Privacy Report lists every server an app contacts.
Your settings
Which categories you block and whether automatic updates are on are stored only on your device, shared between Shieldio and its Safari extensions. They're never sent anywhere. Deleting Shieldio deletes them.
Purchases
Shieldio is sold by Apple through the App Store, under Apple's Privacy Policy. We don't receive your name, email address, Apple Account details or payment information. Apple gives us sales reports, such as the number of downloads by country or region, which don't identify you. For refunds, see Support.
Information Apple may share with us
If you have chosen, in your device's settings, to share analytics with app developers, Apple may share crash reports and aggregated usage statistics (such as the number of installs) with us. These are collected by Apple, not by Shieldio, and never include your browsing. You can turn this off at any time in Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements. Reviews you post on the App Store are public and visible to us.
When you contact us
If you email us, including with Report a Broken Site in the app (which opens a pre-filled email in your own Mail app that you can edit before sending), we receive your email address and whatever you choose to include, such as the address of the site that broke. We use it only to reply to you and to fix blocking problems, we don't share it, and we keep it only as long as we need to. Ask us at any time and we'll delete it. We may pass the address of a broken site, without anything about you, to the filter list maintainers.
This website
This website is a set of static pages. It uses no cookies, no analytics, no scripts, no web fonts and no third-party resources. It's hosted on GitHub Pages. GitHub logs visitors' IP addresses for security purposes, as described in the GitHub Pages documentation and the GitHub General Privacy Statement. We don't have access to those logs.
What we can and can't access
| We can't access | We can see |
|---|---|
|
|
Children
Shieldio doesn't collect personal information from anyone, including children.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, laws such as the GDPR (EU and UK) and the CCPA (California) give you rights to access, correct, delete or move personal information about you, and to object to certain uses. Since the app doesn't collect any personal information, the only information we might hold is email you've sent us. To make a request about it, email wumbusapps@gmail.com. If you're in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your local data protection authority. We don't sell or share personal information.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll update this page and the effective date above. If a future version of Shieldio changes what it sends or where, for example by adding a new server, we'll update this policy before that version is released.
Contact
Johnny Liao
Email: wumbusapps@gmail.com