Privacy Policy

The short version: Maintano keeps your vehicle records on your device. The free app needs no account, and we never see your logbook. Paid plans add an optional sign-in and cloud sync — if you choose them, a copy of your records is stored on our servers so it can reach your other devices. The app sends usage statistics and crash reports to help us improve it. Neither carries the content of your records; the one exception is the name of a service you add to the app’s service list, which usage statistics include after it is cleaned on your device. You can turn the usage statistics off in Settings. If you hand a vehicle’s records to its next owner, you choose exactly what goes and confirm it first. There are no ads, no tracking across other apps, and we never sell data.

Who we are

Maintano is a vehicle maintenance logbook app for Android and iOS, operated by Kian Mobilesoft Ltd., a company registered in Canada and based in Alberta. For privacy law purposes — including the EU and UK GDPR and Canada’s PIPEDA — Kian Mobilesoft Ltd. is the controller of, and the organization responsible for, the personal information described in this policy. Questions about this policy or your data: contact us.

Your records stay on your device

Everything you put into Maintano — vehicles, service log entries, receipt photos, reminders, notes, and the place names and addresses you type — is stored in the app’s private storage on your phone. On the free tier — whether or not you are signed in — that is the end of the story: Maintano keeps no copy on any server, and we cannot see, access, or recover your records. (Usage statistics are separate and described below; the one piece of your own text they can include is the name of a service you add to the app’s service list. A VIN you enter is sent to a public decoder to look the vehicle up, as the section after this one explains.)

Records belong to the account that was signed in when you entered them — or to the phone itself if you were not signed in. The first time an account signs in on a phone, the records entered before any sign-in become that account’s. If you sign in with a different account on the same phone, the app shows that account’s records only; the earlier account’s records stay on the phone, out of view, until it signs in again. Nothing is copied between accounts.

That has an honest flip side: without cloud sync your device holds the only copy. If you delete the app or use Settings → Delete all data, your records — for every account that has used the app on that phone — are gone permanently and we cannot restore them.

Looking up a vehicle by its VIN

When you enter or scan a vehicle’s VIN, the app sends that VIN to vPIC, the public VIN decoder run by the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), to suggest the vehicle’s year, make, and model. You can accept the suggestion, change it, or ignore it.

Only the VIN is sent: no name, no email address, no account details, and none of your records. The request goes straight from your phone to NHTSA and does not pass through our servers. NHTSA is not one of our service providers; it is a public service of the US government.

Accounts and cloud sync (Pro)

Signing in is optional and is only ever needed for paid features. If you do sign in, Google or Apple tells us your name, your email address, and your profile picture, along with a stable account ID. That ID — not your email — is what identifies your account to us; the email is there so we can show you which account you are signed in as and reach you about the account itself. We never receive your provider password.

With a paid plan, the records you already keep on your device — vehicles, log entries, reminders, insurance cards, and the photos attached to them — are also copied to our servers, which are Google Firebase (Firestore and Cloud Storage) operating on our behalf. That copy exists for one reason: to put your logbook on your other devices. It is not used for advertising, profiling, or anything else, and it is shared with no one beyond the processors this policy names.

Subscriptions are bought and paid for in the Apple App Store or Google Play. The stores handle the payment — we never see your card details. Whether your subscription is active is processed for us by RevenueCat, Inc., which receives your account ID and the purchase information the stores provide.

How long the cloud copy is kept:

• For as long as your subscription is active.
• After a subscription lapses, for 12 months from the expiry date. Any sign-in restarts that 12 months. We email a warning before the deadline to the address on your account — keeping that address reachable is the only way a warning can find you. At the deadline the whole account is deleted — the sign-in account, every synced record, and every photo. The copy on your device is untouched, and resubscribing inside the window simply resumes sync.
• If you delete your account yourself in the app, you are signed out immediately, your account’s copy on your device is wiped (records another account keeps on the same phone are left alone), and the account and its synced data are permanently purged 30 days later. Sign back in with the same provider inside those 30 days and everything is restored; afterwards, the same sign-in starts a fresh, empty account.

Moving your records to another of your accounts

If you lose access to the account your records are synced to, you can ask us to move them to another account of yours. We do that only after checking that both accounts are yours — a store receipt or order number for the subscription, and the email address on each account — and only once per source account. The records and photos are copied to the destination account; the copies in the source account are marked deleted and purged on the schedule above. We keep an internal record of the request (which accounts, when, how many records) so that a move can always be explained afterwards. Nothing on a phone is moved: the phone shows whichever account is signed in.

Usage analytics and crash reports

The app uses Google Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics to understand which features are used and to fix crashes. This telemetry includes things like which screens are opened, the kind of event that happened (for example “a log entry was added”), your device model, operating system version, app version, and the coarse region Google derives for statistics.

Apart from the one exception described next, it never includes the content of your records:

• No vehicle details, log entries, costs, notes, place names, addresses, or photos are sent.
• No advertising identifiers are used, and the app shows no ads.
• Nothing is used to track you across other apps or websites.
• Nothing is ever sold or shared for marketing.

The exception is the service list. If you add your own service to it — for example “Ceramic coating” — the name you typed is included in usage statistics, after it is cleaned on your device to remove anything that looks like personal details. We use these names to learn which services to add to the built-in list. Turning usage analytics off in Settings stops this too. It is the only text you type that usage statistics include.

Analytics identifies your installation by a random ID that Google assigns to the app on your device — not by your name or your email. If you sign in, we keep that ID with your account for one purpose: so that a subscription you buy in the store can be counted in our statistics. It is deleted together with the account.

You can turn usage analytics off at any time in Settings inside the app; the switch takes effect immediately. Crash reports have no switch: they carry nothing from your records, and a crash we never hear about is one we cannot fix. While you are signed in, crash and diagnostic reports carry your account ID, so that when you write to us about a problem we can find the reports that belong to your account. The ID is removed from new reports the moment you sign out. Reports already sent are kept for the crash-report retention period and are not part of the account deletion described above. Telemetry is processed by Google LLC on our behalf and retained for a limited period — analytics data for up to 14 months, crash reports for around 90 days — before it is deleted or reduced to aggregate statistics.

Push notifications

Maintano can send you a notification when we publish an announcement — a release note or a usage tip. It is off by default and only ever starts after you turn on News & announcements in Settings and allow notifications for the app.

When you turn it on, your device registers with Google Firebase Cloud Messaging on our behalf and subscribes to one or more announcement channels. A channel’s name carries at most an hour of the day — the one your device, going by its own clock, has picked to be notified at — and it identifies neither you, your account, nor your device. We do not store a notification token, or any other identifier, against you or your account: we send one message to a channel and Google delivers it to the devices subscribed to it, so we cannot tell which devices are in a channel or which received a notification. If you have usage analytics on (see above), opening a notification is counted as one event in those statistics, in the same way as opening any other screen of the app.

The notification carries only the announcement’s own title and text and a reference to the post it opens. Nothing from your logbook is ever included, and the channel is never used for offers or advertising. Turn it off at any time in Settings inside the app, or in your phone’s own notification settings; either one stops the notifications, and turning the switch off also unsubscribes the device from the channels.

When you contact us

If you send a message from the contact form, we store what you write — the topic, an optional title, your message, and the email address you supply if you want a reply — so we can read and answer it. Leave the email field blank and the message arrives with no way to identify you.

Each message also carries a little context about the browser that sent it, so a bug report is reproducible: your browser and operating system (the user-agent string), language, time zone, window size, and which build of this website you were using. Nothing from your logbook is included — the website cannot read it. Messages are stored with Google Firebase, are readable only by us, and are kept while we need them to answer you and to fix what you reported.

Cookies and this website

Everything above about usage statistics describes the app. This website is separate, and it measures nothing: we do not count visitors, record which pages you read, or know where you arrived from. There is no Google Analytics, there are no advertising or marketing cookies, no tracking pixels, and no third-party scripts on the pages you browse. Nothing here follows you to any other site.

One thing is not nothing, so we name it. When you press Send on the contact form, that page loads Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise to check the message is coming from a person rather than a bot. Doing so stores a cookie in your browser and sends Google technical information about the browser session to score the request. It loads only when you send a message — not on this page, and not on any other — and it is used only to protect that form from abuse, never to measure, profile, or advertise to you.

That is why this site shows no cookie banner: apart from the anti-abuse check on a form you chose to submit, there is nothing here to consent to. If we ever add website analytics, we will ask for your consent first and update this policy before anything starts collecting.

Photos and camera access

Maintano uses your phone’s camera only when you choose to take a photo or scan a document — of a vehicle, a receipt, an insurance card, or a VIN. On an iPhone, iOS asks for your permission the first time. On Android, the picture is taken by your phone’s own camera app or document scanner and handed back to Maintano, so the app holds no camera permission.

To add a photo or a file you already have, you choose it in your phone’s own picker. Maintano receives only the item you choose: it does not ask for access to your photo library or your files, and it cannot browse them. Maintano keeps its own copy of what you choose, and the original stays where it was. A PDF you choose is turned into page images on your phone, and the PDF itself is not kept.

Pictures you add are stored in the app’s private storage on your phone with the rest of your records, not in your photo library. On the free tier they are never uploaded; with a paid plan they are part of what cloud sync copies to our servers, under the same rules as the rest of your records.

When Maintano reads text from a picture — a VIN, or the details on an insurance card — it does so on your phone, with on-device text recognition (Google ML Kit on Android, Apple Vision on iPhone). The picture is not sent anywhere to be read. A VIN it reads is then looked up as described above.

Insurance card

You can keep a vehicle’s proof of insurance in Maintano, to show it from your phone when you are asked for it. A card is one to four page images — photos of its sides, scanned pages, or the pages of a PDF — and, if you fill them in, the insurer, the policy number, and the dates the policy takes effect and expires. Maintano can suggest those details by reading the card’s text on your phone, but it saves only the details you confirm or type. The text it reads is never stored and never sent anywhere.

The card is kept like the rest of your records: in the app’s private storage on your phone and, with a paid plan, in your account’s cloud copy, so it reaches your other devices. Maintano uploads it nowhere else. Like the rest of the app’s data, it can also be part of your phone’s own device backup (Android backup or iCloud Backup) if you have turned that on. Nothing from the card — its pictures, insurer, policy number, or dates — is sent with usage statistics or crash reports.

The card stays out of everything Maintano makes from your records for sharing: the service history PDF, the report PDF, the file prepared for Ask AI, the data export in Settings, and the web viewer. It is never part of an ownership transfer: the next owner never receives it, and when they accept the transfer, your card for that vehicle is removed from your account. If we move your records to another of your accounts at your request, the card moves with them.

Removing a card, or deleting its vehicle, takes it out of view at once. Its pictures are deleted from your phone once a day has passed, the next time the app is open, and, with a paid plan, from our servers 30 days later — the delay is what lets a mistake be undone. Its details are deleted with its pictures. Delete all data and deleting your account remove the card along with everything else, on the schedules described above.

Ownership transfer

Ownership transfer hands a vehicle’s records to its next owner. It is part of the paid plans, it never happens on its own, and it is the one place in Maintano where your records are disclosed to another person — so this section describes it in full. You start it, and you confirm what goes on a screen that lists the real counts before anything leaves your account.

• Always included: the vehicle’s details, its service history, and its reminders.
• Included unless you switch them off: receipt photos and notes. Both start switched on, and either can be turned off before you confirm.
• Place names and addresses: a place name and an address you typed on an entry travel with it, as part of the service history. If you typed an address you would rather not hand over, such as your home, edit that entry before you transfer.
• Never included: income entries — what you record earning with the vehicle, such as rides, deliveries, or renting it out — and the vehicle’s insurance card. Neither is copied to the other person, nor are their photos or notes, and the counts on the confirmation screen leave them out. Your income entries stay in your account and in your read-only archive; your insurance card for that vehicle is removed from your account when they accept.

No email addresses change hands. You pass the other person a short code, or a QR code, using whatever app the two of you already use. Neither of you types the other’s address into Maintano, and we never tell either of you anything about the other’s account. We store the code only as a hash, it works once, it expires after seven days, and you can revoke it at any time before it is used.

Once the other person accepts, it is final. A copy of the selected records is placed in their account and it is theirs — we cannot take it back, edit it, or delete it on your behalf, which is why the app tells you this before you confirm rather than after. You keep your own copy as a read-only archive, and you can delete that archive whenever you want. If the person receiving the vehicle records what they paid for it, that figure is private to them and is never shown to you.

The transfer itself is saved as a dated entry in the vehicle’s history, so a later owner can see the vehicle changed hands before. That entry names nobody: it carries no names, email addresses, or account details of previous owners.

Where your data is stored

The servers this policy mentions are Google Cloud infrastructure, and Google may store and process the data in the United States or other countries where it operates. RevenueCat processes subscription status in the United States. When data about people in the EU, UK, or Switzerland leaves those regions, the transfer is protected by the safeguards in our processors’ data processing terms, including the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. In plainer words: your data may be stored outside your country, and the companies holding it are bound by contract to protect it to the standard this policy describes.

Why we may process your data (EEA and UK)

Where the GDPR applies, our legal bases are: performing our contract with you (providing the app, accounts, cloud sync, and ownership transfer you ask for); our legitimate interests in understanding usage, fixing crashes, and preventing abuse — with the in-app switch above for usage analytics, and never with the content of your records beyond the cleaned service names described above; your consent where the law requires it, which you can withdraw at any time; and legal obligations we are subject to.

Children

Maintano is not directed at children under 13 — or the higher age, up to 16 in parts of the EU, that local law sets for consenting to data processing — and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Your rights

Because your records live on your device, you can read, export, or delete them directly — see how to delete your data. If you have an account, deleting it in the app removes the synced copy too, on the schedule described above.

Depending on where you live, the law also gives you rights over the personal data we hold: in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland, the rights of access, rectification, erasure, portability, restriction, and objection, the right to withdraw consent, and the right to complain to your data protection authority; in Canada, the rights of access and correction under PIPEDA and its provincial counterparts, and the right to complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; in US states with privacy laws, rights of access, deletion, and correction — and the right to opt out of data sales, which for Maintano is simple: we do not sell data. To exercise any of them, contact us and we will help.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will post the new version here and update the date at the top. Meaningful changes will also be announced in the app.

Contact

Use the contact form.