FBA Scout privacy policy
Who is responsible
Christopher Michael Barrow, trading as FBA Scout, is the controller responsible for the personal information described here. FBA Scout is a UK sole trader providing product research, sourcing plans and financial-scenario calculations. Contact fbascout@yahoo.com for privacy, support or account-deletion requests.
This notice covers the Android app, its account services and this support website. FBA Scout is currently in internal testing. The intended Google Play subscription is £19.99 per month; the current internal Android release has checkout disabled. This notice does not announce that paid subscriptions are available. We will update it when the services or processing change, and give additional notice where required.
Account and sign-in information
We use Supabase Auth for account registration, Google or email/password sign-in, email confirmation, recovery and session renewal. Supabase processes your account identifier, email address, authentication and session information. A password used for email/password access is sent directly to Supabase over HTTPS; the app does not persist that password. Email confirmation and recovery depend on email delivery, which is limited during internal testing. Contact support if you cannot access your account.
When you choose Google sign-in, Google authenticates your chosen account and supplies identity information to Supabase. This includes a Google identifier and email and may include name and profile-image information under the identity/profile scopes. Supabase stores the linked identity and authentication metadata. FBA Scout uses your Supabase identifier and email for account and membership access. The Android client discards the returned Google provider access token. A temporary PKCE verification secret is kept in Android SecureStore to complete sign-in and removed when the flow completes or is cancelled. Your Google password is handled by Google, not entered into FBA Scout.
The app keeps its own access/refresh tokens, session expiry and account details in Expo SecureStore on Android. The backend checks your Supabase session to authorize account requests. Authentication services may record account IDs, IP addresses, user agents, timestamps and security events. Logging and residual-copy limits are explained below.
Research and preferences
Signed-in account research is cached on your device and synchronized through the FBA Scout backend to Supabase. Changes made offline may queue locally and synchronize when the same account reconnects. Depending on what you use, records include:
- Barcodes, ASINs, product titles, brands and image URLs; analysis dates and available marketplace observations.
- Buy/sell prices, fees, preparation and inbound costs, calculation results, profit/ROI targets and sourcing decisions.
- Shop/source descriptions, notes, saved opportunities and recorded purchase quantities.
- Buy Plan dates, budgets, quantities and analysis snapshots; settings such as onboarding, VAT preference and sound.
Notes, buy costs and saved research can leave your device through account synchronization. They are not included in the separate product/fee lookup requests. Do not put passwords, payment-card details or other people's personal information in notes. Some device preferences and observed seller/product associations stay local. The manual financial-scenario screen uses temporary screen state and does not itself save or synchronize its entered values.
Camera, product requests and external services
Camera permission is used for barcode recognition while the scanner is active in the foreground. App code does not upload camera frames or save photos/video. Manual barcode entry is available. You can withdraw camera permission in Android Settings.
Product lookups send the requested barcode or ASIN to our backend; fee requests can include the selling price. The currently deployed backend supports Amazon seller authorization and Amazon SP-API requests. If that connection is used, Amazon processes product identifiers, relevant selling prices and the seller identifier for seller-specific requests. The connection flow processes authorization grants and stores refresh credentials encrypted server-side. Disconnecting a seller connection is separate from deleting your FBA Scout account. Keepa is not currently configured on our backend.
Displayed product images load from approved Amazon image hosts, which receive the image request and connection metadata such as IP address. Amazon/Google search and product links, seller links, and Discord/TikTok community links open those external services. Product links may contain identifiers or search text. Those services process visits under their own policies. There is no integrated Discord/TikTok login or tracking SDK.
Google Play membership
Google Play handles checkout when enabled; FBA Scout does not receive payment-card details through the billing integration. The purchase/restore implementation processes a purchase token, an account-derived obfuscated identifier, product/base-plan identifiers, status, acknowledgement and expiry to check membership. The backend stores an encrypted purchase token and its hash for ownership and verification. These flows remain subject to testing; the current distributed internal candidate does not enable checkout. Account deletion does not cancel Google Play billing or automatically issue a refund.
Why we use information
- Providing the service you request (contract): creating and authenticating your account, storing/synchronizing your research and settings, responding to service requests and verifying membership when enabled. Without the necessary account/authentication information, we cannot provide signed-in services. Camera use and Google sign-in are optional ways to use features.
- Protecting the service (legitimate interests): limiting abuse, investigating faults and securing accounts. Our interests are reliable, secure operation. We limit access and the information used for these purposes and do not use these records for advertising profiles. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests; we will consider your circumstances.
- Meeting legal obligations: handling applicable data-protection requests and keeping necessary accounting or legal records. A legal obligation does not justify keeping all research or raw credentials indefinitely.
Camera permission is a device control; it does not replace the lawful basis for any separate account processing. We do not use sourcing scores or BUY/MAYBE/PASS results to make decisions about your legal rights or similarly significant personal matters. We do not sell personal information or run advertising, product-analytics or crash-reporting SDKs in the inspected app.
Hosting, recipients and international processing
Supabase provides authentication and account storage; the configured project is in London. Render hosts our API in Frankfurt. Cloudflare delivers this support website when published on fbascout.co.uk. Website delivery necessarily processes IP addresses, requested paths and ordinary connection/security metadata. The static page code includes no login form, analytics, advertising, cookies or browser storage. Cloudflare can separately process delivery/security information under its own privacy information. Following the email link uses your chosen mail service and our monitored Yahoo mailbox. Google provides optional sign-in and Play billing; Amazon processes the optional connection/product/image requests described above.
These primary hosting locations do not mean every support, authentication, log or backup copy stays in the UK or Europe. Providers and their subprocessors may process information internationally. Supabase's published data-processing terms and Cloudflare's published data-processing terms include standard contractual clauses and a UK Addendum for relevant restricted transfers. These published terms are not a claim that every account-specific transfer assessment or provider copy has been independently verified. Contact us for information about the safeguards applicable to your data. Render's privacy information and Google's privacy information describe their processing.
We may disclose minimum necessary information where required by law or to handle a specific legal claim. The app does not request location, contacts or an advertising identifier for these features.
Retention, security and your controls
Account research remains while needed for the requested service, unless you remove it or delete the account. The live service does not automatically expire accounts or research by age. The approved future inactivity rule is closure of unpaid accounts after 24 calendar months without meaningful activity, with 30 days' advance notice and checks for paid entitlements, disputes and continued-retention requests. That automated process is not running; do not rely on inactivity or uninstalling to delete an account.
History has a capacity limit of 500 records: older unsaved entries may be evicted, while saved opportunities are protected. Buy Plan permits up to 366 stored days; that is a capacity limit, not automatic deletion after 366 days. History controls do not remove separate Buy Plan snapshots or settings. Offline removal is not immediate cloud erasure. Sign-out clears readable account caches but preserves isolated unsent changes for the same account to resume. Uninstalling or clearing app storage can remove local data and unsent changes while leaving cloud records.
Our approved operating rules limit raw security/authentication records under our control to 30 days or less where sufficient; ordinary support to 12 months after closure; raw deletion-request emails to 90 days after fulfilment; and minimal deletion receipts to 12 months after fulfilment. Temporary ownership evidence should be removed when no longer needed. These rules require operational review; automated expiry across mailbox, logs and provider stores is not established. Specific necessary complaint, incident or legal evidence may be restricted under a documented hold, reviewed monthly and removed when no longer needed. Necessary sole-trader tax records follow the applicable HMRC retention rule, separately from research and raw credentials.
Provider logs, authentication audit records and residual backup copies can remain outside active account records. We have not established a single physical-erasure deadline for every such copy. Dashboard log-access windows are not deletion guarantees. A deletion response will distinguish confirmed active-data removal from any known exception or outstanding provider check; we do not promise instant erasure of every copy.
Account services use HTTPS. Android session credentials use SecureStore, but research caches and pending synchronization queues use AsyncStorage without application-level encryption. Android backup is disabled in the inspected release configuration. The database uses account-ownership rules, and private stored credentials/purchase tokens use server-side encryption. Research is not end-to-end encrypted; our backend can read synchronized records. These controls cannot guarantee security against every risk.
Account deletion and privacy rights
Use the account-deletion instructions or email fbascout@yahoo.com. You do not need a paid subscription, app installation or access to the original email to make a request; we must verify ownership before changing an account and will review suitable alternatives if access is lost. Do not send passwords, verification codes, purchase tokens or card details.
You may request access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection or portability where applicable. Where consent is used, you can withdraw it. Contact us using the address above. We respond without undue delay and within the applicable legal time limit, generally one calendar month, with lawful identity-check or extension provisions where appropriate. This is a response requirement, not a promise that every backup is erased in that time. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Deleting your FBA Scout account does not delete your Google account. Manage or cancel any Play subscription separately through Google Play subscriptions.