CoinLoupe Privacy Policy
Effective date: 2026-10-18
App: CoinLoupe: Coin ID & Value (Android, package com.cosmovex.qrpilot; earlier versions of this app were called QRPilot)
Developer: Cosmovex. Contact: trionapps@gmail.com
CoinLoupe identifies coins from photos, works out what the metal in them is worth, and keeps a private collection. It works without an account. This policy explains what stays on your phone, what leaves it, and why.
1. What stays on your phone
- Your collection. Coin names, years, mint marks, metal, weight and purity, quantities, condition, what you paid, your notes, and the photo of each coin you choose to save. It is stored on your phone only. We have no server that holds it and we cannot see it.
- Settings and counters. Your language, whether you confirmed you are 18 or over, when the app was installed (used for ad rules), and the last known metal prices.
- Purchases. A record of which products you own (Remove ads, CoinLoupe Pro), checked against Google Play each time the app starts.
Uninstalling CoinLoupe, or clearing its storage in Android settings, deletes all of this. If you share your collection as a spreadsheet, that file is made on your phone and goes only where you send it.
2. Permissions
| Permission | Used for | Leaves the phone? |
|---|---|---|
| Internet | Coin checks, metal prices, ads, purchases, analytics | Yes, as described below |
| Google Play billing | Buying Remove ads, Pro or check packs | Handled by Google Play |
| Advertising ID | Ads (you can reset or delete it in Android settings) | Used by Google AdMob |
CoinLoupe does not ask for the camera permission. When you tap "Take a photo" your phone's own camera app opens and hands CoinLoupe the one picture you took. "Choose a photo" uses Android's photo picker: CoinLoupe only receives the pictures you pick. It never asks for contacts, location, microphone, calendar or accounts.
3. What leaves your phone, and why
Coin checks (Google Gemini, through COSMO)
When you tap Check this coin, the photo (and the back, if you added it) and your app language are sent over an encrypted connection to COSMO, the AI service our apps share, which runs on Google Firebase. COSMO passes them to Google's Gemini API to identify the coin and returns the answer.
- The photo is not stored by us. It is passed through and not written to any database or file storage.
- The answer is stored. The result (coin name, metal details, notes, value range) is kept with your COSMO ledger entry until you delete your COSMO account. It is kept so that a retried request returns the saved answer instead of charging you twice.
- How Google handles what it receives is set out in its terms for the paid Gemini API: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms
- Coin checks are for people aged 18 and over. CoinLoupe asks you to confirm this before your first check. The calculator, the guide and the collection need no such answer and no internet.
- Results can be wrong. Use the confidence and the other possibilities shown. You can report a bad result with the button on the result screen.
COSMO account (your checks balance)
Your checks are a COSMO balance shared by Cosmovex apps. There is no sign-up. COSMO creates an anonymous identity for your phone from salted hashes of a device signal (Android's App Set ID and Android ID). It stores that identity, your balance, a ledger of what you spent, purchase tokens and product ids (so Google Play purchases can be verified and restored), and daily usage totals. COSMO never receives your name or email address. If you choose "Back up my checks", Google Sign-In is used only to attach an opaque Google account identifier so your balance can follow you to a new phone; that is optional.
What we keep after you delete your account, and why. We keep one anonymous device record (a salted hash and a single "free checks already claimed" marker) so that free checks cannot be claimed again by deleting and re-creating an account. It cannot identify you.
Deleting your COSMO account: Settings → Delete COSMO account in the app, or https://cosmovexapps.com/account-deletion . It removes your balance, ledger and stored results after a 7-day grace period.
Metal prices (gold-api.com)
To show what the metal in a coin is worth, CoinLoupe asks gold-api.com for the current price of gold, silver, platinum and palladium. The request contains no personal data and no information about your coins. Their servers see your IP address, as with any internet request. Prices are cached on your phone for 30 minutes. Their terms: https://gold-api.com/terms
Ads (Google AdMob) and consent
CoinLoupe is free and shows ads: at most a few interstitials a day, only after a coin result is closed, and none on install day. Google AdMob may collect device information, the advertising ID, IP address and ad interaction data to show, measure and limit ads, and (where you consent or the law allows) to personalise them. In regions that require it (such as the EEA, the UK and Switzerland) CoinLoupe uses Google's consent message to ask for your choices; you can change them at any time in Settings → Ad Privacy Choices. If you buy Remove ads or CoinLoupe Pro, CoinLoupe makes no ad requests at all. Google's policy: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
App analytics and crash reports (Google Firebase)
CoinLoupe uses Firebase Analytics to count how features are used (for example "coin check started", "result opened", "saved to collection"), Firebase Crashlytics to receive crash reports (the code location of the crash, device model, Android version, and app state), and Firebase Remote Config to adjust settings such as the daily ad limit without an app update. These services use an app-instance identifier and device information. Analytics events do not contain your photos, coin details, notes or collection. Firebase privacy: https://firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Cosmovex app suggestions (cosmovex.web.app)
When CoinLoupe starts it downloads a short list of other Cosmovex apps it may suggest (https://cosmovex.web.app/api/house_promo.json and https://cosmovex.web.app/api/cross_promo.json). The request sends no personal data. The server (Google Firebase Hosting) sees your IP address. The list is cached on your phone and used for a full-screen app suggestion (never shown if you buy Remove ads or Pro) and the "More from Cosmovex" row in Settings.
Purchases (Google Play)
Purchases are handled by Google Play. We receive a purchase confirmation and token from Google Play; we do not receive your payment card details.
Links you open
Opening a link (privacy policy, terms, support, Google Play) opens your browser or Google Play, which have their own policies.
4. Children
CoinLoupe is not designed for children and is intended for users aged 13 and over. Coin checks, which send a photo to an AI service, are for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
5. Your choices and rights
- Change ad consent at any time: Settings → Ad Privacy Choices.
- Remove all ads and ad requests: buy Remove ads or CoinLoupe Pro.
- Cancel a Pro subscription at any time in Google Play.
- Delete your collection and settings: uninstall the app or clear its storage.
- Delete your COSMO account: in the app or at https://cosmovexapps.com/account-deletion .
- For any other request about data held by Google services on our behalf (analytics, crash reports), email trionapps@gmail.com and we will help, within the limits of what those services let us identify and delete.
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or Californian law) you may have rights to access, correct, delete or object to processing of your personal data. Contact us at the address below to exercise them.
6. Security and retention
Data on your phone is protected by Android's app sandbox. Everything sent to COSMO, gold-api.com, Google and Firebase travels over encrypted connections. COSMO results and ledger entries are kept until you delete your account. Analytics and crash data are kept by Google for the retention period set in our Firebase and Google Analytics settings (at most 14 months for analytics events) and then deleted.
7. Changes
If this policy changes, we will update this page and the effective date above. Significant changes will be noted in the app's release notes.
8. Contact
Cosmovex, trionapps@gmail.com