Shaina — Privacy Policy

Legal

Shaina — Privacy Policy

This policy covers Shaina, the Android personal safety app published by Comp-sci-tech. Shaina is designed around the assumption that the person holding the phone may be in danger from someone who can reach it — so the shortest honest summary is this: your information stays on your phone, and we never see it.

The short version

No account. There is no sign-up, no password, no email address and no profile. We do not know who you are.
No servers. Shaina has no backend. Your contacts, your history and your location are never uploaded, because there is nowhere to upload them to.
No tracking. No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no third-party SDKs that profile you.
No selling or sharing. We hold no personal data about you, so there is none to sell, rent or share.

Who we are

Shaina is built by Sadique Iqbal at Comp-sci-tech, an AI-first software engineering studio. If anything here is unclear, or you think it is wrong, email sadiqueiqbal.si@gmail.com.

What Shaina stores on your phone

All of the following is written to an encrypted database on your device, and nowhere else:

Trusted contacts — the names, phone numbers and relationships you enter yourself.
Emergencies and practice runs — when each started, what Shaina did, and the coordinates recorded while it was active.
Notes you write — with the time, and where you were if you chose to save that.
Your settings — including your alert message and the shake gesture Shaina learned from you.

Shaina does not read your phone's contact list, your messages, your call history, your photos or your files.

Your location

Shaina reads your location while an emergency is active, and at no other time. It is written to your phone so you can read it out, show it to someone, or include it in the alert you send. It is not transmitted to us, because Shaina has no server to transmit it to.

What leaves your phone

Three things, and every one of them goes from your phone to a person — never to us, because there is no us for it to reach:

The alert to your circle. By default Shaina opens your own messaging app with the message written out and your contacts already chosen, and you press send. If you switch on Send SMS automatically, Shaina sends it itself — because a phone in a pocket has nobody free to press anything. Either way it is an ordinary SMS from your number to theirs, passing through no service of ours.
The emergency call. Shaina opens your dialler with the number filled in. Emergency numbers can only be dialled by you: Android does not permit any app but your phone's own dialler to place those.
Location updates, every ten minutes. While an emergency is still open, and only if automatic sending is on, Shaina texts your saved contacts your position again. Where you were when it started is worth far less to someone looking for you than which way you were going. It stops when the emergency does.

The microphone

Two things use it, and both are yours to turn off.

Searching the safety guide by voice. Shaina asks your phone for on-device speech recognition only. If your phone would have to send the recording to a server in order to understand it, Shaina does not offer the microphone at all rather than doing it quietly. What was heard appears in the search box so you can see and correct it.

Recording during an emergency, which is off unless you switch it on. Shaina then records for as long as the emergency lasts and stops the moment it ends. Shaina is never listening at any other time, and there is no always-on voice trigger — that was considered and deliberately left out, because a permanently visible microphone indicator is a dangerous thing to have on the phone of someone being watched at home.

Recordings

This is the most sensitive thing Shaina will ever hold: a recording of a room, made at the worst moment of your week. So it is off until you turn it on, it runs only while an emergency is open, and it stops when you say you are safe.

The file is written to storage that only this app can read, is never uploaded, and never leaves the phone. Deleting it is one tap next to Play on that emergency — not buried in a menu, because a person who wants it gone wants it gone now. Delete all recordings in Settings removes every one of them while leaving your history intact; they are separate buttons because they are separate decisions.

Permissions, and why each one is asked for

Each permission is requested at the moment it is first needed, explained in the app beforehand, and — apart from motion sensing — optional.

LocationTo record where you were during an emergency. Never read at any other time.

Motion sensorsTo recognise the shake gesture that starts an emergency.

MicrophoneOptional. For voice search, and for recording during an emergency if you turned that on. Never at any other time.

PhoneOptional. Without it Shaina opens your dialler instead of placing the call.

SMSOptional. Without it Shaina opens your messaging app instead.

AlarmsSo a safety timer goes off at the minute you set it for, rather than whenever Android next gets round to it.

NotificationsTo tell you a shake was detected, to show a safety timer running, and to ring a decoy call.

InternetNot requested at all. Shaina has no internet permission, so Android will refuse it a network connection whatever its code asks for.

How your data is kept safe

Encrypted at rest: Shaina's database is encrypted on your device.
Nothing in transit: Shaina holds no internet permission — not restricted, not unused: absent. There is no upload, no sync and no backup, and no way for the app to start one. You can verify this yourself from the app's listing on Google Play without taking our word for it.
No third-party SDKs for analytics, attribution, advertising or crash reporting.
Minimal by design: the least data we could store is the simplest way to keep it safe.

How long it is kept, and deleting it

Your data stays on your phone until you remove it. You can delete an individual session, or all of your history, from inside Settings. Uninstalling Shaina deletes the database and everything in it.

Because nothing is ever sent to us, there is no copy anywhere else — there is nothing for you to ask us to delete, and nothing we could return to you if you asked.

Children

Shaina is not directed at children under 13, and collects nothing from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If Shaina ever needs to do more than this, we will update this page and the date below, and the app will ask you before anything changes — you will be able to decline and keep using it.

One thing Shaina is not

Shaina is not an emergency service and cannot dispatch anybody. It dials the number you have configured and hands over to your phone. When there is no mobile network at all, it can record what happened but it cannot transmit anything.

Last updated: 26 September 2026 · The same policy is available inside the app, under Settings → About Shaina → Privacy policy. This summary is provided in good faith and is not legal advice.