Privacy
Last updated September 8, 2026
A camera, a voice and a passport. This is everything the app keeps, everyone it passes through, and how to get rid of all of it.
Obelisk is an iOS app operated by Bautista Tancredi, an individual developer based in Argentina (“we”, “us”). This policy is written to be read. If anything in it is unclear, write to hello@obeliskguide.app.
The short version
- The app keeps the photographs you take of monuments, where they were taken, and what was said about them. That is what a visit is.
- A photograph and your voice go to OpenAI to be identified and answered. They are not used to train anything.
- Nothing is published, sold, or used for advertising. There is no analytics SDK, no ad network and no tracking in the app.
- Delete account, in Settings, removes everything, immediately, on the servers and on the phone.
1. What the app keeps
Photographs. The picture you take with the camera, or pick from your library, is stored because a visit is a photograph. It is kept on your phone and on our servers, under your account.
Location. If you allow it, your location at the moment of a scan is used to work out which monument you are looking at and to file the visit under a city. A photograph chosen from your library carries its own location, and that is used instead of where you are standing. Location is asked for on the first scan, it is optional, and it is only ever read while you use the app. It is never read in the background, and the app never watches where you go: it knows the cities you scanned in and nothing else.
What was said. The transcript of each conversation, so that a visit can be opened again later and the conversation picked back up. When you speak, your voice is streamed to the model while you talk and is not stored by us; what is kept is the text.
The answers you gave once. The language, voice, persona, interests and mode you chose at setup, and the date your passport was issued.
Your account. When you sign in with Apple we receive a stable account identifier and, depending on what you chose on Apple’s sheet, a name and an email address. If you asked Apple to hide your email, the app only ever sees Apple’s relay address.
Your membership. Whether you have a membership and which plan, mirrored from Apple. Payment is handled entirely by Apple. We never see your card or your payment details.
Scans. A record of each scan that was allowed, with its day, which is how the free daily limit is counted.
We do not collect contacts, browsing history, advertising identifiers or anything about your device beyond what the app needs to run. The app contains no third-party analytics, crash reporting, or advertising SDKs.
2. What it is used for
To identify what you photographed and talk to you about it. To keep your passport, and to bring it back when you sign in on a new phone. To let a conversation reach back to your own earlier visits. To count the free scans in a day, and to know whether you are a member. To send you the one notification the app has, if you turn it on, which is scheduled locally on your phone the morning after a scan and never uses your location.
Nothing you photograph or say is used for advertising, sold, rented, or shared with anyone except the providers below, and only so that the app works.
3. Who else sees it
| Provider | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | The model that identifies the monument and holds the conversation | The photograph, your voice while you talk, the text of the conversation, the city the photo was taken in, and a few lines about your recent visits so it can refer back to them |
| Convex | Our database and file storage | Your account record, visits, photographs, transcripts and scan history |
| Clerk | Sign in with Apple, and the account behind it | Your Apple account identifier, and the name and email Apple passes on |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, billing for memberships, and speech recognition when you dictate a question in Read mode | Authentication and purchase data. Dictation runs on the phone where the device supports it |
| Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation) | The photograph that stands for a city on its stamp | The name of the city, once. Never a coordinate, never anything about you |
| OpenFreeMap | The map tiles under the passport’s map | The tile requests your phone makes, which carry your IP address like any web request |
OpenAI is accessed through its commercial API. Under those terms, what is sent is used to answer you and is not used to train their models.
4. Where it is stored
Our providers run their infrastructure mainly in the United States, so using the app means your data leaves Argentina and whichever country you are in. Data is encrypted in transit. Your visits and photographs are scoped to your account and are not visible to any other user.
5. What stays on the phone
Your passport reads with no signal, which means the visits and their photographs are on your phone as well as on our servers. That copy goes when the app does.
6. How long it is kept
For as long as your account exists. Deleting a visit removes its photograph, its transcript and its place in your passport. Deleting your account, in Settings, removes the account, every visit, every photograph and every transcript, on the servers and on the phone, immediately and with nothing kept back. Records of purchases stay with Apple under Apple’s own policies.
7. Your choices
- Location is optional. Refuse it and scans still work; the visit is filed without a city. It can be changed in iOS Settings at any time.
- The microphone is only open while the app is talking to you in Listen mode, or while you hold the mic button in Read mode. In Read mode the app takes no audio session at all.
- The notification has a switch in Settings and is off until you turn it on.
- Delete a visit from its own page. Delete your account from Settings.
- To ask for a copy of your data, or anything else about this policy, email hello@obeliskguide.app.
Depending on where you live you may have further rights, including to access, correct, delete or restrict the use of your data, and to complain to a data protection authority.
8. Children
The app is not directed to children. You must be at least 13, or the age of digital consent where you live if that is higher, to use it. We do not knowingly keep data about anyone younger; if you believe we do, write to us and it will be deleted.
9. Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with it, and the app will say so where appropriate. Continuing to use the app after that means you accept the new version.
10. Governing law
This policy is governed by the laws of the Argentine Republic.
11. Contact
Bautista Tancredi · hello@obeliskguide.app