Privacy Policy

Effective October 17, 2026

Draft — under legal review before public launch.

Ruckwise is a budgeting and financial planning app built for U.S. service members. This policy explains what information the operator of Ruckwise ("we") collects, how it is used and protected, and the choices you have. The short version: your financial data is yours, we never sell it, we don't show ads, and we don't use tracking or advertising tools.

Information that stays on your iPhone

Most of what you put into Ruckwise — transactions you enter, budgets, goals, plans and events, notes, your Leave and Earnings Statement (LES) pay details, and settings — is stored only on your iPhone, encrypted by iOS. It reaches our servers only if you turn on server sync or bank connections.

• LES scanning happens entirely on your iPhone. The image is never uploaded.
• The Ask assistant answers using Apple's on-device intelligence or built-in calculations. Your questions and numbers are not sent to us or to any AI provider.
• Your app passcode is stored only on your iPhone, as a one-way scrambled fingerprint in the iOS Keychain.

Information we collect when you create an account

• Account details: your email address, an optional name and rank, and your password (stored only as a one-way bcrypt hash — we can never see it).
• Security details: your two-step verification secret (encrypted), one-time recovery codes (hashed), and a list of your signed-in devices (the device type reported by your browser or app, and when it was last used).
• Data you sync: if you turn on server sync, the transactions and categories you choose to sync.

Beta waitlist

If you join the waitlist on our website, we store your email address and the date you signed up, only to invite you to the beta and send launch news. Ask us at any time to remove it.

Bank connections (Plaid)

When you connect a bank, you sign in through Plaid Inc., a service used by many financial apps. Your bank username and password go to Plaid, never to us. Plaid then shares with us, read-only: your account names, the last digits of account numbers, account types, balances, and transactions (date, amount, merchant, and category). We cannot move money, make payments, or change anything at your bank. Plaid's handling of your data is described in the Plaid End User Privacy Policy. You can disconnect a bank at any time in the app, which also revokes our access at Plaid.

How we use information

• To run the app: show your balances and transactions, keep your devices in sync, and send the notifications you turn on.
• To keep your account secure: verify sign-ins, detect abuse, and limit repeated attempts.
• To support you when you ask for help.

We do not sell or rent your information, use it for advertising, share it with data brokers, or use it to train artificial intelligence models.

Who else handles data

We use a small number of service providers, bound to use data only to provide their service to us:

• Plaid — bank connections (see above).
• Railway — hosts our servers and encrypted database in the United States.
• Apple — app distribution and, if you allow them, notifications.
• Have I Been Pwned — when you choose a password, we check whether it appears in known data breaches. Only the first five characters of a one-way hash of the password are sent; the password itself never leaves our server.

We may disclose information if required by law, such as a valid court order, and will notify you when the law allows.

How we protect information

All connections use encryption in transit (HTTPS). Our entire database is encrypted at rest with AES-256, and bank access tokens and two-step secrets are additionally encrypted with separate keys. Sign-ins can require two-step verification, and you can sign out every device at once. Backups are encrypted. See our Security page for details.

How long we keep information

We keep your account data while your account is open. If an account has no sign-ins or activity for two years, we delete it and disconnect its banks. When you delete your account in the app, it is erased from our live systems immediately and your bank connections are revoked at Plaid. Encrypted backups that may contain it are deleted within 30 days. Records of administrative actions (for example, that an account was deleted) are kept for security and legal purposes.

Your choices and rights

• Access and export: export your transactions from the app at any time (Settings → Export Transactions).
• Correction: edit any information in the app.
• Deletion: delete your account in the app (Settings → Server Sync → Delete Account), or erase all data on your iPhone (Settings → Erase All Data).
• Notifications: turn each type on or off in Settings → Notifications.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws. Contact us to exercise them; we won't treat you differently for doing so.

Children

Ruckwise is intended for adults 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Not affiliated with the government

Ruckwise is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or any branch of the armed forces.

Changes

If we make material changes to this policy, we will tell you in the app before they take effect.

Contact

Questions or requests: the support email listed on our App Store page.