KNOWN

Privacy Policy

Effective 22 August 2026

Known is a car maintenance app. It keeps a file on your car: what it is, what it needs, and what it is worth. This page says exactly what we collect to do that, what we do with it, and how you delete it. There is no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party analytics SDK in the app.

Who we are

Known (knownhistory.com) and the Known app for iPhone are operated by Known ("we", "us"). You can reach us at hello@knownhistory.com.

What we collect

Your account

When you sign in with Apple or Google we receive the name and email address those services share with us, and an identifier for your account. If you sign in with an email code we keep the email address. We use these to create and secure your account and to tell which file is yours. We never see your Apple or Google password.

Your car

What you add: the VIN or license plate you scan or type, the year, make, model and trim, a nickname, service records (what was done, when, at what mileage, what it cost, notes), odometer readings, registration expiry, tire date codes, claims about past work, and any photo you attach. The VIN is decoded through the US government's public NHTSA vPIC service to identify the car; recalls and complaints come from NHTSA by year and model. A license plate is used only to find the car's VIN and vehicle details, and to do that we send the plate and state to public vehicle-lookup services (we try our own index first, then third-party lookup sites). Those services see the plate, not your account. A plate is never used to look up an owner, and we never store or show one.

Your device

If you allow notifications, a push token for this device, so reminders can reach it. Your time zone, so reminders arrive in the morning where you are. The camera is used on the device to read a VIN, a plate, an odometer or a tire sidewall; the frames are processed on your phone and are not sent to us. If the app crashes, or our server hits an error while serving you, a diagnostic report goes to Sentry: the error itself, the app version, your device model and iOS version, and your account id, so we can fix what broke. No screenshots, no screen contents, nothing you typed.

Payments

Known Plus is a subscription paid through Stripe on the web. Stripe collects your card details; we never receive them. We keep Stripe's customer and subscription identifiers and whether the subscription is active, so the app knows what you have paid for. Stripe's own privacy policy governs what Stripe holds.

Usage

The app sends us a small number of first-party usage events (for example that a car was added or a service was logged) so we can see which parts of Known are used. These go to our own servers only. The website uses a lightweight analytics script from Vaya to count visits; it is not present in the app.

What we do not do

Who else touches your data

We run on Cloudflare (servers and storage), PlanetScale (database), Stripe (payments), Apple (sign-in and push notifications), Google (sign-in, if you choose it) and Sentry (crash and error reports, as described above). The app loads brand logos from logo.dev by car make; like any image load, logo.dev sees your device's IP address and nothing else about you. Market estimates are computed from public auction and listing data about cars like yours, never from your file.

How long we keep it

For as long as you have an account. Your car's file is yours: a closed file is kept so its history stays true until you delete it or delete your account. When you delete your account, the usage events are stripped of your identifier and kept only as counts.

Deleting your account

In the app, open the garage menu, then Account, then Delete account. That removes your account, every car and its history, your photos, your push token, cancels any Plus subscription and deletes your Stripe customer record, and asks Apple to revoke Known's Sign in with Apple authorization. It cannot be undone. You can also email us and we will do it for you.

Your rights

You can see everything we hold about a car in the app and export it as a document. You can correct a record by adding a new one (history is append-only so that it stays honest), and you can delete a car or your whole account at any time. If you are in a place with privacy rights beyond these, such as the EU or California, email us and we will honor them.

Children

Known is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app and update the date above.