Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 22, 2026

This Policy explains what Barrier collects, how it is used, and who processes it. Skincare information can be sensitive, so this page is specific about photos and skin data rather than general.

1. Overview

This Privacy Policy explains how Barrier collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you use our website, mobile app, and related services.

Barrier is a cosmetic skincare app. Some of what you give it — your skin type, sensitivities, concerns, reactions, routine, and optional photos of your skin — is personal and, in some places, legally treated as consumer health data. Section 5 covers that specifically.

2. Information we collect

Account information. Your email address, the sign-in method you use (including Sign in with Google), an account identifier, subscription status, and account settings.

Skincare profile. Skin type, sensitivity, goals, concerns, preferences, products on your shelf, routine steps, and reaction history you record.

Journal and check-ins. Daily notes, how you report your skin feels, dates, and related entries.

Photos. Photos you choose to capture or add — including skin and face photos for progress tracking, and product or label photos for scanning. Photo capture is optional; routine tracking, journaling, product search, and watchlists all work without it.

Product activity. Products you scan, search, save, compare, or watch, the exact variants you track, and the ingredient records associated with them.

Barrier Expert conversations. The questions you ask, the context assembled to answer them, any image you explicitly attach, and the responses returned.

Device and usage information. Device and operating system details, app version, language, approximate region, diagnostic and crash information, and how features are used.

We do not ask for and do not want government identifiers, financial account numbers, or medical records.

3. Where your information is stored

Barrier keeps your records on your device and, when your account sync is active, in our hosted backend so your profile, routine, journal, watchlists, and associated media are available to your account and can be restored. This includes photos you save, which are stored in our media storage and associated with your account.

We want to be direct about this because it is easy to assume otherwise: photos you save are not necessarily confined to your phone. If you want a photo to exist only on your device, do not save it to your Barrier account, and delete any photo you have already saved.

4. How we use information

• To operate the app: resolving products, reading ingredient lists, producing fit scores, and maintaining your routine, journal, and watchlists.
• To generate cosmetic observations and Skin Score values from photos you chose to add.
• To answer your questions through Barrier Expert using the context you saved.
• To send restock and price notifications for variants you asked us to watch.
• To keep the service secure, prevent abuse, moderate content, and enforce our Terms.
• To fix problems, understand which features are used, and improve the product.
• To meet legal, tax, accounting, and compliance obligations.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not use your skin photos or health-related information to target advertising to you.

5. Skin photos and consumer health data

Photos of your skin, and the profile and journal entries describing your skin, may qualify as consumer health data or as a special category of personal data depending on where you live. We treat them accordingly.

We do not use photos for identification. Barrier does not run facial recognition, does not create a faceprint, template, or other biometric identifier from your photos, and does not use them to identify you or anyone else. Photos are used to produce cosmetic observations and a Skin Score for your own record.

Photos you attach to Barrier Expert are sent to our AI provider. When you explicitly attach an image to a question, that image is transmitted to OpenAI for processing so it can be described. This happens only for images you attach to a request.

Cosmetic only. Observations produced from photos describe visible cosmetic patterns. They are not a diagnosis and are not a medical assessment. See our Terms.

Your control. Photo capture is optional. You can delete individual photos and entries in the app, and you can delete your account and its associated data — see Data Deletion.

6. Artificial intelligence processing

Barrier Expert and some background features use third-party large language models, currently provided by OpenAI. To answer a question, we send the model the text of your request together with the context needed to answer it, which may include your saved profile, routine, shelf, check-ins, watchlist, product and ingredient records, and any image you attached.

Text may also be sent to a moderation service to detect abusive or unsafe content.

We instruct our AI provider to process this data to serve your request. We do not permit your content to be used to train third-party foundation models. AI output is generated and can be wrong; see the AI section of our Terms.

7. How we share information

We share information only as needed to run Barrier:

• Infrastructure and storage — hosting, database, media storage, and authentication providers, including Supabase and Cloudflare.
• AI and moderation — OpenAI, as described above.
• Sign-in — Google, when you choose Sign in with Google.
• App distribution and billing — Apple, for App Store distribution and any subscription you purchase there.
• Legal and safety — where required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Barrier, our users, or others.
• Business transfer — if Barrier is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.

We do not sell your personal information to data brokers or advertisers.

8. Data retention

We keep your information while your account is active and for as long as needed to provide the service. When you delete your account we begin deleting your account data, except where we are required or permitted to keep something for legal, security, billing, fraud-prevention, dispute-resolution, or compliance reasons. Backups are cycled out on a rolling basis.

9. Security

We use technical and organizational measures including encryption in transit, access controls, and row-level authorization so that account data is reachable only by that account. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, port, or restrict processing of your personal information, to object to certain processing, to withdraw consent, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

You can edit or delete most information directly in the app, and delete your account at any time — see Data Deletion. For anything else, email [email protected] and we will respond within the time your law requires. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

11. US state privacy notices

California. Under the CCPA/CPRA you have rights to know, delete, correct, and opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined. Skin and health-related information is treated as sensitive personal information and used only to provide the service you asked for.

Washington and Nevada. Washington’s My Health My Data Act and Nevada’s consumer health data law give you rights over consumer health data. We collect the skin-related data described above to provide Barrier’s features to you. We do not sell consumer health data. You may request access or deletion at [email protected].

Other states. Residents of states with comprehensive privacy laws have comparable rights, which you can exercise using the same contact address.

12. International users

Barrier is operated from the United States, and information is processed there and in other countries where our providers operate. If you are in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, we rely on your consent for special-category data such as skin health information, on performance of our contract with you to run the service, and on our legitimate interests in securing and improving it. Transfers out of your region are made under appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

13. Children’s privacy

Barrier is for adults 18 and over and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided information, email [email protected] and we will delete it.

14. Cookies and similar technologies

Our website uses only what is needed to serve and secure the pages, and to understand aggregate traffic. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. The mobile app does not use advertising identifiers for tracking.

15. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. If changes are material we will take reasonable steps to notify you, such as updating the effective date, posting notice in the service, or sending a message where appropriate.

16. Contact

Questions, requests, or privacy concerns can be sent to [email protected].