EDC Vault — Privacy Policy

Effective date: May 19, 2026

EDC Vault (“the app”) is a personal collection tracker for custom knives, fountain pens, flashlights, and similar small everyday-carry items. It is published by SWD Collectibles, LLC (“we,” “us”). This page describes what data the app handles, where it goes, and what your rights are.

We wrote this in plain English. If anything is unclear, email admin@dornburg.org and we’ll explain.

The short version

No account, no login, no email collection. You don’t sign up for anything.
Your collection data stays in your own iCloud private database. We never see it. We never store it on our servers. We don’t run servers that hold it.
AI features call Anthropic’s Claude API. Item details and maker names you write are sent to Anthropic to generate catalog descriptions and maker bios. See “AI services” below for what gets sent and what doesn’t.
No analytics, no advertising, no third-party trackers. The app does not use SDKs that track you. We don’t know how many people use the app or how often.
You can delete your data at any time by deleting items inside the app, or by removing the EDC Vault container from iCloud entirely (see “Your rights” below).

What data the app handles

Data you create and store in your iCloud

The collection records you enter — item descriptions, photos, maker info, valuations, notes, tags — are stored exclusively in your private iCloud database (CloudKit). This data:

Syncs automatically across your own Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac) signed into the same iCloud account.
Is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest by Apple.
Is not visible to us. We have no access to your iCloud private database. Apple’s standard CloudKit access model applies — the developer of a CloudKit app cannot read user records.
Persists until you delete it.

Camera and Photos library

The app uses your device camera to capture photos and short video clips of items you log, and (with your permission) imports photos from your Photos library. Captured photos are saved into your iCloud private database alongside the item record. They are not uploaded anywhere else.

Microphone

The microphone is requested when capturing short action-shot video clips of items, and for any on-device voice dictation features. Audio is not transmitted off-device.

Speech recognition

When you use voice dictation while logging an item, the speech-to-text happens on-device using Apple’s Speech framework. The audio and resulting text are not sent to us or to third parties.

AI services

EDC Vault uses Anthropic’s Claude API for two features:

Catalog description generation — when you tap to generate a description of an item, the structured fields you’ve entered (maker name, model name, blade steel, materials, dimensions, valuation, etc.) are sent to Anthropic’s API to produce the output text. Photos are not sent.
Maker bio enrichment — when you add a new maker, the maker’s name and (if you provided one) the URL of their website are sent to Anthropic. The app also fetches publicly available text from the maker’s website and from public dealer pages (e.g. Arizona Custom Knives) to provide as source material for the bio. That source text is sent to Anthropic along with the maker name.

What is sent: the structured text fields above and, for bio enrichment, fetched public website text.

What is NOT sent: your photos, your iCloud identity, your device identifiers, or any data not directly involved in the request.

API calls are made directly from your device to Anthropic’s servers over TLS. Anthropic’s privacy policy applies to that traffic: https://www.anthropic.com/privacy

The app uses an API key bundled with the build during beta. Power users can replace it in Settings with their own key, in which case calls are billed to their account.

What we do not do

We do not run analytics SDKs (no Firebase, no Mixpanel, no AppsFlyer, no Amplitude, nothing similar).
We do not include advertising SDKs.
We do not sell, rent, or share data with third parties.
We do not use your data to train any AI model.
We do not track you across other apps or websites.

Children’s privacy

EDC Vault is intended for adults — typical users are 18+ collectors. We do not knowingly collect any data from children under 13. If you believe a child has been using the app and you’d like their device’s iCloud container reset, see “Your rights” below.

Your rights

Because your collection data is stored in your own private iCloud, you control it directly:

Delete an item — open the item, tap Delete. Removes the record from your iCloud immediately.
Delete a maker — Makers tab, swipe-to-delete.
Reset everything — delete the EDC Vault app from your device, then in iOS Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → Manage Storage → EDC Vault → Delete data from iCloud. This permanently removes every record the app stored.
Export your data — not yet supported in the beta; planned. Email us if you need a manual export.

You may also contact us at the address below to request information about what data we hold. (Spoiler: none of it. We don’t operate user-facing servers. Your iCloud holds everything.)

Security

All network traffic uses TLS. API keys for AI services are stored in the iOS Keychain on your device. The bundled beta API key is XOR-obfuscated in the app bundle as an anti-casual-extraction measure; we plan to migrate to a server-side proxy before public release so the underlying key never ships in the IPA.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a material way, the next app update will note the change in the release notes and the Effective date above will be updated. Continued use of the app after a change constitutes acceptance.

Contact

Shane Dornburg
SWD Collectibles, LLC
admin@dornburg.org