Hookio Privacy Policy

Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how Hookio, a crochet pattern checking app developed by Idion, collects, uses, and protects your information. It applies specifically to the Hookio app on iOS and Android, not to other Idion products.

By using Hookio, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

What we collect

An anonymous session identifier. Hookio creates one behind the first screen, before you are asked for anything at all. It is what your shelf belongs to while you have no account, and it reaches nothing outside Hookio.

The patterns you bring. The photographs, screenshots or document you imported, up to twelve images or one document per pattern, and the rows read out of them: the stitch operations, the repeats, the counts the pattern states, and the yarn weight, yardage and hook size it calls for. These are yours. They are shown back only to you, on your own device and account.

Every verdict. Which rows reconcile, which rows are flagged and with which two counts, how many rows could not be read, and which terminology convention, US or UK, produced that verdict.

Your projects. The row you are on, the note you wrote against a row, and the photos you attached to a row, up to four per row, held at full size.

Your stash, if you log one. A name you typed, a yarn weight and a length in metres. It is optional, it is often absent, and the app works without it.

Your email address, only if you choose to keep your shelf across devices. That is one screen you can reach from the shelf or from Settings, and nothing else in the app asks for it. It is an email address and a password. There is no name field, no username, and no sign-in through Apple, Google or any other provider.

Your subscription status, through our subscription management provider, and the answer you give to the four option reason survey if you start to cancel and do not skip it.

Usage events in our own database. Which screens you reach and which actions you take, which import path you used and how many images it carried, whether a check reached a complete verdict, how long it took, whether that verdict came back clean, and whether either paywall presentation was reached and what happened there. These events are anonymous and are not tied to your email address.

Data kept on your own device, so the app works with no connection at all: your session, your appearance choice, your terminology setting, the images staged in the import tray, and your whole shelf with its verdicts, positions, notes and photos.

This is the complete list of what Hookio collects today. If that changes as the app grows, this policy will be updated first, and the last updated date above will reflect it.

What we do not collect

To be specific rather than leave this to inference, and in the order somebody worried about a craft app would ask.

No audio, ever. Hookio never asks for the microphone, at any point in the app, and there is no feature in it that wants one. No video either: the camera takes still images of pattern pages and of rows you have worked, and nothing else.

No location of any kind. The permission is never requested and no feature depends on one.

No health or medical records, no government-issued identification, no contacts, no advertising identifiers, and no biometric data.

No payment card, bank, or other financial account details. We never see them.

No notification token, because Hookio sends no notifications. There are none at launch, so there is nothing to register and nothing to store.

Nothing belonging to another person, and nothing of yours shown to another person. There is no shared shelf, no public library, no feed, no profile and no messaging. Nothing you import, write, photograph or check is visible to any other user of Hookio.

No third-party analytics software and no advertising software. None is embedded in the app, at any tier.

Nothing you bring is used to train any model, ours or anybody else's. Your patterns are read to produce your own verdict and for nothing else.

No claim about you. Hookio describes a document and its arithmetic. It never says anybody crochets well or badly, never rates a designer, and never attaches a score, grade, percentage or confidence value to a pattern or to a person.

If any of this changes in a future version of the app, we will update this policy before that change ships, not after.

Accounts and identifiers

Hookio can be used without an account, all the way through. Checking a pattern, reading the verdict, running the project, buying a subscription and restoring one all work with no account at all. When you start without signing in, the only identifier we hold is an anonymous session id that lets your shelf persist on this device.

If you later decide to keep your shelf across devices, we collect an email address and a password you choose. Nothing else: no name, no username, no confirm field, no marketing checkbox. There is no sign-in through Apple, Google or any other provider, because Hookio offers no third-party sign-in at all.

Creating an account joins your existing anonymous shelf to it rather than replacing it, so nothing you have already checked, run or written is lost. Your email address is used to sign you in, to send the reset link if you forget your password, and to contact you about the service. It is not used for marketing, and we send no promotional email to it.

Camera

Hookio asks for your device's camera in two places, and both are a tap you made. The first is photographing a pattern page you want checked. The second is attaching a photo to a row while you are running a project.

The permission is requested at the moment you tap the camera, never on first launch and never in advance. The camera is never activated automatically or in the background, and it takes still images only. Hookio records no video and asks for no microphone anywhere in the app.

If you decline, nothing else changes. Importing from your photo library, importing a file, pasting an image and sharing a pattern in from another app all keep working, so Hookio stays fully usable without ever granting the camera. The control stays where it is, we do not ask a second time, and if you grant it later in your device settings it works on the next tap with no relaunch.

Photo library

Hookio asks for your photo library so you can use a pattern you already have. Most patterns arrive as screenshots, so this is the ordinary path rather than the fallback: you pick up to twelve images for one pattern, and you can also attach a photo you already took to a row of a running project.

This access is user-initiated. It is triggered only on the tap that opens the library, and Hookio reads only the specific items you select. It does not scan, index or search the rest of your library, in the foreground or the background, and it never looks for pattern-shaped images on its own. If your device offers access to a limited selection, that is enough for Hookio and is never treated as a problem.

Photos you take inside Hookio are written to your project, not to your photo library. Hookio adds nothing to your library and deletes nothing from it.

If you decline, the camera, file import, paste and the system share sheet all still work, and the rest of the app is untouched.

How we use what we collect

We use the information described above to read the patterns you bring into rows, to walk those rows and produce your verdict, to hold your place in a project and to show your shelf back to you. That is the app.

We do not use your information for purposes beyond operating and improving Hookio, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

Usage analytics

We record which screens you reach and which actions you take, so we can see where the app is confusing and fix it. In Hookio that is a short and specific list: which import path you used and how many images it carried, whether the check reached a complete verdict, how long it took, whether the verdict came back clean, and whether either paywall presentation was reached and what happened there.

These events are stored in our own database. We do not use any third-party analytics service and we do not use any advertising service, so this information is not shared with anyone and is not combined with data from other apps.

The events are anonymous and are not tied to your email address. None of them is ever shown back to you as a score, a streak, a chart or a summary, because Hookio attaches no number to you or to your work.

Sending your pattern to be read

To turn a photographed or imported pattern into rows, Hookio sends the images or document you brought, over an encrypted connection, to our own server, which passes them to Google Gemini. This happens on our servers, not on your device, and our access key is never included in the app.

What comes back is structure and nothing else: the stitch operations, the repeats, the counts the pattern states, and the yarn weight, yardage and hook size it calls for. That reading pass never decides anything. Your verdict is produced afterwards, on your device, by arithmetic that walks those rows and compares the count each row reaches against the count the pattern states. Every flag you see comes from that arithmetic, not from the model.

Your pattern is sent for the sole purpose of producing your own verdict, and it is not used to train the model provider's systems or ours. We do not send your email address or your account identifiers with it.

What the model does, and what it does not

A model is used in Hookio for one job: reading a document you brought into rows. It is the step that turns a photograph of a page into stitch operations and counts. Everything you are then shown about whether those counts reconcile is arithmetic, computed on your device and reproducible by hand with a pencil.

The model never writes crochet instructions, never decides that a row is wrong, never supplies a corrected count, and never fills in an instruction your pattern left out. Our AI Policy describes how this works and what its limits are.

Automated decision making

Hookio's verdict is a statement about a document, not about you. It does not make decisions about you that produce legal effects or similarly significantly affect you, and it is not used for any form of profiling.

Nothing in the app scores, grades or ranks you, your work, or the designer of a pattern, inside the app or outside it.

Subscriptions and payments

If you subscribe, we collect your subscription status through our subscription management provider. Payment itself is handled entirely by the Apple App Store or Google Play. We never see or store your payment card details.

A subscription does not require an account with us. It belongs to your store account, which is also what restores it on a new device.

If you start to cancel, we show a short reason survey with four options. Answering it is optional, skipping it takes one tap, and the answer is stored with no name or email address attached to it.

Third-party services

We rely on a limited number of infrastructure providers to operate Hookio: hosting and database, the model provider that performs the reading pass described above, and a subscription management provider. These process information on our behalf, under confidentiality and data protection commitments, and only to the extent needed to provide their service to us.

We do not sell your information to third parties, and we do not share it with third parties for their own independent marketing purposes.

Security

We apply reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, loss, or misuse, including encrypting data in transit and restricting access so that your patterns, verdicts, projects and photos are readable only by your own account. No system is perfectly secure, but security is a priority in how we build Hookio, not an afterthought.

If we become aware of a security incident that affects your information, we will notify you and take appropriate action as required by applicable law.

How long we keep it

We retain your information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide Hookio's features. A checked pattern and a project position are kept indefinitely on purpose: leaving a project half finished and coming back to it months later is the ordinary way this app is used, and nothing expires because a subscription lapsed.

If you delete your account, we delete or anonymize your information as described on our Data Deletion page, except where retention is required by law or for the limited purposes described there.

International transfers

Your information may be processed in countries other than your own. Where this happens, we take steps to ensure it receives an appropriate level of protection, consistent with applicable data protection law.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access the information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, export it in a portable format, restrict or object to certain processing, or withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, California, or another jurisdiction with its own data protection law, you may have additional or more specific rights under that law. These are not reduced by anything in this policy.

See our Data Deletion page to request deletion, or contact us using the details on our Contact page for any other request. We will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law, and in any case within a reasonable time.

Children's privacy

Hookio is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under the age required by applicable law to consent to data processing on their own behalf. If you believe a child has provided us with information, please contact us so we can remove it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Hookio evolves. We will update the last updated date above when we do, and for material changes we will make a reasonable effort to notify you.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to our privacy team. See our Contact page for details.