Short version: Doteka processes everything on your device. We do not collect, transmit, or store any of your personal data, photos, or search queries on any server.
1. Overview
This Privacy Policy describes how Doteka ("we", "our", or "the app") handles information when you use our Android application. Doteka is an AI-powered photo search application developed by the Doteka team and published at doteka.top.
We are committed to protecting your privacy. Our core design principle is that your photos and personal data remain on your device at all times.
2. What Data We Collect
We do not collect any personal data. Specifically, Doteka does not collect, transmit, or share:
- Your photos or thumbnails
- Photo metadata (location, date, device info embedded in images)
- Search queries you type into the app
- Semantic embeddings generated from your photos
- Text extracted from images via OCR
- Device identifiers, advertising IDs, or analytics data
- Usage patterns, crash reports, or telemetry
All of the above exists solely on your device and is never transmitted anywhere.
3. Permissions We Request
Doteka requests the following Android permissions to function:
- READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE — Required to scan and index photos in your gallery. Images are processed locally and never uploaded.
- INTERNET / ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE — Used only once, during the initial setup, to download the AI model files (~300 MB) from our servers. After models are downloaded, the app works entirely offline. No personal data is transmitted during or after this download.
- FOREGROUND_SERVICE / FOREGROUND_SERVICE_DATA_SYNC — Required to run the background image indexing process reliably while showing a progress notification.
- POST_NOTIFICATIONS — Used to show indexing progress notifications. We do not send any push notifications.
4. On-Device Processing
All AI inference in Doteka runs locally on your device using ONNX Runtime. This includes:
- Vision model — generates semantic embeddings from your photos
- Text model — converts your search query into an embedding for comparison
- OCR (Tesseract) — extracts text from images for text-based search
- Language translation (Google ML Kit) — translates Russian queries to English for the CLIP model; this runs on-device after the ML Kit translation model is downloaded
The semantic database (embeddings and OCR results) is stored in your device's private app storage and is not accessible to other apps.
5. Third-Party Services
Doteka uses the following third-party components:
- Google ML Kit (Language Identification & Translation) — runs on-device after downloading translation language packs. Subject to Google ML Kit Terms of Service. No personal data from your photos is processed by Google ML Kit; only your search query text may be processed locally by ML Kit.
- ONNX Runtime (Microsoft) — open-source inference engine. Runs entirely on-device. No data is sent to Microsoft.
- Tesseract OCR (Apache 2.0) — open-source OCR library. Runs entirely on-device.
We do not integrate any advertising SDKs, analytics SDKs, or social media SDKs.
6. Data Storage & Security
All data created by Doteka (embeddings database, OCR index) is stored in the app's private internal storage on your device. This data:
- Is deleted automatically when you uninstall the app
- Is not accessible to other applications
- Is not backed up to any cloud service by us (though Android's standard backup mechanisms may apply based on your device settings)
The AI model files downloaded at setup are stored in internal storage and are only used for local inference.
7. Children's Privacy
Doteka is not directed at children under the age of 13. Since we do not collect any personal data from any users, there is no specific concern regarding children's data. However, we encourage parents to supervise their children's use of any mobile application.
8. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. For significant changes, we will notify users via an in-app notice. Your continued use of Doteka after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.