BG Remover – Privacy Policy

1. The Cutout Happens On Your Device

BG Remover removes the background from a photo, lets you put a colour, a blur of the original or a photo of your own behind the cutout, and then saves it, copies it to the clipboard or shares it. This policy covers the website at bgremover.riekapps.com and the Android and iOS apps together, because they work the same way: every part of the job — finding the subject, cutting it out, styling the background, producing the final image — runs on the device in front of you.

• Website — the AI model (about 88 MB) is downloaded into your browser once and runs there. Your image never leaves the browser tab.
• iPhone and iPad (iOS 17 or later) — the app uses Apple’s built-in Vision subject lift, which is part of the operating system and runs entirely on the device.
• Android — the app uses Google ML Kit subject segmentation. Google Play services downloads the segmentation model once, on first use, and from then on the model runs on the phone. The photo itself is never sent to Google.

After that one-time model download, the apps work with no internet connection. There is no BG Remover account, no sign-up and no RiekApps server that ever sees a picture. The app does not ask who you are.

2. Your Photos

The photo you pick, take or share into the app is read on the device, cut out on the device, and written back to the device — to your Photos library when you tap Save, to the clipboard when you tap Copy, or to whichever app you choose in the share sheet. At no point is the image, or anything derived from its content, transmitted to RiekApps or to any other party.

“Share to BG Remover” from Photos or another app hands the image to the app locally, in the same way as picking it. Pasting an image from the clipboard is likewise handled on the device.

3. The Anonymous Usage Counter

To know roughly how many people use BG Remover and whether it is working, the app keeps one anonymous counter. When you open the app, and when you finish a cutout, save it or copy it, the app requests a 1-pixel image from stats.riekapps.com, a server run by RiekApps. The request carries:

• An event name — for example “done” or “save”.
• The platform — web, app.ios or app.android.
• How long the cutout took, in milliseconds.

That is the whole of it. The request contains no image, nothing about the image’s content, no user identifier, no account, no advertising ID and no cookie; the server sets no cookie in reply. The server keeps only aggregate counts — how many events of each kind, per platform, per day — and there is no way to link a count back to a person or a picture. Nothing is sent from debug builds.

As with any web server, the stats server and the website keep standard access logs that record the IP address and user agent of each request. These are retained briefly, for security and to keep the server running, and are not used to profile anyone.

4. What Is Stored On Your Device

In the phone apps, in the app’s private storage, which other apps cannot read:

• Your recent cutouts — the original photo and the cutout, up to 40 of them — so you can come back and re-style them with a different background.
• Whether the intro screens have been shown.
• A count of how many cutouts you have made. It is used for one thing: deciding when to ask you, once, for a store review and, once, whether you would like to share the app (section 6).

You can delete cutouts one at a time, delete all of them at once from Settings, or remove everything by uninstalling the app.

On the website, the only thing stored is the model itself, cached by your browser so it does not have to be downloaded again. Clearing your browser’s site data removes it.

5. What RiekApps Never Collects

• No photos, cutouts or anything about what is in them. They stay on your device (sections 1 and 2).
• No name, email address, phone number, contacts or account information.
• No location. The app holds no location permission.
• No advertising ID, device identifier or cookie.
• No analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, no ad network and no third-party tracker of any kind. The only code that reports anything is the usage counter described in section 3, which we wrote ourselves.

6. Review And Share Prompts

After your first cutout, the app asks whether you would rate it, using the store’s own in-app review prompt — Google Play’s on Android, Apple’s on iOS. After your second, it offers to share a link to the app with someone, through your phone’s share sheet. Both are optional, both are shown only once, and both are handled entirely by the store or the operating system. RiekApps receives nothing from either prompt: we do not learn whether you rated, what you rated, or whether or with whom you shared.

7. Apple, Google And Other Third Parties

The app relies on these third parties, and on no others:

• Apple — Vision subject lift runs on the device as part of iOS; the App Store distributes the app and shows the in-app review prompt. See Apple’s Privacy Policy.
• Google — ML Kit subject segmentation runs on the device; Google Play services downloads the segmentation model once, which tells Google that a device requested it, in the same way as any other Play services download; Google Play distributes the app and shows the in-app review prompt. The photo is never sent to Google. See Google’s Privacy Policy.
• RiekApps — the stats server in section 3, and the website itself.

There is no ad network, no mediation partner, no analytics vendor and no billing service, because the app has no ads, no analytics beyond the counter and nothing to buy.

8. Device Backup

Your phone’s own backup may copy the app’s private data in section 4 — including your recent cutouts — to your Google or Apple account and restore it to a new phone. That is a feature of your device operating on your own account, not a RiekApps service, and RiekApps has no access to those backups. You can turn it off in Android Settings under Google → Backup, or in iOS Settings under your name → iCloud.

9. Permissions

• Photos — to pick a photo, and add-only access to save the cutout to your library. The app never reads your library beyond the photo you choose.
• Camera — only when you tap “Take a photo”. The app never asks for it before then.
• Internet — the usage counter in section 3 and, on Android, the one-time model download. Cutting out, styling, saving, copying and sharing all work offline.
• Clipboard — read only when you tap Paste, written only when you tap Copy.

The app asks for no access to your location, contacts, microphone or files outside the photo you choose.

10. Your Choices And Rights

RiekApps holds no data about you, so there is no profile on our side to access, correct, export or delete. The data on your device is under your control: delete cutouts in the app, clear the app’s data, uninstall it, or clear the website’s site data in your browser. Requests about data Apple or Google hold go to them under their policies. If you have a question or a request under a privacy law that applies to you — for example the GDPR or the Indian Digital Personal Data Protection Act — write to riekapps@gmail.com and we will answer it.

11. Children

BG Remover is a general-audience utility and is not directed at children under 13. It does not collect personal information from anyone, of any age. If you believe a child has used the app in a way that concerns you, write to us and we will help.

12. Changes

If this policy changes, the revised version is published on this page with a new effective date. A change that broadens what the app collects will be announced in the app before it takes effect, not applied quietly.

13. Contact

RiekApps — riekapps@gmail.com. Questions about this policy are answered at that address. See also the Terms of Use and the Support page.