Privacy policy

Effective September 18, 2026

Refused stops junk mail. To do that we need a few things about you — your address, photographs of the mail you want stopped, and permission to contact senders on your behalf. This page says exactly what we collect, what we do with it, and what we give to anyone else.

The service is operated by Refused LLC, a Washington limited liability company, and is available in the United States only.

What we collect

• Account information. Your name, email address and profile picture, from whichever sign-in you use, or the email address and password you create.
• Mailing addresses. The postal addresses you add so we know which mail is yours.
• Photographs of mail. The pictures you take of junk mail. These usually show your name and home address, and whatever else is printed on the envelope.
• Recordings and transcripts of calls we make for you. When we phone a sender on your behalf, we record and transcribe the call. You are not on these calls; we are.
• Subscription information. What you bought and whether it is active. Apple and Google handle the payment itself — we never see your card.
• Notification token. An anonymous device identifier, if you turn on push notifications, so we can tell you when something happens.
• Diagnostics. Crash reports and basic device information — device model, operating system version — when the app misbehaves.
• Website analytics. Standard traffic measurement on refused.io. This does not apply to the app.

We do not collect your location, your phone number, your contacts, or any audio other than the calls described above. If you unlock the app with Face ID or a fingerprint, that check happens entirely on your phone and we never receive it.

What we do with it

• Read your mail photographs to work out who sent the mail.
• Contact that sender and ask them to take your address off their list.
• Tell you what happened, and keep a record so you can check.
• Run your subscription and support requests.
• Fix crashes and keep the service working.

We do not use any of it for advertising, and we do not sell or rent your information to anyone.

Who else sees it

Senders. This is the point of the service, so it is worth being plain about: to get you off a mailing list, we give that sender your name and the mailing address you want removed. There is no way to do this without telling them who you are. We usually do this by telephone, and we record and transcribe those calls so there is a record of what was agreed.

Service providers. Companies that process data on our behalf, under contract, and may not use it for their own purposes:

• Cloud hosting, storage and databases
• Artificial intelligence providers, which process your mail photographs and the audio of calls we make for you
• Telephone providers that place the calls
• Subscription and payment processing
• Crash and error reporting
• Email delivery
• Push notification delivery

We may also disclose information if the law requires it. Nobody else gets it.

Health-related mail

Junk mail sometimes comes from pharmacies, clinics or health insurers, and you may photograph a piece of it. Where that happens, Washington’s My Health My Data Act may treat what is in the photograph as consumer health data.

We handle it this way:

• We never infer anything about your health, and we do not categorise mail as health-related.
• We use a photograph only to identify the sender and get you off their list.
• We never sell it, and sharing it needs your written consent.
• Deleting your account deletes the photographs along with everything else that identifies you.

How long we keep things

• Mail photographs, addresses, call recordings and transcripts: until you delete them or delete your account.
• Account information: until you delete your account.
• Records of which senders were contacted: kept after account deletion, with everything identifying you stripped out, so we know which senders actually stop sending mail.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app, under You › Delete account. It removes your name, email, addresses, mail photographs, call recordings, transcripts and notification settings.

What stays is the de-identified record described above. Our crash reporting and payment providers keep their own records under their own retention schedules; we cannot delete those for you.

If you would rather not use the app, email support@refused.io and we will do it for you.

Your rights

Wherever you live in the US, you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. Write to support@refused.io and we will answer within 45 days. We will not treat you differently for asking.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Mail photographs are held in private storage and reached only through short-lived signed links. Access is limited to the people who need it to run the service.

Children

Refused is for adults. It is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about any of this, or about your data: support@refused.io