Privacy Policy

Fireball is operated by Helios Studio Limited, a company registered in New Zealand (NZBN 9429053665690) ("we", "us", "our"). This policy covers personal information collected through the Fireball website (fireball.finance), the Fireball mobile apps, and the browser version of the Fireball app.

Fireball is currently offered in New Zealand and is preparing for Australian availability. We comply with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, including the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs), and apply the Australian Privacy Principles where they govern our handling of Australian visitor information.

We collect only what we need to run Fireball.

• Account details: username, email address, date of birth, your marketing choice, an optional referral code and signup answer, and two factor sign in settings if you turn them on.
• Financial data: balances, transactions, account details and KiwiSaver balances from banks you connect through Akahu; holdings, cash, purchase costs, deposits and withdrawals, dividends, trades and account value history from an Interactive Brokers link you add; anything you enter or import yourself; and figures Fireball works out, such as net worth history and projections. We never receive your bank login details, and neither link can move money or place trades.
• Sharing and Fireball Family: when you share your finances with a collaborator, their invitation email, their role, and a record of who changed what. When you pay for or join Fireball Family, invitation emails and which accounts hold a place. The payer sees the email of each person invited or covered, and members see the payer's name and email. Family covers billing only, so no one's finances are visible to anyone else in the family.
• AI data: what you ask AI features and their answers, AI Chat memory notes, any feedback you give, and for an AI assisted import a cleaned summary of the file rather than the file itself.
• Shop text you choose to share: only if you turn on Help Fireball recognise shops (see Section 6).
• Billing: your plan, subscription status and the payment references needed to match purchases made through Stripe, the Apple App Store or Google Play. We never receive your full card details.
• Product answers kept with your account: the signup channel you arrived from on the website (never the full link or an ad click identifier), a few fixed choices you make in the app, such as why you stopped a paid plan, and the column headings of files you import. We never record free text, amounts, rows or file names this way.
• Device, diagnostics and security: push notification tokens, crash and error reports, app speed measurements, anonymous mobile and website usage analytics, known app installations, IP address, and rate limit signals.
• Support and marketing: what you send through the support form, and your email and consent when you join the newsletter or the Australian waitlist.
• Address searches: the address you type when you search for a property.

We do notask for your full legal name, home address, phone number or government ID. A connected bank may include an account holder's name or address in its account record.

Information we get from others (IPP 3A)

Some information reaches us from another source: account data from your bank connection or broker, identity details from Google or Apple sign in, subscription status from Stripe, Apple or Google Play, and diagnostics or usage data from your device, browser, Firebase, Sentry or Vercel. We use it for the purposes in Section 3, and tell you through sign up, connection and purchase screens and this policy.

• Provide Fireball, including budgeting, net worth, FIRE projections, bank and broker connections, and AI features.
• Let you share your finances with up to four people you invite, and run Fireball Family invitations and cover.
• Process your subscription, enforce one free trial per person, and measure renewals, retention and churn in aggregate.
• Keep your account secure, sign you in, and detect fraud and abuse.
• Send service emails and push notifications, and marketing emails only if you opted in.
• Fix crashes and errors, and understand in aggregate how Fireball is used, which channels bring people to it, why people stop paying, and which import formats to support.
• Measure whether our Reddit and Meta advertising led to signups or purchases (Section 8).
• Respond to support requests and comply with the law.

We do not use your data for automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.

Your data is held by Supabase in Sydney, Australia. Mobile usage analytics are exported to Google BigQuery in Sydney and are never joined to your account or financial data. Some providers process data overseas (Section 5).

Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and database access rules mean your financial data is available only to you and the people you invite. Fireball is not end to end encrypted, because our servers process your data to provide the Service.

The mobile app keeps an encrypted copy of your data on your device so it works offline, with the key held in your phone's secure storage. A collaborator's device may keep a read only copy of shared data for up to 24 hours after its last access check. The browser version keeps financial data in memory only. If you add a home screen widget, a small net worth or FIRE snapshot is stored for it, hidden until you choose to show it. Signing out removes these copies.

We share only what each provider needs for the purpose below. Some are overseas, where privacy protections may differ from New Zealand's; we use the transfer routes allowed under IPP 12. Locations describe our current setup and can change.

We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we never share financial data with advertisers or data brokers.

AI features ask for your permission first, and send nothing without it. Anthropic (Claude) is our main AI provider. OpenAI is used only if Anthropic fails or is unavailable, and Google Gemini is a reserve. During October 2026 accounts are moving to this order; until yours moves, OpenAI is the main provider with Gemini as its backup. A request is never sent to more than one provider at once.

• What we send: only what the task needs, such as your question, recent chat, and the relevant balances, transactions, budgets or goals. Help questions get no financial data. We never send your email, login details, full account numbers or government ID, and no provider receives your user ID.
• How providers handle it: under their business terms, Anthropic and OpenAI do not train on our requests and keep them for up to about 30 days, longer only for abuse checks or where the law requires. Google's handling depends on its service terms, and we do not promise zero data retention with any provider. See the current terms from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.
• Web lookups: for a question that needs a current public fact, such as where a payment method is accepted, the provider may search the web with a short description and the names of shops from your spending, never amounts, dates or accounts. We keep the answer and its sources.
• Memory: AI Chat can keep short notes about you, such as a goal or your household situation, when you ask it to or, from app version 1.5.0, by itself. It is built not to keep balances, account numbers or sensitive details. You can read, edit and delete notes in the chat sidebar, and you can turn automatic saving off under Settings, Fireball AI, Automatic memory.
• Imports: an AI assisted import sends a cleaned summary of the file, never the file, file name, payees or notes.
• Your control: delete any conversation or all chat history in the app at any time.

Help Fireball recognise shops

If you turn this on, we keep the shop text, with digits removed, from your own card purchases that we could not match to a shop, together with the category you chose. Our team checks it by hand and adds real shops to a built in list that categorises them for everyone. Amounts, dates, accounts, transfers and payments to people are never shared, and other users never see what you shared. Turning it off in Settings deletes what you shared. Older app versions share a one way fingerprint of the shop name instead of the text.

• Crash and error reports: Firebase Crashlytics in the app and Sentry on the website receive error details, device and app versions, and your account identifier so we can fix faults. They receive no balances or transactions, and Sentry strips emails, cookies and sign in codes first.
• Mobile analytics: Firebase Analytics and Performance Monitoring are on during normal app use. They receive an anonymous installation identifier, a fixed set of app events and speed measurements, and device details, never your user ID, financial data or anything you type. Collection is suspended while you use Demo Mode.
• Website analytics: Vercel Web Analytics measures page visits and performance without cookies.
• Reddit: when you arrive from a Reddit ad, we tell Reddit about a later verified signup, trial or purchase, with a one way hash of your email, the ad click identifier, and your IP address and browser details. We never send your readable email, Fireball user ID, financial data or payment amount.
• Meta: for production visitors in New Zealand and Australia, Meta Pixel runs on approved public pages and we send matching server events for verified signups, trials and purchases. Meta may receive the page, IP address, browser details, Meta browser and click identifiers, and for those outcomes a one way hash of your account email address, used only to match it to a Fireball ad. We never send Meta your email address in readable form, and automatic event detection and automatic advanced matching stay off. Meta is never loaded on account, financial or sign in pages.

We use essential cookies and, for eligible visitors, limited advertising measurement cookies on public pages.

Fireball honours Global Privacy Control and the choice below. Opting out clears the Meta cookies we can reach and stops later Meta events from this browser. You can also clear cookies in your browser settings; removing the Supabase cookie signs you out.

Loading your Meta measurement preference.

We keep your data while your account is active. When you delete your account, we remove your account and everything you own in Fireball, including transactions, budgets, net worth history, AI chats and shared contributions. Some shorter limits apply while your account is active:

• AI chats: deleted 30 days after their last update. Memory notes stay until you delete them. AI feedback is kept for 12 months.
• Notifications: in app notifications are kept for 90 days.
• Bank and broker links: disconnecting Interactive Brokers removes everything it supplied. Bank history stays for your net worth charts unless you choose to delete it when disconnecting.
• Invitations: sharing and Family invitations expire after 14 days. Access and places last until removed, left, or either account is deleted.
• Shared shop text: kept only while the setting is on.
• Diagnostics and analytics: crash reports for 90 days, mobile analytics for 14 months, security and audit records for up to 365 days, and website analytics and error reports under each provider's settings.
• Advertising measurement: for a free trial from a Reddit ad, the hashed email and click identifier for up to 45 days. Reddit and Meta keep events under their own settings.
• Marketing consent: as long as needed to show consent and honour unsubscribes.

Some records can outlast account deletion:

• Billing and tax records, held by us and Stripe as tax law requires, typically 7 years.
• A free trial record of email addresses that have started a trial, kept at Stripe to enforce one trial per person.
• Billing analytics and refund evidence, with your account link removed. Pseudonymous billing groupings are destroyed after 36 months.
• Referral records, anonymised and kept for up to 7 years for fraud checks.
• App store subscription identities, with your account link removed, so they cannot be reused on another account.
• Encrypted backups, until they expire. They are used only for disaster recovery and never to restore a deleted account.

Under the NZ Privacy Act 2020 (and equivalent overseas laws), you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you (IPP 6).
• Correct anything that's wrong or out of date (IPP 7).
• Delete your account and Fireball data through the app or web dashboard, subject to the exceptions in Section 10.
• Delete selected data without closing your account, including saved bank history, AI chats and memories, and shared shop text.
• Withdraw marketing consent at any time.
• Turn off shop recognition sharing and delete what you shared at any time in Settings.
• Opt out of push notifications in the app or your device settings.
• Lodge a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).

To exercise any of these rights or make a privacy complaint, contact us at support@heliosstudio.app. We will acknowledge the request, investigate it, explain our outcome, and respond within the period required by law (normally within 20 working days for access requests). If you are not satisfied, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

If we suffer a privacy breach that is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and affected people as soon as practicable, as the NZ Privacy Act 2020 requires.

Fireball is not directed at children under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

When Connected AI is available, eligible paid users can expressly authorize a compatible AI service to read personal accounts, transactions, the transaction rules you saved, the alerts you set up, your next payday, your Weekly Review, your watchlist, and saved budget, goals, net worth, FIRE, debt and financial insight summaries. The service can also ask Fireball to work out figures for a period you name, or a FIRE or debt what if, which Fireball works out from your saved information with its own calculations, on its servers or in your Fireball app while it is open. Where suggestions are available, the service can suggest a change such as a rule, a category, a tag, a budget, a goal or an alert, and nothing changes unless you review and save it in Fireball. This consent is separate from Fireball AI settings. Client names are unverified. Your chosen service receives data under its own terms, including its processing locations and retention. Access excludes collaborator data, attachments, private notes, bank credentials and account numbers. Connections survive ordinary sign out, expire after 90 days without a financial read and can be disconnected individually or together. Disconnection stops future access but cannot recall previously shared data. MCP cannot refresh banks or change records. Fireball holds a request and its answer for up to 15 minutes and a suggestion for up to 30 days, or 7 days after you save or dismiss it. It keeps a record of whether its servers and your app worked an answer out the same way, without any figures, for 30 days. Fireball retains sanitized connection access events for 30 days without tokens, financial payloads or search text.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date above and, for material changes, notify you by email or an in app notice.

Helios Studio Limited
NZBN: 9429053665690
Auckland, New Zealand
Privacy Officer and general enquiries: support@heliosstudio.app
Support form: fireball.finance/support