Privacy Policy
Last updated: 30 October 2026
This policy explains how Paperwell handles your information. The app is provided by Volkan Günay (Vomcore). Contact: hello@vomcore.com.
Short version
No account, no sign-up, no advertising, no crash reporter and no server of ours. Your library, notes and saved searches stay on your phone. To search PubMed, the app sends your search terms directly to the public services listed below — not to us. Apart from that, only the purchase check and a few usage counts, described below, go online.
What is stored on your device
- Library: articles you save (title, authors, journal, abstract and identifiers), your collections, notes, stars and read status.
- Saved searches: the query, its filters and when you last checked it.
- PDFs: open-access PDFs you download and PDFs you choose to attach from your own files. Paperwell only reads a file you pick yourself.
- Preferences: theme, language, default filters, and — only if you enter one — your own NCBI API key, kept in the iOS Keychain.
Deleting the app deletes all of this. Nothing is uploaded to us, because we run no server for Paperwell.
Services the app talks to
- NCBI E-utilities (U.S. National Library of Medicine) — receives your search terms and article IDs to return results. As NCBI requires, each request carries the app name and our contact address (
tool=paperwell,email=hello@vomcore.com); it carries nothing that identifies you. If you add your own API key, it is sent with your requests. - Europe PMC (EMBL-EBI) and PubMed Central — receive an article identifier when you look for an open-access PDF.
- doi.org and publisher sites — only when you tap a link, which opens in your browser.
Like any website, these services see your device’s IP address and handle it under their own privacy policies. We do not receive or log your searches.
Payments
Paperwell Pro is sold as a weekly, monthly or yearly subscription, or as a one-time lifetime purchase. Purchases are handled by the App Store and we never see your payment details. Whether your purchase is active is verified through RevenueCat, Inc. using an anonymous identifier that contains no name, email or advertising ID.
Permissions
Paperwell does not request the camera, photo library, contacts, location, microphone or notifications, and does not track you across apps.
Usage counts
To understand how the app is used and improve it, Paperwell sends RevenueCat a few values tied to the same anonymous identifier: on the welcome screen, whether you started with one of the sample questions (and which one) or with your own question; how many evidence searches you have completed; and at which moment the Pro screen opened. They never include your questions, search terms, saved articles, notes or API key. These counts are not linked to your identity, are not used for advertising and are not sold.
What we do not do
No advertising SDK, no tracking pixel, no fingerprinting, no data broker. We do not sell your data and do not use it for advertising.
Children
Paperwell is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.
Your rights and contact
We hold no account and no personal profile; your data is on your device and under your control. The only things kept on our side are the anonymous purchase record and the usage counts at RevenueCat; to have them deleted, write to the address below (the record is anonymous, so we may ask for your App Store receipt to find it). For any question write to hello@vomcore.com.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it and the new text is published here before the version that relies on it ships.