Becoming Canadian

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-06-07

Becoming Canadian is an independent study app for the Canadian citizenship test. We have designed it to collect no personal information about you.

What we collect

No personal information, no usage analytics, no advertising identifiers, and nothing used for cross-app or cross-site tracking.

The one exception is crash and performance diagnostics. The app uses BugSnag (a third-party crash- and performance-monitoring service from SmartBear) to help us find and fix bugs. When the app crashes or hits an error, BugSnag automatically sends a diagnostic report that includes a stack trace, the type of device, the OS and app version, and app-start and session timings. None of this is tied to your identity and it never contains your study progress, attempts, bookmarks, or test history. Performance timings carry a random per-install identifier (not your name, email, or any account; never used for tracking) — see Crash reports for the full breakdown. You can turn all of this off under Settings → Crash Reporting.

What stays on your device

Your study progress is stored locally on your device only:

This data is written to your device’s UserDefaults and never leaves the device. Settings → Reset All Progress inside the app clears your attempts, bookmarks and test history. In-app preferences (such as the exam-timer toggle and the category filter) persist until you change them again or delete the app — deleting the app removes every trace, including those preferences.

Network activity

The app’s only automatic network activity is sending crash and performance diagnostics to BugSnag (see Crash reports). It makes no other network calls of its own. The only other outgoing connections happen when you tap a link that opens Safari — for example, a link on the Citizenship Journey screen that opens a canada.ca page about the citizenship application process. Those open the Government of Canada’s website in your browser; at that point you are interacting with canada.ca, not with this app.

Children

The app is suitable for all ages and collects no personal information from anyone, including children. The only data that leaves the device is the anonymous crash and performance diagnostics described under Crash reports — these contain no personal information and are not tied to any user’s identity. You can turn them off entirely under Settings → Crash Reporting.

Third-party SDKs

The app links BugSnag (bugsnag-cocoa and bugsnag-cocoa-performance) for crash and performance monitoring — see Crash reports. Aside from BugSnag, the app links only Apple frameworks (SwiftUI, UIKit, Foundation). BugSnag’s own privacy policy is at https://www.bugsnag.com/legal/privacy-policy.

Crash reports

The app uses BugSnag to automatically transmit crash and performance diagnostics so we can find and fix bugs. A report is sent when the app crashes or hits a handled error, and BugSnag also records app-start and session performance timings. A report includes the stack trace, device model, OS version, app version, and a short trail of recent in-app actions (for example, “started a test” or “reset progress”) to help us reproduce the problem. None of this is linked to your identity, and it never includes your study progress, attempts, bookmarks, or test history.

For crash and error reports we clear the random per-install identifier BugSnag would otherwise attach, so those reports cannot be correlated back to a specific device or person. Performance timings (app-start and network spans) are sent with a random per-install identifier that BugSnag generates; it is not tied to your name, email, or any account, but it does let those performance events be grouped by install. It is not used for advertising or cross-app tracking.

Crash reporting and performance monitoring share a single switch — the same Settings → Crash Reporting toggle controls both. Reporting is on by default (it is anonymous and helps us fix bugs), so on a fresh install the performance identifier may be created on early launches. While the toggle is off, neither SDK is started on that launch, so no performance identifier is created or transmitted then. Turning it off takes effect the next time you open the app.

You can disable crash and performance reporting entirely under Settings → Crash Reporting; the change takes effect the next time you open the app.

Separately, the app may collect on-device diagnostic logging via Apple’s MetricKit; that data stays on your device and is shared only if you explicitly export it via the share sheet.

Changes to this policy

If we change how this app handles data, we will update this page and bump the Last updated date above. Material changes will also be announced in the App Store release notes.

Questions

Email support@zarochintsev.com with any privacy questions.

This is an independent project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Government of Canada.