Legal¶

The author is not an attorney. What you do with the Text Collector app and the information on this site is your responsibility.

This website¶

Except for the Text Collector logo and name, and where otherwise indicated, content on this website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Android, Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

The Verizon Messages+ Backup Viewer¶

The author is not affiliated with Verizon. Verizon is a trademark of Verizon Trademark Services, LLC.

The Text Collector App¶

The software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.

Privacy policy¶

Your personal data does not leave your phone. Text Collector keeps data only in protected storage so that other (non-root) apps cannot access it.

You may share collections created by Text Collector via third-party apps. Collection sharing is subject to the privacy policy of the sharing application you choose.

Usage statistics¶

The Text Collector app can send anonymous usage statistics to legaltextcollector.com. It reports statistics only if you explicitly opt in.

These statistics do not include any information that can identify any individual.

That is, Text Collector never reports any “personally identifiable information” to this site or any third party. In particular, Text Collector does not report:

Your name or contact information
Names or contact information from your address book
Content of your messages
Specific message metadata

The information that is reported includes the number of messages collected, how long the collection took and other similar data in aggregate form. It also includes the make and model of your phone, plus the versions Android and Text Collector installed.

Error reports¶

When Text Collector or the Verizon Messages+ Backup Viewer encounter certain types of errors, they offer an option to email help@legaltextcollector.com. If the error was caused by a particular text message, you can optionally include the text message data in the error report.

This is never sent automatically; you must explicitly choose to send a report for each error.

If you include text message content in your report, the text message content will only be used to troubleshoot the error. It will be deleted as soon as the error has been diagnosed.

Use of Android permissions¶

Text Collector uses these Android permissions:

Identity, Phone, Device ID & call information: To display your own name and contact information on the output PDF.
Contacts: To display names from your address book
SMS: To copy your text messages for rendering to PDF
Make and manage phone calls: To read owner’s phone number, on some HTC phones only
Access photos, media and files: To copy pictures and attachments, on some LG and Alcatel phones only
Network connections & access: To report anonymous usage data, only if you explictly opt in
Prevent device from sleeping: To avoid collections being delayed by phone going to sleep

This permissions request dialog from Android says that the same permission allows both sending messages and reading them:

Permissions request dialog screenshot says "send and view SMS messages"

Despite what this dialog says, Text Collection never sends messages and does not even request the “send” permission.