Your contacts are not our product.
Most "free" business card scanner apps are not really card scanners. They are contact harvesting businesses that use card scanning as a pretext to gain access to your entire address book. They build a graph of every person you have ever met and sell it. SnapSlips is different. We are a software company. You pay us a small annual fee; we give you a tool that works. Your contacts stay yours. Full stop.
The business model they don't tell you about
When you install a "free" card scanner app and tap "Allow access to Contacts", you are not just letting it save one card. You are handing over your entire professional network — every person you have ever met, their phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, and companies.
That data is then sold through three channels:
- Data brokers — bulk contact databases sold to marketers and recruiters.
- Lead generation services — your contacts become "leads" sold to sales teams.
- Email verification platforms — your contacts' emails are used to verify and enrich other companies' lists.
The card scanning feature is incidental. Collecting your contacts for free is their real service. You are not the customer — you are the product.
Apps that operate this model include:
CamCard
Contact harvesting + data sales
CardScan
Contact harvesting + lead generation
ScanBizCards
Contact harvesting + CRM upsell
ABBYY Business Card Reader
Contact sync to cloud (their servers)
How SnapSlips is different
Zero contacts permission
We never ask for access to your address book. Not on sign-up, not ever. There is no technical pathway for us to read your existing contacts.
One contact downloaded, nothing else
When you save a scanned card, your browser generates a standard .vcf file and downloads it directly to your phone. We never see it, store it, or transmit it.
Card images deleted after 30 days
Scanned images are stored temporarily to power your scan history. They are permanently deleted after 30 days and are never used for AI training or advertising.
Our revenue model is simple
You pay us a small annual fee. That is our entire business model. We have no data broker relationships, no lead generation partnerships, and no advertising network.
Side-by-side comparison
Our privacy policy is written in plain English
No legal jargon designed to obscure data collection. We spell out exactly what we collect, why, and for how long — and what we will never do.
Try SnapSlips free — no contacts access required.
One free scan. No app download. Works on iPhone, Android, and desktop.
Plans from $9.99/year · Cancel any time · No contacts permission ever