Privacy policy

1. Who we are

InverterBoss is made by Kindly Made, a small independent app maker in South Africa. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Kindly Made. For the purposes of South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Kindly Made is responsible for any personal information described here. You can reach us at support@kindlymadeapps.com.

InverterBoss works with Sunsynk and Deye systems. Kindly Made is not affiliated with Sunsynk, Deye or SOLARMAN. Their names belong to them and are used only to say which systems InverterBoss works with.

2. Your sign-in

To show your system, InverterBoss signs in to your maker’s cloud with the same login you use in their app.

• Sunsynk Connect: your email address (or username) and password go from your phone to Sunsynk only, over an encrypted connection. Before it leaves your phone, the password is encrypted with Sunsynk’s own key, as Sunsynk’s website does.
• Deye Cloud: Deye asks every app to add its own key to each sign-in. So that this key is never stored inside the app, InverterBoss sends your email address (or username) and a coded form of your password (its SHA-256 hash, not the password itself) to Kindly Made’s sign-in helper, a small program run on Cloudflare. The helper adds InverterBoss’s key, passes the request to Deye, and hands Deye’s answer back to your phone. It stores nothing and logs nothing. It is used only when you sign in, which Deye asks for about every 60 days. Everything else goes straight between your phone and Deye.
• What InverterBoss keeps: the sign-in your maker gives back (a token), never your password. The token is encrypted with a key held in Android’s secure key store, and it is left out of your phone’s backups. Signing out deletes it from your phone.

Your account with Sunsynk or Deye, and what they do with your system’s data, are covered by their own terms and privacy policies.

3. Your system’s readings

• From your maker’s cloud: InverterBoss reads your system’s name, size and time zone, its power flow (solar, battery, grid and home), the battery’s charge, whether the grid is up, the inverter’s state and fault codes, and its energy totals and history. It reads them while you use the app and, for alerts, every 15 minutes in the background. They come straight from your maker to your phone.
• Live at home (Premium): when your phone is on your home Wi-Fi, InverterBoss can read your inverter’s Wi-Fi logger directly, every few seconds. To find the logger, it sends a short search message on your home network, which loggers answer with their address and serial number; or you type them in. These readings never leave your home network. InverterBoss only reads: it cannot change anything on the logger or the inverter.

We never receive your readings. History is read from your maker when you look at it and kept only while the app is open.

4. What InverterBoss keeps on your phone

InverterBoss saves the following in its own private storage on your phone:

• Your systems: the systems you chose, with their names and sizes, the login (email address or username) each one uses, and the address and serial number of a Wi-Fi logger you set up.
• Your sign-in tokens, encrypted, as section 2 explains.
• Your settings: the look, the power flow’s layout, each system’s electricity tariff, and your alert choices, limits and quiet hours.
• Your alerts: the list of past alerts, and what the alerts last saw of each system, so that one outage gives one alert.
• The widget: the latest reading of the system the widget shows.
• Premium: the last answer Google Play gave about whether you have InverterBoss Premium.

Other apps cannot read any of it. It never leaves your phone, except in your own Android backup (section 7) or when you choose to share something (section 6).

5. The permissions InverterBoss uses

• Internet and network state (INTERNET and ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE): to reach your maker’s cloud, our sign-in helper and your logger at home, and to wait for a connection before a background check.
• Notifications (POST_NOTIFICATIONS, Android 13 and later): for alerts, such as the grid going down. Android asks you first.
• Start at boot and wake lock (RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED and WAKE_LOCK): so that Android’s 15-minute background checks carry on after the phone restarts, and can finish once started.
• Billing (com.android.vending.BILLING): so that you can buy InverterBoss Premium through Google Play.

InverterBoss does not have, and does not ask for, permission to use your location, contacts, camera, microphone, photos, files or phone calls.

6. Things you choose to share

InverterBoss only shares something when you ask it to, through Android’s share menu, with the app you choose: the monthly report, as a picture or a PDF, and CSV files of your history. They hold your system’s name and readings, and the savings worked out from your tariff, and nothing else. Once you share something, it is handled by the app and the service you chose, under their terms.

7. Android backup

If backup is turned on for your phone, Android can include InverterBoss’s settings, your systems and their logins, and your alerts in your phone’s backup, which Google stores in your own Google account. The sign-in tokens are never included: on a new phone, you sign in again. The backup is made and kept by Google under Google’s privacy policy, and we have no access to it. You can turn backup on or off in your phone’s settings, and delete old backups from your Google account.

8. Google Play

You download InverterBoss from Google Play, which Google runs under its own terms and privacy policy. Google gives us statistics about InverterBoss, such as the number of installs, ratings and reviews, and the countries, Android versions and phone models it is used on. These come to us as totals. Google also shows us reports when InverterBoss crashes or freezes, from people who have chosen to share usage and diagnostics data with Google. Those reports describe the phone model, the Android version and what the app was doing, not who you are. We use them only to fix problems.

If you write a review on Google Play, it is public, along with the name on your Google account. We may reply to it there.

9. InverterBoss Premium and payments

The free app shows one system’s power flow, battery, grid and today’s totals. InverterBoss Premium is an optional monthly or yearly subscription, with a free trial on Google Play, that adds alerts, history, savings, several systems, the widget and live readings at home.

• Google Play takes the payment. You buy InverterBoss Premium through Google Play, under the Google Play Terms of Service and Google’s privacy policy. Google handles your card or other payment method. We never see your card or bank details.
• InverterBoss only asks whether it is active. To know whether you have Premium, InverterBoss asks Google Play, on your phone, whether your Google account holds an InverterBoss Premium subscription, and after you buy, it confirms the purchase to Google Play, as Google requires. It keeps only the answer on your phone, and sends nothing about your purchase to us.
• What Google tells us. Like every app sold on Google Play, we can see the orders for InverterBoss in our Google Play account: an order number, what was bought, the price, and whether the subscription is active, renewing or cancelled. Google’s sales reports also give, for each order, the buyer’s country, sometimes their state or province and postal code, and the model of phone used. We can look up an order by its number or by the buyer’s email address, which we do only if you write to us about a purchase. We use this only to look after your subscription, to answer you, and to keep the records that tax and accounting law ask for. Under GDPR, our reasons are to provide the subscription you bought and to meet those legal duties.
• Google Play’s own diagnostics. Google’s billing software, which InverterBoss uses for Premium, sends Google some information about how billing is working, under Google’s privacy policy. It includes nothing about your solar system.
• Managing or cancelling is always done in Google Play: open the Play Store, tap your profile picture, then Payments & subscriptions › Subscriptions. Uninstalling InverterBoss does not cancel a subscription.

10. What we never do

• We never change a setting on your inverter. InverterBoss can only read.
• We do not show ads, and InverterBoss contains no advertising code.
• We do not use analytics, tracking or crash-reporting tools inside InverterBoss.
• We do not ask you to create an account with us.
• We do not receive, sell, rent or share your login or your system’s readings.
• We do not use your information to build a profile of you or to make automated decisions about you.

11. When you email us

If you write to us, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to tell us, such as a report or a CSV file you send. We use it only to answer you and to improve InverterBoss. We keep emails only as long as we need them to help you, and usually no longer than two years after we last hear from you. You can ask us to delete them sooner. Mail to support@kindlymadeapps.com is passed on by Cloudflare’s email routing to a Google (Gmail) mailbox, where it is stored, and may be kept on servers outside South Africa or the European Union, under the protections those companies offer.

Under GDPR, our reason for using this information is our legitimate interest in answering your questions and looking after InverterBoss.

12. This website

This website has no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and it uses no cookies of its own. Its fonts and pictures come from the site itself, not from other companies. The site, and our sign-in helper for Deye, are hosted by Cloudflare, which handles technical information such as your IP address and browser type to deliver them and to protect them from attacks. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

13. Children

InverterBoss is made for adults who own or look after a solar system, and its audience on Google Play is people aged 18 and over. It is not directed at children, and it does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included.

14. Your rights (POPIA and GDPR)

Wherever you live, you can ask us:

• whether we hold any personal information about you, and for a copy of it;
• to correct it, or to delete it;
• to stop using it, or to limit how we use it;
• to object to how we use it.

In practice, the only personal information we could hold is emails you have sent us and, if you buy InverterBoss Premium, the order records Google Play shows us (section 9). Our sign-in helper keeps nothing. Your login, your readings and your settings are on your phone and with your maker, so you are in control of them (section 15).

To use any of these rights, email support@kindlymadeapps.com. We will reply within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to South Africa’s Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) or, in the European Union or the United Kingdom, to your local data protection authority.

15. Deleting your data

• A sign-in: in InverterBoss, open Settings › Your systems and tap Sign out. Its token is deleted from your phone, and its systems are no longer shown.
• Everything on your phone: uninstall InverterBoss, or use Settings › Apps › InverterBoss › Storage › Clear storage on your phone.
• Android backups: delete InverterBoss’s data from your phone’s backup in your Google account.
• Things you shared: delete them where you sent them, such as your email or chats.
• Your account with your maker: Sunsynk or Deye can help with that, under their own policies.
• InverterBoss Premium: cancel it in the Play Store (section 9). Google keeps its own record of your purchases under its privacy policy. The order records Google Play shows us stay in our Google Play account, and we keep copies only as long as tax and accounting law requires.

16. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will publish the new version on this page with a new date. If a change matters to you, such as InverterBoss handling your information in a new way, we will also say so in the app’s update notes before it takes effect.

17. Contact us

Kindly Made, South Africa. Email support@kindlymadeapps.com.