Privacy policy

No name, no email

When you open Sift for the first time, it creates an anonymous account tied to your device — not your name, email address, or phone number. That account is how Sift remembers your history and your free answers. Your phone keeps a backup of that anonymous ID so reinstalling Sift brings your history back — to erase it, use Delete my data (below) rather than just deleting the app.

What we store

• The link you share, and the question you ask about it.
• The answer Sift gives you, and the few comments it quoted as proof.
• A push notification token, so Sift can tell your phone when the answer is ready.
• If you tap 👍 or 👎 on an answer, that rating and any note you add.
• If you ask by text message, WhatsApp, Telegram, email, Instagram, Messenger or Discord instead of the app: the phone number, email address or account handle you wrote from, so the answer can be sent back to you there.
• If you redeem a promo code, the code and when it expires.

How an answer gets made

To answer your question, Sift reads the public comments on the post you shared, along with the post itself: its caption, transcript and post info, and for “Is this real or AI?” the video’s frames. For fact-checks and Sift+ web answers it also looks up reputable sources on the web. It fetches the post and comments through third-party public-data providers and the platforms’ own public APIs, then sends your question and the relevant text to AI service providers whose models judge what answers it and write the reply. To understand what a post shows and says, Sift may also send the public post (its video, images or text), its caption and your question to Google (Gemini). Sift keeps only a short written description of the post (never the video, images or audio), so the next person asking about the same post gets an answer faster. These providers process the data only to produce your answer. When you share a link, Sift only reads public comments — never private posts, messages or accounts.

What we keep, and for how long

The full set of comments Sift reads is deleted within 24 hours. What’s kept afterward is only the small number of comments actually quoted in your answer, saved alongside it so you can see the proof later. Sift never stores or re-shares a whole comment section or video.

If you share screenshots instead of a link, they’re sent to an AI service provider (Anthropic) to find the post — and, if it can’t be found, to answer from what they show. That happens before Sift knows what’s in them, so the provider sees everything on screen. Don’t share screenshots of private messages. The first time you share one, the app says this and waits for you to tap Continue. The screenshots themselves are thrown away right after; only the creator’s name, the caption and any comments quoted in your answer are kept, with your question.

Comments Sift reads off a screenshot but can’t find in the post’s public comments stay private to you: an answer that uses them, or an answer made from the screenshot alone, is never shown to anyone else or on a public page.

Sift uses your phone’s language setting so answers come back in your language. If you report a quoted comment, we keep that comment’s text and which post it came from so we can review it; the report isn’t linked to your name. While we review it, the comment is hidden from every answer and public page that quoted it; if we remove it, it’s deleted from them for good.

Public answer pages and anonymous counts

When Sift finds a confident answer about a public post, that answer can appear on a public page about the post (sift.wtf/p/…), with the few public comments that back it up — if two or more people asked it, if it’s an everyday question like “what song is this?”, or if the post’s own comments keep asking it. These pages show the question and the answer — never who asked, and never anything tied to your device.

Sift also keeps anonymous, aggregate counts about public posts — for example how many comments looked like spam or bots, which questions people keep asking, and whether commenters who own a product liked it. These counts aren’t linked to you and stay after you delete your data.

Payments

Sift+ purchases are handled entirely by Apple and Google through RevenueCat. Sift never sees or stores your card details — it only learns whether your account is currently on Sift+.

What we don’t do

Sift doesn’t sell your personal data, and it doesn’t use it for ad targeting. There are no ad trackers in the app. Some product answers include shopping links that may earn Sift a commission; clicking them is up to you.

Delete everything, any time

Open Sift, go to You, and tap Delete my data. Your account, your history, your answers, your ratings and your push token are removed immediately — no waiting, no support ticket required. (The anonymous counts and public answer pages described above aren’t tied to you, so they stay.)

Sift also asks RevenueCat, its payments provider, to delete the anonymous customer record for that account. If you’re on Sift+, that happens once your subscription has moved to your phone’s new anonymous account (or has ended), and Sift keeps retrying until RevenueCat confirms it. If you ask by text message or another chat app, replying STOP turns Sift off for that number or handle and deletes any link still waiting for a question; a link waiting for a question is deleted after 30 minutes anyway.

So deleting can’t be used to reset the free answers, and doesn’t cost you a promo pass you redeemed, Sift keeps one scrambled code made from your phone’s notification token (it can’t be turned back into the token), how many free answers you’d used and, if you had a pass, the day it ends — nothing you asked or saw — and clears it out after 30 days, or when the pass ends if that’s later. It also keeps whether you’d started your first 3 full Sift+ answers (just yes or no), for a year, so deleting can’t restart them; each part is cleared on its own once it runs out. And it keeps the times of your recent answers under scrambled codes — the last two days’, or the last 30 days’ on a Sift+ subscription — and clears them out within 30 days, so deleting doesn’t reset the daily limit or fair use.

On the web (and on phones Sift can’t verify), Sift also keeps a scrambled network code (made from your internet connection, never your address, and it can’t be turned back into one) with the times of your free answers and free fact-checks, to stop them being claimed over and over from one place. It’s kept up to 30 days, and stays when you delete your data.