Privacy Policy
This policy explains what Fetan SMS reads on your phone, what actually leaves it, what we never collect, and how to have your data deleted.
Last updated: 29 July 2026Fetan SMS is published by Fetan Technologies ("we", "us"). It is an Android application for businesses in Ethiopia: it reads bank deposit SMS on your device and delivers an alert to the Telegram chats you choose. This policy covers the app, our servers, our Telegram alert bot, and the web console used by our staff and sales partners.
The short version. The app reads incoming SMS on your phone, but acts only on deposit messages from 12 supported Ethiopian banks and wallets. Everything else is ignored on the device and never reaches us. We do not read your contacts, your photos or your location. We never ask for card numbers or banking passwords. We do not sell data or run advertising, and there are no third-party trackers or analytics SDKs in the app.
Contents
1. Who we are
Fetan SMS and the surrounding platform — our REST API, the Fetan Admin Console, the Partner & Sales Portal and the Fetan Alert Bot on Telegram — are built and operated by Fetan Technologies in Ethiopia. We are the data controller for the personal data described below. The Android application is distributed on Google Play under the package name com.bluetech.fetansms.
2. What the app reads on your device
To do its job, Fetan SMS holds Android's permission to receive and read SMS. Android has no mechanism to grant an app access to messages from certain senders only, so the permission is broad — but what the app does with it is narrow, and enforced in the app itself:
- Each incoming message is checked against the list of supported SMS sender IDs: CBE, Awash Bank, Dashen Bank, Bank of Abyssinia, Telebirr, Siinqee Bank, Berhan Bank, Bunna Bank, COOP (CBO), Hibret Bank, Wegagen Bank and Zemen Bank.
- A bank is never identified from words inside the message body. If the sender ID is not on the list, the message is discarded immediately.
- Of the messages that pass, only credit (money-in) notices are parsed. Debits, fees, balance notices, OTPs, adverts and personal messages are not.
- The app also reads recent messages already in your inbox on start-up, so deposits that arrived while it was closed are not missed. The same sender check applies.
Parsing happens on the phone. Message text that does not produce a deposit alert does not leave the device.
3. Data we collect
| What | Why | Where it is held |
|---|---|---|
| Name and phone number | To create your account, run your subscription, and let our team support you. | Our servers and your device |
| Device identifier — generated on the device; not your IMEI, serial or advertising ID | To tie one subscription to one phone, and to handle device transfers when you change phones. | Our servers and your device |
| Parsed deposit details — amount, bank, the masked account fragment printed in the SMS, reference number, sender label, date, and the branch name you configured | To build your transaction history and to compose the alert your team receives. | Your device; the alert text passes through our servers to reach Telegram |
| Delivery records — that an alert was sent, to which connected chat, and whether it succeeded | To retry failed deliveries and to tell you when something did not arrive. | Our servers |
| Telegram chat identifiers you connect, and any branch routing rules you create | To know where each alert should go. | Our servers |
| Subscription data — plan, trial and expiry dates, status, referral coupon if you used one | To run trials, subscriptions and partner commissions. | Our servers and your device |
| Payment proof — the screenshot of your bank transfer that you upload | So our team can verify your payment and activate the plan. | Our servers |
| Service check-ins — a periodic signal carrying your device identifier, app version and subscription state | To validate the subscription and apply device or account status. | Our servers |
| Diagnostics — see section 8 | To find and fix parsing and delivery faults. | Our servers |
Our website counts page views and download clicks anonymously. Those counts contain no identifiers, and the site sets no advertising or tracking cookies.
4. What we never collect
- Your contacts. The app declares no contacts permission. Staff are invited with a Telegram link, not chosen from your address book.
- Your photos or files. The app declares no storage or media permission. A payment screenshot reaches us only because Android's own photo picker hands us that single image after you select it.
- Card or banking credentials. No card number, CVV, PIN, online-banking password or OTP is ever requested, entered or stored. There is no in-app purchase.
- Your location, camera or microphone. None of these permissions are declared.
- Messages from senders we do not support, and messages that are not deposits. These are dropped on the device.
- Advertising and tracking data. The app contains no ad networks, no third-party analytics SDKs, and no cross-app identifiers. We do not sell or rent personal data to anyone.
The app also holds no permission to send SMS. It cannot send a message from your number, so it never does.
5. How we use your data
- To provide the service: parsing deposits, delivering alerts to your chosen chats, keeping your history and reports.
- To run your account: trials, subscriptions, renewals, payment verification and device transfers.
- To tell you when something needs attention — a delivery that failed, an expiring trial, a payment awaiting verification.
- To keep the service secure and honest: preventing one subscription being shared across phones, detecting abuse, and calculating partner commissions on verified payments.
- To fix faults, using the redacted diagnostics described in section 8.
We do not use your data for advertising, profiling or automated decision-making, and we do not use the content of your deposits for anything other than delivering and recording them.
6. Telegram and other third parties
Alerts are delivered through Telegram, using our official bot. This means the alert text — including the amount, bank, masked account fragment and branch name — is passed to Telegram's servers so it can be shown in your chat. Telegram processes that message under its own privacy policy, over which we have no control. You choose which chats are connected, and you can disconnect any of them from the app at any time.
We also rely on:
- Google Play for distribution and updates, under Google's own terms.
- Our hosting provider for the servers that run our API and database.
We do not share your personal data with anyone else, except where we are legally required to, or where it is strictly necessary to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.
7. Subscription and payment
Subscription is paid by local Ethiopian bank transfer only. You pay at the bank or through your bank's own channels, then upload a screenshot of the transfer in the app so our team can verify it. The app does not process payments and does not collect card or other payment credentials. We receive the screenshot you choose to send us and the plan you selected — nothing more.
If you registered with a referral coupon, the partner who issued it is credited a commission when your first payment is verified. Partners see the commission and the coupon that produced it; they do not see your transactions, your contact details or your bank data.
8. Diagnostics
When parsing or delivery fails, the app records a small diagnostic event so we can fix the cause. Each event carries the event type, a timestamp, your device identifier, your phone number, the app version and the platform.
Where a message snippet is included to debug a parsing failure, every digit in it is replaced with # on the device before it is queued, and the snippet is truncated. Account numbers, amounts and reference numbers therefore never leave your phone in a diagnostic event.
These events are queued locally, capped in number, and sent in the background. They are never allowed to delay or block a deposit alert.
9. Storage, retention and security
- All traffic between the app and our servers uses HTTPS. Sessions use signed tokens and are tied to your registered device.
- Your transaction history lives in the app's private storage on your phone. Uninstalling the app removes it from the device.
- On our servers we keep account, subscription, routing and delivery records for as long as your account is active, and afterwards only as long as we need them for legal, accounting or dispute-resolution purposes.
- Payment screenshots are kept while the related subscription record is kept, as proof that a payment was verified.
- Diagnostic events are short-lived and used only for fault-finding.
- Access to the Admin Console is restricted by role, so staff see only what their role requires. Sales partners are restricted to their own coupons and commissions.
- No system is perfectly secure, but we do not log SMS content or personal data in our production logs, and we do not store payment credentials of any kind — because we never collect them.
10. Your rights and data deletion
You can ask us to:
- tell you what personal data we hold about you;
- correct anything that is wrong;
- delete your account and associated data;
- stop processing your data, by ending your use of the service.
You can also act directly in the app at any time: disconnect a Telegram chat, remove a branch rule, turn forwarding off for a bank, or uninstall the app — which stops all SMS reading immediately and removes the local history.
To request deletion, follow the steps on our Request data deletion page. We will confirm once it is done, normally within a few business days. Some records may be retained where the law requires it — for example accounting records of a payment we verified.
11. Children
Fetan SMS is a business tool and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has registered, contact us and we will remove the account.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the product changes. The date at the top always reflects the current version, and material changes will be announced in the app or on this site. Continuing to use Fetan SMS after a change means you accept the updated policy.
13. Contact us
For any privacy question or data request, reach us through the support channel shown in the Fetan SMS app, or through our official Telegram bot — the same bot that delivers your alerts. Our Contact page lists every way to reach us.
See also our Terms of Service.