Last updated: 15 October 2026
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FanLog is a family of apps for following a sport on your own schedule: FanLog MMA, FanLog Rugby, and any app published later under the FanLog name. Each one keeps a list of the fights or matches you mean to watch, lets you mark what you have seen and rate it, and keeps every result hidden until you say otherwise. This page covers all of them; they are built from the same code and handle your data the same way. It is short because they do very little with it.
There is no FanLog server, no account and no sign-up. Your list, what you have marked watched, your ratings and the athletes or teams you follow are stored on your phone and are never uploaded. The apps make two kinds of network request, both for public files, and neither carries anything about you.
Everything is stored locally on your device, in files only the app can read:
| Data | Where |
|---|---|
| Fights or matches you have added to your list, marked watched, or rated | local SQLite database (fanlog.db) |
| Athletes or teams you follow, and when you started | same database |
| Which announcements you have already been notified about | same database |
| The catalogue itself: events, fights or matches, athletes or teams, results | same database, replaced a season at a time on each update |
| Your settings: theme, text size, language, spoiler masking, notifications, competitions you have put away | local preferences |
None of it is transmitted to the apps’ author, or visible to them. There is no identifier of any kind — no account, no device id, no advertising id — so there is nothing that could tie this device to a person even if the data did leave it.
This matters more here than in most apps. What you have watched is the whole point of FanLog, and it is also the sort of thing nobody should have to share. It is a column in a database on your phone, and there is no code in the apps that sends it anywhere.
Four cases, and they are the only ones.
The catalogue. Each app ships with a snapshot of its catalogue inside it and refreshes it from
public files on GitHub, at raw.githubusercontent.com/michaelfery/fanlog-catalog. The request asks
for a file and says nothing else; the app names itself in it (FanLog and its version), the way a
browser does. GitHub sees it the way any website sees a visitor — which means it sees the IP
address the request came from, as every web server does. Nothing about your list, your ratings or
your follows is included, because the app has no way to send them.
Pictures. Athletes’ photographs and, in the team-sport apps, clubs’ crests are loaded as you
scroll from ESPN’s image CDN, at a.espncdn.com. They are hotlinked rather than bundled, so ESPN’s
servers see those requests the same way GitHub sees the one above: a file asked for, from an IP
address. The app sends no identifier with them. What it does mean, stated plainly because most
policies leave it out: the athletes and clubs whose pictures your phone loads are visible to ESPN
as image requests, in the same way that any website loading images from a third party makes those
requests visible to it.
If the phone has no network, both simply fail and the app carries on with what is already on it. The apps are designed to work offline; the network only ever refreshes the catalogue.
Android’s automatic backup. Android may copy the app’s database and settings to the backup storage attached to your Google account, as it does for other apps on your phone. It is what gives you back your list and your ratings when you reinstall or move to a new phone.
The tip. Settings offers one optional purchase, “Support FanLog”, which unlocks nothing. It goes entirely through Google Play Billing, on your device and your Google account: Google handles the payment under its own terms, and the app learns only that the purchase exists, which it reads back from Play to say thank you. The author never sees your name or your means of payment, and no receipt is sent anywhere, because there is nowhere to send it.
It writes a report on the phone — the app’s version, the Android version, the device model and the place in the code where it broke; nothing about you. Settings then offers to send it, through the app of your choice, after you have read it in full. Nothing is sent unless you send it, and the report is gone once you discard it.
The ones you would see if you inspected an app:
| Permission | Reason |
|---|---|
| Internet | Fetching the catalogue files and the pictures described above. |
| Notifications | Telling you that someone you follow has been booked or scheduled, or that an event you track starts soon. Deny it and the app works, without notifications. |
| Network state, wake lock, foreground service, boot completed | Contributed by the Android background-work library, which runs the catalogue refresh and puts reminders back after a restart. Not used for anything else. |
| Billing | Google Play’s, for the optional tip above. |
Notifications are built and shown on the device, from data already on it. Nothing is sent anywhere to produce them, and no push service is involved.
There is no analytics, no advertising tracker and no crash-reporting tool in these apps. Not configured off — absent from the build.
The FanLog apps are not directed at children and knowingly collect no data about them: they collect none, from anyone.
Since your data lives only on your device, you control it directly. Uninstalling an app removes everything it holds, and clearing the app’s storage in Android’s settings does the same without removing it. There is nothing to request from us, because we hold nothing.
This policy will change if the apps change. The date at the top is authoritative. An app added to the family is covered here only once this page names it.
Write to mferyapps@gmail.com.