privacy

what we store

Your account: email address, name, handle, bio and photo. Your echoes: each song, the place (coordinates and name), the time, the weather, and any note or photo you add. Your circle: who you're connected with, who you've blocked, which echoes you've handed to whom, the ripples you send, and which handed echoes you've opened. Your notification settings, and a short record of sign-in attempts (network address and handle) that stops people guessing their way in.

who sees what

Nothing is public. Other people signed in to echoes can see your profile: name, handle, bio and photo. Your echoes are private until you share one, and then only with the people you choose: your circle, or specific people you hand it to. They see its place only to the nearest kilometre or so unless you share the exact spot, and its note and photo only if you share those too. Share cards are made only when you ask.

listening

When you tap listen on the web, a few seconds of sound are recorded and sent to ACRCloud to name the song. In the iOS app, Apple's ShazamKit names it from a signature made on your phone, and no sound leaves it. We don't keep recordings.

spotify

Only if you connect it. echoesreads the track you're playing right now, and your Spotify profile (id, display name, email) once, when you connect. We never post to Spotify, change your library, or read your listening history. You can disconnect it in settings at any time.

the services we use

These companies handle your data for us, and only to run echoes:

• Supabase: our database, sign-in and photo storage. Everything you save lives here.
• Vercel: hosts echoes and runs its servers. Like any host, it sees your network address when you use the app.
• Resend: sends your sign-in codes, so it gets your email address.
• ACRCloud: names the song when you tap listen on the web, from the few seconds of sound recorded.
• Apple ShazamKit: names the song in the iOS app, from a signature made on your phone. No sound leaves it.
• Apple (iTunes Search): song search, album art and previews. It gets what you type into search, from our servers, not from you.
• Spotify: if you connect it, we read what's playing now, and your Spotify id, name and email.
• Google: turns the coordinates of an echo into a place name, from our servers, not from you.
• OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap: the map itself. Our servers fetch the map tiles, so they never see you.
• Overture Maps Foundation: the named places nearby that the app asks about when you save. We keep our own copy of their open data, so they never see you.
• OpenStreetMap (Overpass), Ontario's lidar service and the City of Toronto: when you confirm an echo's exact place, our servers rebuild the 60 m around it from their open data. They are asked about a square of map tiles around it, a few hundred metres across, never the place itself, and never anything about you.
• Open-Meteo: the weather when you save an echo, and the weather where you are for the map's light. Your phone sends it the coordinates (for the map, rounded to about a kilometre).
• Apple, Google and Mozilla push services: deliver notifications to your device. The message is encrypted, so they can't read it.
• Microsoft: hosts our support inbox, so it holds whatever you write to us and any report you send.

We don't sell your data, use it for advertising, or track you across other apps and websites.

the waitlist

If you join the waitlist we store your email for one purpose: telling you when a spot opens. No newsletters, no resale.

deleting

Delete any echo in the app and it's gone, photo included. To delete your whole account: you, then settings, then delete account. It removes your profile, every echo and photo, your avatar, your circle and your notifications at once, and disconnects Spotify. Nothing is kept.

questions

Write to support@melomaniacstudios.com. A person reads every message.