Privacy Policy

Subtrackt is a podcast player that uses AI to segment episodes so you can skip what you don’t want to hear. This policy explains what information we handle to make that work.

This policy covers the Subtrackt app and this website (subtrackt.io). Subtrackt is operated by Subtrackt.io, LLC, a California limited liability company (“Subtrackt”, “we”, “us”).

What we collect

Your account. Subtrackt uses Google Sign-In on Android. When you sign in, we store your email address, display name, and profile picture URL, plus the authentication tokens needed to keep you signed in. Tokens are encrypted at-rest, and we never store your Google password. When the iOS app arrives, Sign in with Apple will work the same way.

Your listening data. Subtrackt syncs your subscriptions, app settings, playback positions, and per-segment listening/skip choices across your devices (up to five per account). It also remembers the audio devices you set up profiles for — your car, your earbuds — by the name you give them, so those settings follow you to a new phone. Your individual data is tied to your account and visible to no other user.

Aggregated data. Subtrackt may choose to use aggregated data about its user base. This data will never be personally identifiable, nor shown at an individual user detail level even when anonymized. It will always be aggregated across groups of users.

Reports and diagnostics — only if you send them. If you report a problem from inside the app, you choose what to attach. The options include the app’s recent logs and state, and the downloaded audio of the specific episode you’re reporting. Nothing is attached unless you leave its box ticked, and you can send a report with no attachments at all. Attachments upload directly to our storage provider, and they are deleted when you delete your account. Reports are never sent automatically.

Newsletter and waitlist. If you sign up for our newsletter or the iOS waitlist, we store the email address you submit and which page of our website you signed up from, with double opt-in confirmation. We use it to send product updates — nothing else. Every email includes a one-click removal link. This list is separate from your Subtrackt account: deleting your account does not remove you from it, and unsubscribing does not delete your account.

Server logs. Our servers keep technical logs — including IP addresses and request paths — for security, abuse prevention, and debugging. We keep them for 30 days.

Free-plan abuse prevention. We keep your current two Free show selections and their swap dates so the same limits apply across your devices. On account deletion, we retain these limited facts under a keyed, pseudonymous identifier derived from your verified sign-in identity, so recreating the account does not reset the allowance. For shared phones, we also retain a keyed phone identifier, the current pseudonymous Free account assignment, its assignment date and the version/request reference needed to handle retries safely. This enforces one active Free account per recognized phone and seven-day account transfers. Account deletion removes login bindings; it does not reset that limited allowance record. We keep no past-owner list. We also retain limited prior-preview identity/device claims where they exist. These records contain no email, name, or listening history and remain while needed to enforce the Free allowance. Google Play Integrity checks help protect the app; App Set ID may be sent at sign-in, and optional Google Device Recall records are used only for abuse prevention.

Who else handles your data

We use a small number of infrastructure providers to run Subtrackt. They process data on our behalf and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes:

• Netcup hosts the Subtrackt application and database.
• Cloudflare carries traffic between your device and our servers, and stores report attachments.
• Hetzner provides secondary storage and development infrastructure.
• Google provides sign-in and, on Android, handles subscription payments.

That is the complete list. We do not use any advertising network, analytics service, attribution service, or crash-reporting service — there is no such code in the app or on our servers.

What we process that isn’t about you

Subtrackt’s AI processes publicly available podcasts — the same feeds and audio every podcast app downloads — to find segment boundaries, transcribe speech, and detect ads. Podcast audio and transcripts are processed by third-party AI services, and those services receive no information about who is listening. That processing is about the podcast, not about you: it describes the show, its segments, and the ads inside it. Your personal listening history doesn’t feed anyone’s advertising profile, including ours — we don’t have an advertising business.

Playing an episode is between you and the publisher. When you play or download an episode, your device fetches the audio from the podcast publisher’s own servers, exactly as any podcast app does. That request does not pass through Subtrackt, so the publisher can see your device’s IP address. This is how podcast distribution works everywhere; we mention it because you’d reasonably want to know.

What we never do

• We do not sell your personal data — not to advertisers, not to data brokers.
• We do not use your information for marketing or advertising — ours or anyone else’s.
• We do not run third-party advertising or tracking within our app.

Security

Everything the app sends to Subtrackt travels over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Authentication tokens are encrypted on your device and stored on our servers only as a one-way digest, never in a form we could read back.

Payments

Subscription payments on Android are handled by Google Play. We never see or store your card details — we receive only a confirmation from Google that a subscription is active, along with the identifiers needed to keep it in sync. Your subscription stays with your account.

Data retention and deletion

Your account data and synced listening data are kept while your account is active. When you delete your account — instructions here — your personal data and any report attachments you sent are removed from our systems within 30 days, except for the limited abuse-prevention records described above, minimal records we’re legally required to keep, and short-lived backups that expire on their own schedule.

Your rights

You can request a copy of your data, correct it, or delete it — from inside the app or by emailing us at [email protected]. If you’re in a jurisdiction with specific privacy rights (GDPR, CCPA, and friends), those rights apply and the same email is the way to exercise them.

Children

Subtrackt is not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. Podcasts are made by independent publishers and can contain adult language and themes; Subtrackt is intended for adults.

Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be registered with a preamble on this page, noting dates and a summary. An in-app notification will also appear to users for material updates to the policy. Continued use of the Subtrackt app and website after notification of changes means acceptance of those changes.

Contact

Privacy questions: [email protected]