Privacy policy

Effective date: [EFFECTIVE_DATE: to be set]

Who we are

Birdband is made by Dangerous Minds Inc., 7562 Valley Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19128 (United States). In this policy, “we” and “us” means us. You can reach us at hello@birdband.me.

This policy covers the Birdband app for Android and this website, birdband.me.

Birdband is made for children

Birdband is directed to children, roughly 5 to 12 years old, and their families. We built it so that it doesn't collect personal information from children. That is what the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is about, and the same design protects everyone else who uses the app.

What stays on your device

Everything your child makes in Birdband is kept in the app's private storage on the device:

• songs, including the recordings of your child's singing;
• song titles your child types, and the critter they build;
• settings, including the grown-ups' sharing settings. The grown-up PIN is stored only in scrambled form (a salted hash), never as the PIN itself.

None of this is sent to us. Birdband has no accounts and no servers of ours that it talks to. The app itself doesn't use the internet.

Birdband leaves itself out of Android's backups, so its songs are not copied to a backup in the cloud.

The microphone

Birdband asks for permission to use the microphone, because singing is how songs are made. It records only while your child is recording, which they start by tapping the record button. The recordings are used on the device to make the song (the bird's singing, the instruments, the drums and the choir) and are saved with the song on the device.

You can turn off the microphone for Birdband at any time in Android's Settings (Apps → Birdband → Permissions → Microphone). Birdband can still play songs without it.

Sharing songs in person

Sharing is off when Birdband is installed. A grown-up turns it on in the app's “For grown-ups” area by entering their year of birth (only checked, not saved) and choosing a 4-digit PIN. A grown-up can turn sharing off again at any time, and can ask for the PIN every time a song is sent.

When sharing is on, your child can send a song as a file with Android's share sheet: for example with Android Quick Share to a phone nearby, or through another app you pick, such as messages or email. The song goes from your device to the other device, or through the app you picked. We never receive it. If you send a song through another app, that app's own privacy policy applies to it.

A song file contains the song and its recordings, which can include your child's voice. It contains the song's title and the critter, but not the names of the people who made it. A title is whatever your child typed, so it could include a name: have a look before sharing.

Songs your child receives are saved on your device when they choose to open them. Songs they have sent are on the other person's device; ask them if you'd like them deleted.

Purchases

Birdband is free to download and includes one free song. A one-time purchase through Google Play unlocks making more songs. The purchase can only be started in the “For grown-ups” area, behind the grown-up check.

Google processes the payment under Google's privacy policy. Birdband only receives a confirmation from Google Play, on the device, that the purchase was made; it checks that confirmation and keeps it on the device. We don't receive your name, email address or payment details from the app. As the seller, we can see Google Play's order records (such as an order number, the product, the price and the date), which we use only for accounting, refunds and support.

No ads, analytics, accounts or trackers

Birdband shows no ads and contains no advertising, analytics or tracking code. There are no accounts to create and nothing to sign in to. The only outside code that talks to anything beyond the app is Google Play's billing library, which talks to the Google Play Store app on the device for purchases.

If you have allowed your device to share usage and diagnostics with Google, Google Play may give us statistics about crashes and performance (“Android vitals”). These don't tell us who you or your child are.

This website

birdband.me is hosted on GitHub Pages. Like most web hosts, GitHub may keep server logs, such as the IP address of visitors, to run and protect its service. See the GitHub General Privacy Statement. The website sets no cookies and has no analytics, ads or third-party content; its fonts and pictures come from this site.

The song player at birdband.me/s plays songs from links made by the earlier Loopbird app. The song is in the part of the link after the “#”, which browsers don't send to the server: the page decodes the song in your browser and fetches only instrument sounds from this site.

Keeping and deleting data

We don't keep any data about you or your child on our servers, because we don't receive any. You control what's on your device:

• to delete a song, open My songs in the app, slide the song to the right and tap Delete;
• uninstalling Birdband deletes all of its songs and settings from the device.

Parents' rights

Under COPPA, parents can ask to review the personal information an app has collected from their child, have it deleted, and refuse further collection. Birdband doesn't collect personal information from children, so we hold nothing to review or delete: everything is on your device, where you can delete it as described above. If you have rights under other laws, such as the GDPR in the EU or the UK, the same applies. We're happy to answer any question: write to hello@birdband.me.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date. We would never start collecting personal information from children without first asking for a parent's verifiable consent, as COPPA requires.

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