Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 28, 2026
own.audio is a private, DRM-free audio library for families, currently in development. This policy covers two separate things: the pre-launch waitlist on this website, and the own.audio apps, which are in closed testing and not yet publicly available.
Who's responsible for your data
own.audio is operated by Kornel Maráz. For anything to do with your data — questions, requests, or complaints — email privacy@own.audio.
What we collect
When you register for the waitlist, we collect the name and email address you enter. We also automatically process your IP address at the moment you submit the form, solely through Cloudflare Turnstile, to verify you're not a bot. We also note which page of this site you signed up on (for example the home page or a blog post), and the name of the site that linked you there if the link said so, to learn which pages are useful. We don't ask for anything else, and the site has no accounts, no payments, and no product to use yet.
Why we collect it, and on what basis
We use your name and email only to email you when own.audio launches, and to determine whether you're one of the first 100 registrants who qualify for the $5 launch credit. We process this data on the basis of your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) — you actively opt in by checking the consent box before submitting the form, and you can withdraw that consent at any time by asking us to delete your data.
How long we keep it
We keep your registration until own.audio launches and for up to 12 months afterward, or until you ask us to delete it — whichever comes first. If own.audio doesn't launch, or these plans change materially, we'll delete waitlist data we no longer have a reason to hold.
Who has access to waitlist data
Nobody but us. We do not sell, rent, forward, or share your name or email with any third party, and we don't use it for anything beyond the purpose above — no marketing lists, no analytics profiles, no advertising. The only parties involved in handling this data are infrastructure we run on, acting strictly as processors on our instructions:
- Cloudflare — hosts the database your registration is stored in (Cloudflare D1, in the EU region) and this website.
- Cloudflare Turnstile — verifies you're not a bot when you submit the form; see Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy notice.
- Seznam.cz — sends the confirmation email through its Email Profi service, from servers in the Czech Republic (EU); see Seznam's privacy information.
The apps, and who holds your data
own.audio can be used two ways, and which one you choose decides who is responsible for your data. This is the most important thing on this page.
- On a server your family runs. You install own.audio on your own machine. Your account and everything in your library stay there. We never receive it, cannot see it, and cannot delete it — the person who runs that server is the data controller, not us. We only supply the software.
- On our hosted service. If you sign in against own.audio's own server, we hold that data and we are the controller for it. Everything below describes this case.
What the apps collect on our hosted service
- Your account — email address and display name, and a password stored only as a one-way hash. If you sign in with Google (or, once we switch them on, Apple or Microsoft), we receive your email address, name, and an identifier from that provider; we never receive your password there.
- Audio you add, its details, and any narration generated for it.
- Listening activity — position, bookmarks, and favourites, so playback follows you between devices. Your apps also record listening sessions: what you played, for how long, on which kind of device, and at what speed. That is what your own listening statistics are built from, and it is visible to you. Other members of your family cannot see it unless you turn that on.
- Your devices and sign-ins — a device name and, for each signed-in session, the IP address and the kind of app or browser it came from, so you can see where you're signed in, sign a device out, and so we can spot misuse of your account.
- Family membership — which family you belong to, your role in it, and what you've chosen to share with it.
- Storage and credit — how much storage your library uses and a record of credit added to and charged against your account. No payments are taken during closed testing, and we never store card details.
The apps carry no advertising and no third-party analytics. We do not collect an advertising identifier, and we do not sell or share personal data for advertising.
Who processes app data for us
As with the waitlist, we don't sell or share your data. These providers run the service for us and process data only on our instructions:
- vpsFree.cz — the server that runs own.audio and its database, in the Czech Republic (EU).
- Cloudflare — stores your audio files and covers (Cloudflare R2, Western Europe), hosts the web app, and carries all traffic between the apps and our server.
- Google — only if you choose to: signing in with a Google account, and the optional features that translate text, narrate it, or generate a cover image (Google Cloud Translation, Text-to-Speech, and Gemini). Those features send Google the text you asked us to process — for example the book you uploaded, or a podcast's published transcript — and its title and author, and nothing else about you. Google may process this outside the EU; such transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
To fill in missing details like album covers, artist photos and book information, our server looks titles up in public catalogues (MusicBrainz, which we run ourselves, plus the Cover Art Archive, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, Apple's iTunes Search, Deezer, and Google Books). Those lookups come from our server and contain only the title, artist or author being looked up — never your name, account, or IP address.
Recommendations
Off unless you switch them on. Until you do, nothing looks at your listening to suggest anything, on your device or on our servers.
When you do switch them on, the matching happens on your device. Your app already holds your own listening history; it compares that against a public catalogue of podcasts that we host and that contains no information about anyone. Your listening history is not sent anywhere to produce a suggestion, and we do not build a profile of you. Searching or browsing that catalogue does not involve your listening history at all, and those searches are answered by our own server rather than passed to anyone else.
You can turn recommendations off again at any time. There is nothing stored to delete when you do — because nothing was stored when you turned them on.
Children and family accounts
A parent or guardian who administers a family can create accounts for their children. Where they do, the child does not supply an email address and does not sign in with Google or Apple — the adult sets the account up, which is also how we take that adult's consent.
An adult can mark a family member as a child, and a child account can never add audio or generate narration. This is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the app.
Anyone using the apps can report content they think is inappropriate. Reports go to the family's own administrator, since a family library is private to that family and nobody outside it can see its contents.
We don't knowingly collect personal data directly from children. If you believe we have, email privacy@own.audio and we'll remove it.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account from inside the app at any time, and there's a separate page explaining exactly what that removes and what may remain: how to delete your account.
Where it's stored
Waitlist registrations are stored in Cloudflare D1 in the EU region, and we haven't transferred any waitlist data outside the EU/EEA. App data is stored in the EU too: the database on our server in the Czech Republic, and audio files in Cloudflare R2 in Western Europe. The only transfers outside the EU are the optional Google features described above, and only when you use them.
Cookies and tracking
This site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to see how many people visit and which pages they read. It's cookieless, doesn't collect any personal data or IP-based fingerprint, and doesn't track you across sites — which is also why it needs no cookie banner. See Cloudflare's Web Analytics privacy notice for details. Beyond that, this site uses no advertising trackers. Cloudflare Turnstile may set a short-lived technical cookie solely to complete the bot check when you submit the waitlist form; it isn't used to track you.
Your rights
Under GDPR, you can ask us to: give you a copy of the data we hold on you (access), correct it (rectification), delete it (erasure), limit how we use it (restriction), object to our use of it, or receive it in a portable format. You can also withdraw your consent at any time, which stops future emails and triggers deletion. To exercise any of these, email privacy@own.audio — we'll respond within a reasonable time. If you're not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.
Security
Waitlist data is stored on Cloudflare's infrastructure, encrypted at rest. For the apps, all traffic is encrypted in transit, passwords are stored only as one-way hashes, audio files are reachable only through short-lived signed links, and our server accepts no direct connections from the internet — everything reaches it through Cloudflare. Access to the underlying systems is restricted to the person operating own.audio.
Children
The waitlist on this website isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly accept registrations from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has registered without appropriate consent, contact us and we'll remove the registration. For children using the apps, see "Children and family accounts" above.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we'll update it here with a new "last updated" date. own.audio has not launched publicly yet, so the sections covering the apps describe closed testing and will be revisited before general release.