This policy explains what Spencer Carlson ("Sophon", "we") collects when you use the Sophon iOS app or this website, why we collect it, and what choices you have. It applies to both.

The short version

You sign in with Apple, and you can choose Hide My Email so we never receive your real email address. Transcription and ad detection run on your device. We do not sell your data, we do not show you ads, and we do not include advertising or cross-site tracking software in the app or on this site.

What we collect

On this website. If you join the waitlist we store the email address you type and a short label for which part of the page you submitted from. To keep automated abuse off that form we check a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge and count recent submissions against a one-way, salted hash of your IP address; we do not store the address itself, and those counters are deleted within about a day.

Your Sophon account. You sign in with Apple. Apple gives us a stable identifier for your account and, only if you approve them, your name and an email address. If you choose Hide My Email, that address is one of Apple's private relay addresses — we can email you through it, but we never see your real address. We never receive your Apple password.

Notifications. If you allow notifications, we store a device token from Apple's push service so we can tell you when a show you follow posts a new episode. It's tied to your account and this device; turn notifications off in iOS Settings and we stop.

Your library, if you sync. With sync on, the shows you subscribe to, your playback positions, and similar personal listening state are stored on our servers so they can follow you to another device. This is tied to your Sophon account.

Ad-detection contributions. When enabled, the app can share what it worked out about an episode's ad breaks — the episode's public identifier, the timestamps of detected or corrected ad segments, short audio fingerprints taken at those boundaries, and episode transcript text produced on your device. This is what lets a popular episode skip instantly for the next listener instead of every person scanning it from scratch. It describes the episode, not you: it carries no listening history and is not linked to you in any published output. You can turn contribution off in the app's settings.

Diagnostics. If the app crashes or hits an error we collect a technical report — device model, OS version, app version, and a stack trace — to fix it. We also collect a performance record each time the app scans an episode for ads: how long each stage took, which shortcuts the scan was able to use, whether it succeeded, how many ad breaks it found, and the episode it was scanning. It contains no audio and no transcript text. We use it to keep scans fast and to catch a release that makes them slower. You can turn this off in the app's settings, separately from contribution. We use these to make the app work, not to build a profile of you.

Feedback you send us. If you use Send feedback in the app, we store the message you wrote, the kind of report it is, and — if you fill it in — the email address you'd like a reply at. Leaving "Include app info" on also attaches your app version, iOS version, device model, language, and which detection model you have installed; the form shows you that text before you send it, and turning the toggle off means none of it is attached. If you opened the form from an episode, the episode's title and public identifier come along so we can reproduce what you saw. This is not covered by the contribution or diagnostics toggles below — sending the report is the consent, and we read what you send.

Purchases. Subscriptions are processed by Apple. To keep track of whether a subscription is active we use RevenueCat, a subscription-management provider, which receives the purchase confirmation from Apple on our behalf. We never see your card number or billing address.

What stays on your device

Audio you play, the transcription of it, and the ad-detection model all run locally on your iPhone. Podcast episodes are fetched directly from the publisher's servers, so what you play and when is not routed through us. Beyond sync, contribution, and the scan diagnostics described above — each of which you control separately — the specifics of your listening stay on your device.

What we never do

We do not sell or rent personal information. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We do not embed advertising SDKs, cross-app tracking, or third-party analytics that follow you around the internet. We do not ask for your contacts, photos, or location.

How we use what we collect

To run the app and this site; to sync your library across your devices; to detect podcast ads more accurately and improve the detection model; to diagnose crashes and prevent abuse of our servers; to email you about the launch if you asked us to; and to comply with the law.

Who we share it with

Only with service providers who run infrastructure on our behalf, under contract, and only for the purposes above — currently our backend and website hosting providers, cloud storage, our error-reporting provider, our subscription-management provider, the CAPTCHA provider on this site, and Apple for app distribution and payments. We may also disclose information where we are legally required to, or to protect the rights and safety of our users. If Sophon is ever acquired, information may transfer as part of that transaction; this policy continues to apply until you are told otherwise.

How long we keep it

Waitlist emails are kept until launch, or until you ask us to remove them. Personal listening state is kept while your account exists. Diagnostic reports are kept for a limited retention window. Ad-detection contributions describe episodes rather than people and are retained as part of the shared detection data. Feedback you send is kept while we work on what it reports; if you delete your account, the message stays but your account link and reply address are removed.

Your choices

You can turn contribution and sync off in the app's settings at any time, and you can unsubscribe from any email we send. You can delete your account and its synced data at any time from Settings → Account in the app; this removes your profile, your synced library and listening state, your subscription record, and your notification tokens. The ad-detection contributions you made are not deleted but are de-identified — the link to your account is severed — because they describe episodes rather than you, and other listeners rely on them. Any feedback you sent is treated the same way: the message is kept so we can still act on what it reports, but your account link and the reply address on it are removed. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to access, correct, export, or delete your personal information, and to object to certain processing; for any of those, email hello@sophonpod.com. We will not treat you differently for exercising these rights.

Children

Sophon is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Where your data is handled

Our servers and service providers are located in the United States. If you use Sophon from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed there.

Changes to this policy

If we make a material change we will update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, tell you in the app. Continuing to use Sophon after a change means the updated policy applies.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email hello@sophonpod.com.