Plapper

Privacy Policy

Last updated:

This is a translation for your convenience. Only the German version is legally binding.

This policy covers the Plapper app and the getplapper.com website. What concerns only the website is in the first part, what concerns only the app is in the second; contact details, service providers and your rights apply to both.

The Essentials

  • Plapper works without an account. In that case all entries, recordings and photos stay on your device only.
  • An account is optional. It lets you back up your entries and share them with people you invite yourself.
  • Signing in alone uploads no entries. A child only goes into your account once you consent for that specific child; all others stay on your device.
  • Speech recognition and sorting into categories run on your device. No words are sent to us or to third parties for this.
  • You buy Plapper Plus through Apple. We receive no payment details, only whether and until when your subscription is active.
  • The app and the website contain no advertising and no tracking across apps and websites. We do not sell any data.
  • The app counts how it is used, anonymously, with TelemetryDeck, without content such as words, names or recordings. You can turn this off in Settings. The website counts visits with Plausible Analytics, without cookies and without data that leads back to you.

Controller

WE 2056 UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Königsbrücker Landstraße 72
01109 Dresden, Germany
Email: support@2056.digital

The Website

Hosting with Cloudflare

The website is run on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA). When you open a page, Cloudflare processes on our behalf the data technically required to deliver it: IP address, time, requested address, browser and operating system. This data is kept briefly in server logs and serves secure and stable operation, for example to fend off attacks. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a secure, reachable website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We have a data processing agreement with Cloudflare under Art. 28 GDPR; Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses apply in addition.

No Cookies, No Advertising

The website sets no cookies, uses no advertising services and embeds no third-party content apart from the visit count. Fonts and images come from our own server.

Visit Count with Plausible Analytics

To understand which pages are read and where visitors come from, we use Plausible Analytics (Plausible Insights OÜ, Västriku tn 2, 50403 Tartu, Estonia). When you open a page, your browser loads a script from Plausible and transmits the requested address, the referring page, browser, operating system, device type and the country derived from the IP address. The IP address is not stored; it is only combined with the browser and a random value that changes daily into an identifier that is discarded after 24 hours. This makes it impossible to recognize a visitor or follow them across days or websites. Plausible sets no cookies and reads nothing from your device; only aggregated figures are stored. The data is processed in the EU. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a statistical evaluation of the website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We have a data processing agreement with Plausible under Art. 28 GDPR.

Remembered Language

If you choose a language at the top of the page, your browser remembers this choice in local storage so that the start page greets you in your language on your next visit. Only the language code, such as “en”, is stored. It stays on your device and is not sent to us. Storing it is strictly necessary for this function you requested (Section 25(2) no. 2 of the German Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act, TDDDG). You can delete the entry at any time in your browser settings.

Contact Form

If you write to us through the contact form (in German), we process your email address, your name if you give it, and your message in order to reply to you (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is answering your request). The form is received by Cloudflare and forwarded as an email to our mailbox; nothing is stored on the website itself. To prevent abuse, Cloudflare uses your IP address to limit how many messages can be sent per minute; the address is not stored permanently for this and is not linked to your message. We delete the message once your request is settled and no statutory retention obligation applies.

The buttons for downloading the app lead to Apple’s App Store or TestFlight. As soon as you follow these links, Apple’s privacy policy applies.

The App

Use Without an Account

Everything you record in Plapper (children, words, notes, recordings, photos) is stored on your device only. We receive none of it. You create a backup yourself as a file in Settings; you decide where to save it.

For recordings, the app asks for access to the microphone, and for dictating several words, for access to speech recognition. Recognition runs on your device. You pick photos yourself; Plapper gets no access to your photo library.

Even without an account, the app checks whether you have Plapper Plus (see Service Providers, RevenueCat). No entries, recordings or photos are transmitted in the process.

Sign in with Apple

You sign in exclusively with “Sign in with Apple”. We receive an identifier assigned by Apple and, if you share it, your name. We do not ask for an email address. People you share a child with see your name.

What Data Is on Our Server

When you are signed in, we store on our server:

  • your account identifier and your name (if shared)
  • for each child you have consented for or been invited to: name, date of birth, sex (if given), color in the app and the photo (if selected), plus when consent was given and for which version of the consent text
  • for each entry: the word or phrase, how it sounds, the date heard, the language, the note and the optional assessment of pronunciation
  • voice recordings for the entries (audio files) and when they were recorded
  • who created which entries and when
  • who shares a child with whom, in which role, since when and on whose invitation
  • invitation codes, their validity and who redeemed them
  • redemption attempts with a wrong code (to protect against trying out codes)
  • whether you have Plapper Plus and until when (we learn this from RevenueCat), and from when a child’s Plapper Circle is paused because the managing person’s subscription ended
  • if you allow notifications: a device token for notifications (push token), your device’s language so that notifications arrive in your language, and the notifications sent to you. A notification about a new word or recording contains the child’s name, the word and the first name of the person who entered it, never notes or assessments of pronunciation. When someone joins a child, the managing person learns their first name.

We process this data to provide the features you use with the account: backup, sync between your devices and sharing with invited people (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Recordings, notes and assessments of pronunciation may allow conclusions about your child’s language development. As a precaution, we therefore treat them like health data and store them only with your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR). You give this consent for each child separately before it goes into your account, for example when you want to share or back it up; signing in alone is not enough. Whoever manages a child gives consent for that child; invited people are told before joining that the whole Plapper Circle sees what they enter. Children that were already in your account before consent per child was introduced rely on the consent you gave at sign-in at the time.

You can withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future: in the app under “Child Details” → “Storage Location” → “Only on This iPhone” (on the iPad accordingly). We then immediately and permanently delete the child together with entries, recordings and photo from our server; everything stays on your device. We do not analyze this information and do not pass it on to third parties, except to the service providers named below who store it on our behalf.

We send notifications only with your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time in your device’s settings. Blocking after too many wrong invitation codes serves our legitimate interest in protecting shared data from unauthorized access (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

You enter data about your child in Plapper. Please only enter what you, as a parent or with a parent’s agreement, want to share.

Who Can See the Data

A child’s entries are visible only to the people invited to that child. When inviting, the managing person decides whether someone contributes entries (Parent) or only reads along (Viewer), and can end other people’s access at any time. The entries then also disappear from the removed person’s device the next time their app connects.

Sharing by You

Through the Share menu you can export words as a spreadsheet or as text for an AI assistant and share individual words including their recording. This data only leaves Plapper when you pass it on to another app or service yourself; that provider is then responsible for processing it.

Crash Reports and Test Versions

If you have allowed your device to share analytics with app developers in its settings, Apple provides us with crash reports and aggregated usage figures that do not allow us to identify you. If you use a test version through TestFlight, Apple sends us the feedback you submit there (text, screenshots, device model and system version), crash reports and, if we invited you by email, your name and email address. We use this information to find bugs and improve the app (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Anonymous Usage Statistics with TelemetryDeck

To understand which features are used and where the app gets stuck, Plapper uses TelemetryDeck (TelemetryDeck GmbH, Von-der-Tann-Str. 54, 86159 Augsburg, Germany) to count how the app is used. No advertising ID, no account identifier and no data from other apps is used; there is no tracking across apps and websites.

The following is transmitted:

  • an identifier of your installation, which is irreversibly encrypted (hashed) with a fixed additional value on your device already; two devices of the same person count as two
  • events such as “app opened”, “introduction completed”, “word added”, “Plus offer shown”, “invitation created” or “export used”, each with rough details such as the way a word was entered
  • aggregated attributes: whether you have Plapper Plus and are signed in, and the number of your children, entries and languages in ranges only (such as “2–10”)
  • errors as a technical code, never as text
  • app version, device type, system version, the device’s language and region, and accessibility settings such as text size
  • the time and time zone of the event

No content is transmitted: no words, how they sound, notes, categories, recordings, photos, search terms, names, dates of birth, age or sex. TelemetryDeck stores no IP addresses and sets no cookies. The data is processed on servers in Germany and the Netherlands and evaluated only in aggregate. We cannot draw any conclusions about you. We have a data processing agreement with TelemetryDeck under Art. 28 GDPR.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in improving the app and finding bugs on the basis of anonymous usage figures (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can turn the statistics off at any time in the app under Settings → Privacy → “Anonymous Usage Statistics”. The app then sends nothing more to TelemetryDeck. The source code of the TelemetryDeck software included in the app is publicly available (github.com/TelemetryDeck).

Security

The connection between the app and the server is encrypted (TLS), and our service provider stores the data encrypted. Each person can only read the children they belong to; the server checks this with every request. Invitation codes are valid only once and expire after seven days. After ten wrong codes within one hour, the server temporarily accepts no further attempts for that account. You sign in through Apple; there are no passwords in Plapper.

Retention and Deletion

We store your account data for as long as you use it. Entries, recordings and children you delete are first marked as deleted on the server so that your other devices and invited people also receive the deletion. After 30 days we remove them permanently, including audio files and photos. If you set a child to “Only on This iPhone”, we delete it from our server immediately and permanently.

Further periods: we delete notifications after 30 days, invitation codes seven days after they expire, and wrong redemption attempts after one day.

You can delete your account at any time in the app (Settings → Account → “Delete Account”). We then immediately delete the children you manage together with entries, recordings and photos, your memberships, devices, notifications and invitations as well as your account itself, and we revoke the connection to “Sign in with Apple”. What you entered for other people’s children stays there without your name. Everything stays on your device. You cancel a Plapper Plus subscription with Apple; deleting the account does not end it. When you sign out, the data stays on your device.

Voluntary Provision

You are not obliged by law or contract to provide us with data. Without an account you can use Plapper fully on your device; only backup, sync between devices and sharing are not possible then. There is no automated decision-making or profiling.

Children

Plapper is aimed at parents and other caregivers, not at children. The app is operated by adults; children do not create their own account.

For App and Website

Contact by Email

If you write to us, for example through “Send Feedback” in the app’s settings, we process your email address, your name if it appears in the email, the message itself and, where applicable, the app version in the subject line in order to reply to you (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is answering your request). We delete the email once your request is settled and no statutory retention obligation applies.

Service Providers

  • Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA) runs the website and forwards messages from the contact form to our mailbox, see above.
  • Plausible (Plausible Insights OÜ, Estonia) counts visits to the website, see above.
  • Supabase (Supabase Inc., USA) runs the database, file storage and sign-in for the app. The data and recordings are stored in a data center in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (Amazon Web Services, region eu-central-1). We have a data processing agreement with Supabase under Art. 28 GDPR. For any access from the USA, the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses apply.
  • RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., USA) manages the Plapper Plus subscriptions for us. For this, RevenueCat receives a random identifier of the app or, if you are signed in, your account identifier, Apple’s purchase receipts (subscription bought, time, term, price, currency and country), device type, operating system and app version and, for technical reasons, your IP address. RevenueCat does not receive entries, recordings, photos or names. The purpose is providing and verifying your subscription (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). We have a data processing agreement with RevenueCat under Art. 28 GDPR; for the transfer to the USA, the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses apply.
  • TelemetryDeck (TelemetryDeck GmbH, Germany) produces the app’s anonymous usage statistics for us, see above.
  • Apple (Apple Distribution International Ltd., Ireland) for “Sign in with Apple”, for the purchase and billing of Plapper Plus, for delivering notifications (Apple Push Notification service), for the request to rate the app in the App Store, for crash reports and for test versions through TestFlight. We do not learn whether and how you rate the app. Apple’s privacy policy applies.
  • Google (Google Cloud EMEA Limited, Ireland) provides our mailbox for emails to support@2056.digital with Google Workspace, where messages from the contact form also arrive. We have a data processing agreement with Google under Art. 28 GDPR; for any access from the USA, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses apply.

Your Rights

You have the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18) and data portability (Art. 20). You can withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7(3)). To do so, contact support@2056.digital.

Right to object: Where we process data on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), you can object at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation (Art. 21 GDPR).

You can also lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is the Saxon Data Protection and Transparency Commissioner (Sächsische Datenschutz- und Transparenzbeauftragte), Devrientstraße 5, 01067 Dresden, Germany.

Changes

As Plapper and the website evolve, we adapt this policy. You can find the current version at getplapper.com/en/datenschutz.