Privacy Policy

In short

• To recognise, translate and read your pages aloud, the app sends the photos and text you add — and prompts for AI texts — to our server.
• There, third-party AI services recognise and translate the text, and speech services turn it into audio. They are described in Service providers below.
• Photos are deleted after processing. Page texts, translations and audio stay on our server for no more than 7 days after your book is made; your books are kept on your device.
• We don’t know your name or email address: we keep only technical identifiers, stored in a form that cannot be traced back to you.
• The app has no ads, no tracking and no outside analytics. To improve it, the app tells our own server how it is used — for example when you press Play and how long you listen — never what your pages say.
• Nothing from your pages is sent before you agree to this in the app.

Who we are

Outloud Reader is made and run by an independent developer, referred to here as “Outloud Reader”, “we” or “us”. We decide how the data described here is used, so for data protection law we are its controller. You can reach us at support@outloudreader.app.

This policy covers the Outloud Reader app for iPhone, iPad and Android, its server, and this website.

What we collect

• Your account. The app creates your account itself — a random number — the first time it needs one, and keeps it so it is the same across your devices and survives a reinstall. It is shown in the app as your support code.
• Technical identifiers. We keep technical identifiers (of your device and your app installation), stored only in a form that cannot be traced back to you — to keep your account and purchases working on your devices and to prevent abuse.
• The pages you add — photos, text you paste or type, pages of a PDF — and the prompts you write for an AI text. See What we send and why.
• Your page balance and purchases: how many pages you have and have used, the store transaction numbers of the page packs you bought and of any refunds, and, if you subscribe to Premium, which plan you have and its current period.
• Usage records. For each import: when it happened, whether it was a photo or text, how many pages and characters, the language and voice, whether it failed and why (a short technical code, never your text), the country the request came from (as reported by our hosting provider), and what it cost us. To protect the service from fraud and abuse, we record the name and number of the network each request came from (for example, your mobile operator); we don’t store your IP address. We do keep a short code computed from it with a key that changes every day: the code can’t be turned back into the address, and it can’t connect requests on different days. We also record when the app was first and last used and its version. We also record how the app is used: when it is opened, which first-run screens are passed, when you press Play and how many seconds of each page you listen to, taps on pages waiting for audio, and whether the purchase screen was closed or a purchase started, finished or was cancelled — as event names and numbers, never your text. For each page read we also note what kind of page it is (for example a book, a menu or a document) — a label, never its text. These records carry a shortened hash of your account number, never the text of your pages.
• Your consent. When you tap “I agree” in the app, we record that your account agreed, the version of the text you agreed to, the time, a technical identifier of the device, the app’s language and version, and the country the request came from — so we can show what was agreed if it is ever questioned. No IP address is kept.
• Your account key on Android. On Android, the app also keeps a small account key in your Google backup, so that a reinstall or a new phone keeps your account and your pages.
• Subscription records. If you subscribe to Premium, our server keeps for 30 days a log of the checks of your subscription with Google Play and RevenueCat and of what each one changed in your Premium period. It carries a shortened one-way hash of your account number and a shortened one-way hash of the Google Play purchase token — never the token itself, and never the text of your pages.

We don’t collect your contacts, location, microphone or advertising identifier. The app contains no third-party analytics, advertising or crash-reporting software, and there are no ads.

What stays on your device

• Your library — books, their text and translations, and the audio — is stored on your device. Where your version of the app offers iCloud sync and you turn it on, the library is also kept in your own private iCloud database, which Apple stores for you and we cannot read. The original photos and PDF pages are synced too, so “Original” in the reader works on your other devices; another device downloads one only when you open it.
• First reading of a photo. The app first reads each photo with Apple’s on-device text recognition. When that reading is clear, only the text is sent, and the photo never leaves your phone. When it isn’t, a reduced copy of the photo is sent together with that first reading.
• PDF files. The file stays on your phone. Only the pages you choose are sent — as their text, or as a picture of the page when it has no text in it.
• No page leaves your phone until you tap Create (or Write text for an AI text) and, the first time on each device, agree to processing. If you choose Not now, nothing is sent. You can read that agreement again at any time in Account → How your pages are processed.
• On Android the library stays on your device as well, and photos are first read with Google’s on-device text recognition, under the same rules as above. If you use Android’s backup, the library and the app’s settings may be copied to your Google backup, encrypted so that neither Google nor we can read them (this needs a screen lock); audio and original photos are not included. You can turn the backup off in your phone’s settings.

What we send and why

Your pages

When you create a book, each page goes to our server as text or as a photo. There, third-party AI services recognise and translate the text, and speech services turn the translation into audio with word timings, so each phrase can be highlighted as it is spoken. To get those timings, the audio we just generated (never your voice) is transcribed by a speech-recognition service. Your pages are not used to train AI models — neither ours nor our providers’.

AI texts

When you ask the app to write a text for you, your request is sent to our server and to OpenAI, which checks it for unsafe content and writes the text. Before anything is sent, the app looks for email addresses, phone numbers, card numbers and links and asks you to leave them out. We don’t store your request, and a text written for your request is not kept on our server — it is sent back to your phone. If you make a book from it, it is treated like any text you paste.

Texts on topics the app chooses for you, such as Surprise me, are different: they contain nothing you typed, so we keep them and may offer the same text to other people. We record which of them your account has already received, so you don’t get the same one twice.

If you report a text, the report is an email to us with the details the app fills in, which you see before sending. What AI texts will and won’t be written about is in the content rules.

Purchases

See Purchases below.

Why we are allowed to use it

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the law asks us to name a legal basis for each use of your data:

• To provide the service you asked for (performance of our contract with you): your account, processing your pages and AI texts, your page balance and purchases, sync between your devices.
• Our legitimate interests, which we have balanced against your privacy: keeping the service secure and preventing abuse (technical identifiers, request logs, the record that an account has already received free pages, refund records), caching results so we don’t pay twice for the same page, and usage records for our accounting and to improve the service. You can object to these uses; see Your rights.
• Legal obligations, where the law requires us to keep or disclose information.

Before the first page is sent from a device, the app asks you to agree to how your pages are processed. We ask so that nothing leaves your phone before you know where it goes. If you no longer want your pages processed this way, stop creating books and, if you like, delete your account.

Service providers

These companies process data for us, only to provide the app and under their terms as our processors or service providers. Below we name the AI provider and the services that are part of your device or your purchases, and describe the others by what they do. This is the list the consent screen in the app refers to; you can ask us for the current list of all providers at support@outloudreader.app.

Cloudflare

• Receives: every request to our server, including pages, text and audio; our storage and logs.
• Why: hosting, storage, caching, request logs.
• Where, and how long: Cloudflare’s global network. What we store there, and for how long, is under How long we keep things. Cloudflare keeps our request logs for up to 7 days; as for any website, these may include technical details of the connection, such as your IP address.

OpenAI

• Receives: page photos and text; text to translate; your requests for AI texts and the texts written for them.
• Why: reading and translating pages; checking and writing AI texts.
• Where, and how long: USA. Not used to train OpenAI’s models. Sent with storage turned off; OpenAI may keep API data for up to 30 days to monitor abuse.

Speech services

• Who: speech models we run ourselves on rented cloud servers, and speech services of other companies. Which of them voices a page depends on its language and voice, and changes as we improve the voices.
• Receives: the text to be read aloud, and the audio made from it.
• Why: turning text into natural speech and timing each word, so the phrase being read can be highlighted.
• Where, and how long: data centres in the United States and other countries. Not used to train models. Kept for no more than 30 days, and by most of these services not at all.

RevenueCat

• Receives: your account number, your App Store purchases and receipts, and basic technical information from its software in the app, such as device type and operating system.
• Why: processing and checking in-app purchases and refunds.
• Where, and how long: USA; kept while we use RevenueCat, unless we ask it to delete your record.

Apple

• Receives: your App Store purchases, technical identifiers, your payments, and what the app keeps in your iCloud.
• Why: Apple’s App Store and device verification services, in-app purchases, and iCloud, which keeps your account and — if you use iCloud sync — your library.
• Where, and how long: under Apple’s own privacy policy.

Google

• Receives: on Android, your Google Play purchases and subscription status (our server asks Google Play directly whether your subscription has renewed, using the token of your purchase), a check that the app and the device are genuine, and the account key in your Google backup.
• Why: Google Play billing and subscriptions, preventing abuse, and Google’s backup, which lets a reinstall or a new phone keep your account.
• Where, and how long: under Google’s own privacy policy.

We may also disclose data if the law requires it, for example in response to a valid court order, or to protect the service and its users from fraud or abuse. If the service is ever taken over by someone else, your data would pass to them under this policy, and we would tell you first.

International transfers

Most of our providers process data in the United States, and Cloudflare serves requests from the data centre nearest to you. When data from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland is processed in a country without an equivalent level of protection, we rely on the safeguards the law provides, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses in our providers’ data processing terms, or a provider’s certification under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework. You can ask us for more information about these safeguards.

How long we keep things

• Uploaded photos and page text, while your book is being made: deleted as soon as the page is done. A page that failed keeps its photo so you can retry — never more than 3 days after upload.
• Finished pages (text, translation, word timings) waiting to reach your phone: kept until your phone confirms it has them, and no more than 7 days after the import ends. A summary without any text (page states, page counts) is kept 30 days.
• Generated audio, with the sentences it reads and their word timings: 7 days. It is filed under a hash of your account number, so your other devices can reuse it.
• Cached page readings and translations: 7 days. They are stored under a fingerprint of the photo or text, not linked to your account.
• Our request logs (request number, shortened account hash, shortened device key, endpoint, size, status, duration, country, network name and number, and the daily connection code): up to 30 days. They never contain page text, photos, translations, AI requests or audio.
• Usage records (see What we collect): kept indefinitely, for our accounting and to plan the service. They are plain statistics — when the app was used, how many pages and characters were read aloud, in which language and voice, and what it cost — and contain nothing of what your pages or AI texts said. They are filed under a shortened one-way hash of your account number, not under your name or email address. You can ask us to delete those of your account.
• The record of AI texts on our own topics your account has received: kept so that you don’t get the same text twice. It is erased with “Delete my data”.
• App usage events: kept for 180 days and erased with “Delete my data”.
• The record of your consent: while you have an account and for as long as we may need to show what was agreed; it is not deleted with the account.
• Your account, technical identifiers, page balance and purchase records: while you have an account; see below for what deletion keeps.
• The subscription log (see What we collect): 30 days, and erased at once when you use “Delete my data”. It never contains page text.

Deleting your data

You can delete your data in the app: Account → Delete my data. This immediately:

• deletes your page balance, including paid pages you haven’t used;
• deletes your imports still on our server, with their photos and texts;
• deletes your activity records tied to your account (including app usage events and page labels);
• ends your devices’ access to the account, so it can’t be used again.

Deleting your data doesn’t cancel a Premium subscription: Apple keeps renewing it until you cancel it in your Apple Account settings.

Your books are not deleted — they stay in your library on your devices; deleting a book, or the app, removes them. If you used iCloud sync, Delete data from iCloud in the app removes them from iCloud.

After deletion we keep what we need to handle money and prevent abuse: a record that the account existed and was deleted; the transaction numbers of packs credited to it and of any refunds (so a later refund can be processed); and a note that the account has already received its free pages. The usage records and the record of AI texts on our topics, described above, also stay: they contain none of your text and remain filed under a shortened, one-way identifier of the deleted account — write to us if you want them deleted too. The record of your consent is kept as described above. RevenueCat’s record of your purchases is not removed by deleting your data today; write to us and we will remove it. Cached content, audio and logs expire on the schedule above.

Deleting your data also erases the subscription log. On Android it doesn’t cancel a Premium subscription either: Google Play keeps renewing it until you cancel it in Google Play → Subscriptions. On Android, deletion also replaces the account key in your Google backup with a new one; your library on the phone is not touched. If you no longer have the app, see Delete your data or write to us.

Purchases

Payments are handled by Apple; we never see your card or billing details. Purchases are managed through RevenueCat: the app tells RevenueCat your account number, and Apple’s purchase, renewal and refund notices go to RevenueCat, which passes them to our server. Our server checks each purchase with RevenueCat and keeps its transaction number, the pack or Premium plan, which account it was credited to, and whether it was refunded. When Apple refunds a pack, its pages are removed, and creating new books may be paused for the account that bought it.

On Android, payments are handled by Google Play, and we never see your card or billing details. RevenueCat manages these purchases in the same way, and Google Play’s notices reach our server through RevenueCat and directly. For a subscription, our server also asks Google Play itself whether it has renewed, so that Premium follows what you actually paid. We keep the Google Play order number of each paid period, and in the subscription log only a shortened one-way hash of the purchase token.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us:

• what data we hold about you, and for a copy of it;
• to correct it;
• to delete it, including the records that deleting your data in the app does not remove;
• to restrict how we use it, or to object to a use based on our legitimate interests;
• to receive the data you gave us in a common machine-readable format.

Write to support@outloudreader.app and include your support code from Account → Support code, so we can find your records. We may need to confirm that the account is yours before acting. We answer within one month, and we don’t charge for it. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, you can also complain to your data protection authority.

California and other US states. In the past 12 months we have collected these categories of personal information, for the purposes described above: identifiers (your account number and technical identifiers of your device and app installation), commercial information (your page packs, Premium subscription and refunds), the content you add, internet activity (our request logs, usage records and this website’s visit statistics) and approximate location (the country of a request and, for visits to this website from the United States, the state). We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not use sensitive personal information to infer anything about you. You have the right to know, delete and correct your personal information, and we will not treat you differently for using these rights. You can use them as described above, yourself or through an authorised agent.

Security

Everything between the app and our server is encrypted in transit, and every request is checked against Apple’s App Store and device verification services. We store technical identifiers only in a form that cannot be traced back to you, keep page content for days rather than months, and limit access to our systems to the developer. On your device, your account information is kept in the iOS keychain, and the texts in your iCloud library are stored as encrypted fields. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities where the law requires it.

On Android, requests are checked in the same way by Google’s services, and the account key in your Google backup is stored so that we cannot read it.

Children

Outloud Reader is not meant for children under 13, and AI texts are written for a 13+ audience. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. Where the law sets a higher age for agreeing to the processing of your data yourself — for example, 16 in some countries of the European Union — a parent or guardian must agree for you. If you believe a child has used the app without that agreement, write to us and we will delete the data.

This website

outloudreader.app is hosted by Cloudflare. It sets one cookie of its own, lang, only when you pick a language, to remember it. It uses the country your connection comes from, as reported by Cloudflare, to show App Store prices in your currency. Its fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, so your browser connects to Google’s servers when you open a page.

Visit statistics

To learn which pages are read and which links and campaigns bring people here, the site keeps its own statistics, without cookies. For each page view and each tap on an App Store, Google Play or “Get the app” button, our server records the page and the button, the page’s language, the country your connection comes from (and, in the United States, the state), whether you use a phone, a tablet or a computer, the name of your browser (not its version), the name of the website that linked to the page (not the full address), the campaign labels in the link you followed (such as utm_campaign), whether that link came from a Google ad, and the time. To count visitors, it also stores a code computed from your IP address and your browser’s details with a key that changes every day: the code can’t be turned back into either, and it can’t connect your visits on different days. These statistics are stored with Cloudflare, only we can see them, and they are deleted after 13 months.

Google Ads

If you are in the United States and come to the site from one of our Google ads, it also loads Google’s conversion tag, so that Google can tell us how many of the people who clicked an ad then tapped an App Store or Google Play button. Google then receives the ad click’s identifier, your IP address and your browser’s details, and may set its own cookies for this, such as _gcl_au. We turn off ad personalisation and remarketing, and ask Google to restrict how it processes this data (restricted data processing), so that it uses the data only to measure our ads, as our service provider. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, the tag isn’t loaded at all. Visitors outside the United States, and visitors who didn’t come from an ad, never get it.

App Store links

Links to the App Store carry a campaign label such as ct=google-us-search-1, which names the campaign or the website that brought you here, or site. Apple uses it to show us in App Store Connect how many downloads each campaign led to, as totals. The label says nothing about you.

Google Play links

Links to Google Play carry the same label as utm_campaign, with utm_source naming the website or network that brought you here. Google uses them to show us in Play Console how many installs each campaign led to, as totals. The labels say nothing about you.

What the website doesn’t collect

We don’t store your IP address or your browser’s full details, and we don’t collect your name, email address, advertising identifier or precise location. The website doesn’t track you across other websites or from one day to the next, and we don’t sell your data or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Changes

If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. If we start sending a new kind of data or using a new kind of service, we will update this page before we do, and the app will ask for your agreement again before sending anything.

This policy is written in English and translated into other languages for convenience. If a translation differs from the English text, the English text prevails.

Contact

Questions or requests about your data: support@outloudreader.app. A person will answer.