Privacy policy: Decibel (working name): Sound Meter & Night Noise Log

Status: this app is in development and has not been released yet. This policy describes what the app is designed to do, as written in its specification; it will be reviewed again before release.

In short

The app measures sound levels with the microphone of your phone. It works on the phone only. It has no account, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking, and it sends nothing anywhere. No audio is ever recorded or stored: only the measured levels are kept.

What is stored on your phone

• Sound levels, one value per second, with the time they were measured, kept in a local database inside the app. No table, column, file or log holds audio samples; an audio buffer lives only for the 100 milliseconds it takes to process it.
• Sessions (quick measurements and night logs), noise events detected in a night log, gaps in a measurement, and the calibration profiles you create.
• Cases and notes that you write yourself, for example a name for a dispute, an address, a place, who measured, notes and witness names. These are free text that you type; the app does not collect them from anywhere.
• Your settings, such as weighting, language and theme.

Permissions

• Microphone (iPhone: microphone access; Android: the RECORD_AUDIO permission). It is used only to measure sound levels, and it is asked for when you choose to allow it. Sound is analysed on the phone.
• Night log in the background: when you start a night log yourself, the app keeps measuring with the screen off. On iPhone this uses the background audio mode and the system shows its microphone indicator. On Android it uses a foreground service of type microphone with a visible notification that has a Stop button. A night log is started only by you, from the open app.
• The app does not use location, camera or contacts. On Android the release build has no internet permission.

Backup and export

Reports (PDF) and data (CSV) are created by you and handed to the share sheet; you decide where they go. A backup is a plain JSON file that you create and share yourself. Addresses, notes and witness names in your cases are text you wrote; the app's help reminds you to ask witnesses before naming them.

What the app does not do

No advertising, no analytics, no crash reporting, no accounts and no network use. Planned store privacy labels: App Store "Data Not Collected"; Google Play "No data collected or shared".

Contact

Questions about privacy: plainapps@tuta.com.