SoundSketcher

Privacy

What SoundSketcher keeps about you, and why. In short: only what is needed to run the service.

Without an account

  • Sounds you upload or record without signing in are kept only for you, for 24 hours, and then deleted. Nobody else sees them. To find them again, the site sets one small cookie (ss_guest) that holds only a random code; it is needed for this and for nothing else. Sign in to keep your sounds.
  • Without an account you can try a few short sounds a day. To count them we use the same daily code as for the visit statistics (made from your address and browser, changed every day, never stored as an address); the counts are deleted after two days.
  • Your drawings, sound shapes, settings and other edits stay in your browser (local storage). They are not sent to us.

With an account

  • Sign-in details: your email address and name, as given when you sign in.
  • Your files: the sounds you upload, kept private to your account, and their analysis.
  • Your role (Free, Standard, Pro) and the storage it allows.
  • A minimal record of activity: when the account was created, when you last used it, how many files you uploaded and how many sketches you saved.
  • Deleting it: you can delete your account yourself (account menu → Delete account). Your files, your sketches and your record go at once; sounds you shared to the public library stay there, without your name.

We do not record what you draw or what you listen to.

Visit statistics

  • To see how the site is used and improve it, we count page visits and simple actions in the app (for example how often a sound is played, which engine, or how often an export is made). These counts are not linked to you or to your account.
  • There are no cookies for this, and nothing is stored in your browser for it.
  • Addresses are not stored. To count visitors once a day, we use a code made from your address and browser that changes every day and cannot be traced back to you.
  • To tell people from automated programs, a page counts as visited when it has loaded in a browser and sent us a small signal, and we note whether you then interacted with it (scrolled, clicked, typed). With the visit we keep the country (worked out from the address, which is not stored; IP geolocation by DB-IP) and the kind of site you came from (for example a search engine and which one), never the words you searched for.
  • Detailed counts are deleted after 13 months; only daily totals are kept.
  • If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, nothing is counted.
  • Like any web server, ours also keeps standard access logs (address, page, browser) for 14 days, for running the service and its security.

Why

To keep your files in your account, apply the storage limit of your role, let invite codes upgrade an account, and see whether the service is in use.

Other services

  • Sign-in is provided by Google Firebase Authentication, which processes your email address to sign you in.
  • Some pages load fonts from Google Fonts.
  • There are no advertising trackers and no analytics from other companies: the visit statistics above stay on our server. Your data is not sold or shared.

Your choices

  • You can delete your files from the Library at any time.
  • You can ask us to delete your account and everything kept with it, through the Feedback form in the app.
  • Your data is kept while your account exists, and deleted when you ask.

Listening experiments

The listening experiments have their own information sheet and ask for your consent separately.

Last updated: 18 October 2026