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Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 3, 2026

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how CryWhy collects, uses, stores, and protects information when you use the CryWhy website, Android app, and related services. CryWhy is designed for parents and caregivers. It is not directed to children to create accounts or interact with the service independently.

2. Information We Collect

Depending on how you use CryWhy, we may collect the following categories of information:

  • Audio submissions: recordings you choose to submit for cry analysis, which may contain baby cries and incidental background sound.
  • Account information: your email address, display name, and authentication data provided by your sign-in provider (e.g. Google Sign-In) if you create an account. When you sign in via Google, we receive your email address, name, and Google account identifier. We do not share your audio or clip data with Google.
  • Subscription information: subscription status, entitlement state, and purchase metadata provided by Google Play Store. CryWhy does not directly handle payment card data.
  • Device identifier: a hashed device fingerprint generated on your device from a platform-provided identifier (Android ID on Android, vendor identifier on iOS). This identifier is scoped to CryWhy, cannot be used to track you across other apps, and is used to manage your free trial and link anonymous usage to your account.
  • Device registration: when you link your account to a mobile device, we store a device registration record including the device fingerprint and platform. Premium accounts may register up to 3 devices. All device registrations are deleted when you delete your account.
  • Service usage information: anonymous visitor identifiers, session events (app launches, model syncs, analyses), clip feedback, and app interaction data used to operate, secure, and improve the service.
  • Approximate location: city and country inferred from your IP address using a third-party geolocation service. Your IP address is not permanently stored in our database but may appear in short-lived server logs. We do not request precise GPS location.
  • Technical information: device/browser type, app version, operating system, and service diagnostics needed to troubleshoot reliability and detect abuse.
  • Crash reports: if the app encounters an error, anonymized crash diagnostics (stack traces, device context) are sent to our error monitoring service (Sentry). Crash reports do not include your email, audio, or personal data.

3. How We Use Information

We use collected information to:

  • Provide cry analysis results and related product functionality.
  • Store your history, votes, and preferences when you use an account-backed experience.
  • Detect fraud, abuse, excessive automated use, and service misuse.
  • Operate subscriptions, trials, entitlement checks, and customer support.
  • Improve model quality, reliability, and safety through evaluation and training workflows.
  • Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms.

4. Audio Processing and Model Improvement

CryWhy performs cry analysis entirely on your device using locally stored machine learning models. Audio is not streamed to a server for analysis. If you choose to save a recording, the audio file is uploaded to our servers and stored alongside your analysis results.

Audio recordings you save, together with feedback you provide about result quality, may be retained and used to evaluate, retrain, and improve our models. Audio used for model training is de-identified by removing your user ID, email, and account metadata. Anonymized audio may be reviewed by team members for quality assurance.

No anonymization process is perfect, especially for audio. Do not submit recordings you are not comfortable sharing with CryWhy for service operation and improvement.

5. Cookies and Session Tracking

CryWhy uses a session cookie (crywhy_session) to maintain your authenticated state between requests. This cookie is HTTP-only, secure, and scoped to the domain that sets it. We do not use third-party advertising or analytics cookies. The device fingerprint described in Section 2 is stored locally on your device and transmitted to our servers with API requests to identify your trial status.

6. Legal Bases

Where applicable under laws such as the GDPR, we process personal data on the basis of one or more of the following: performance of a contract with you, your consent, our legitimate interests in operating and improving the service, fraud prevention and security, and compliance with legal obligations.

7. Sharing and Service Providers

We do not sell personal data to data brokers. We may share information with service providers that help us operate CryWhy, including:

  • Google Sign-In: authentication. Google receives your sign-in request; we receive your email and name. Google's use of this data is governed by Google's Privacy Policy.
  • Google Play Store: subscription billing and purchase management. Google Play's privacy policy governs billing data.
  • Sentry: crash and error monitoring. Receives anonymized error diagnostics only.
  • IP geolocation provider: infers city/country from your IP address for analytics. Your IP is not stored permanently.
  • Cloud hosting and storage: infrastructure providers used to run the service and store data.
  • Professional advisers or authorities where required by law or to protect our rights and users.

8. Retention

We retain different categories of data for different periods:

  • Account data: retained while your account is active. Deleted within 7 business days of a deletion request.
  • Server logs (containing IP addresses and request metadata): retained for up to 90 days.
  • Usage analytics (visitor events, session data): retained for up to 1 year.
  • Saved audio clips: retained while your account is active. On account deletion, the user link is removed. De-identified audio may be retained indefinitely for model training and evaluation.
  • Transaction records: anonymous transaction IDs are retained for up to 7 years to comply with tax and financial reporting requirements.

9. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect data against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, or alteration. Model files are encrypted at rest on your device. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. International Transfers

CryWhy and its service providers may process data in countries other than your own, including the European Union and the United States. Where required, we use Standard Contractual Clauses and supplementary technical measures (encryption, pseudonymization) to protect transferred personal data.

11. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your location, you may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, portability, restriction, or objection to certain processing. You may also withdraw consent where consent is the basis for processing.

You can delete your account directly from the app (Settings > Account > Delete account) or by emailing contact@crywhy.com. Full instructions are on our account deletion page. Some information may remain in backups, security logs, or de-identified training materials where permitted by law.

12. Children's Privacy

CryWhy is designed for adults (parents, guardians, caregivers) and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will promptly delete it and notify the parent or guardian.

Audio recordings may incidentally contain sounds of infants or children. You are responsible for ensuring you have obtained any necessary consent before recording audio in environments where other individuals are present, in accordance with the recording consent laws of your jurisdiction.

If you believe a child's personal data has been collected through CryWhy, please contact us at contact@crywhy.com.

13. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version becomes effective when posted with a new "Last updated" date. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

14. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, your data, or a deletion request, contact us at contact@crywhy.com.