Privacy Policy

for the Bellbuch app

Deutsche Fassung

1. Controller

The controller responsible for data processing under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

2. In short

The app itself collects no personal data. There is no user account, no registration and no sign-in. Anything you create in the app stays locally on your device; we do not read it, transmit it or store it.

The app displays advertising. Google AdMob, the service used for this, processes data from your device when it does so — that is technically unavoidable when serving ads. Section 4 sets out exactly what is involved. We deliberately chose the more data-frugal setup and do not add any analytics of our own.

3. Data the app itself processes

Your content in the app (start and end of your monitoring sessions and the time, duration and type of detected dog sounds) is stored only in your device's local storage. It never leaves the device. We run no server for this app that such data would be sent to, and we have no access to it.

Uninstalling the app removes this locally stored data along with it. A separate deletion request to us is neither necessary nor possible, because the data never reaches us in the first place.

3a. Microphone: no audio is stored

Bellbuch uses the microphone only during a monitoring session that you start yourself and can stop at any time. The audio is analysed directly on the device by a bundled sound recognition model (Google's YAMNet, included in the app) and discarded immediately. This also applies while the device is locked during monitoring; iOS shows the orange microphone indicator, Android a persistent notification that Bellbuch is listening. No audio recordings are stored and no audio is transmitted — not to us, not to Google, not to anyone else. The only thing saved is that a dog sound of a certain type (barking, howling, whining) was detected at a certain time for a certain duration.

Conversations nearby are therefore neither recorded nor analysed. The advertising receives no data from monitoring. If you share a day or a report as a PDF, you decide who receives the file. You can delete single entries and whole days in the day view, and older or all recordings under History → Delete recordings.

4. Advertising (Google AdMob)

To fund the app we display ads through Google AdMob, a service of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. When serving and measuring an ad, Google processes among other things:

• your device's advertising identifier (the Advertising ID on Android, the IDFA on iOS where you have permitted its use),
• your IP address and the approximate region derived from it,
• technical device details (model, operating system version, language setting),
• records of which ad was shown when, and whether it was tapped.

The purposes are serving and billing the advertising, and protecting against click fraud. Google acts as its own controller for this processing; details and Google's current information are available in Google's privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy and in its overview of how it uses data from partner apps at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Personalised ads are only shown if you consented when you first started the app. With your consent, further advertising partners may also bid for the ad slots through Google AdMob; the consent dialog lists them under “Manage options”. You can change your decision at any time in the app under Settings → Change ad settings. Users in US states with their own privacy laws can also opt out of the sale or sharing of their data for advertising there at any time (“Don’t sell or share my data”). The app never shows ads while monitoring is running.

Independently of this, you can reset your device's advertising identifier or restrict its use at any time in your system settings (Android: Settings → Google → Ads; iOS: Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking).

4a. App updates (Expo)

The app receives smaller updates – such as bug fixes and translations – directly, without going through the App Store. To do so, it asks Expo at startup whether a new version is available. Expo is a service of 650 Industries, Inc., USA. This request transmits your IP address, the operating system, the app version and a random identifier that the app generates once on first launch. It contains no information about you, applies only to this app and has nothing to do with the advertising ID.

The request happens regardless of the consent dialog, because it has nothing to do with advertising; its only purpose is to keep the app up to date and free of errors. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a working, secure app (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); storing the identifier on your device is strictly necessary for this (Section 25(2) No. 2 TDDDG). According to Expo, it participates in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. How Expo processes data is described at expo.dev/privacy.

5. Legal bases

Where consent is obtained for advertising, the legal basis is Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR; you may withdraw it at any time with effect for the future. Where processing takes place without consent, we rely on our legitimate interest in a financially viable app that stays free for you, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.

6. Recipients and transfers outside the EU

Beyond the advertising integration described in section 4 (Google and, with your consent, further advertising partners) and the update request to Expo described in section 4a, we do not share data with third parties. Google and Expo may process data outside the European Union, in particular in the United States. Google bases such transfers on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, Expo on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

7. Retention

We store no personal data ourselves and therefore cannot state retention periods for holdings of our own. How long Google and Expo retain the data they receive follows from their own privacy policies (see sections 4 and 4a).

8. App permissions

The app requests only the permissions its features require: microphone (only during a monitoring session you start yourself, see section 3a) and, if you agree, permission for cross-app tracking for personalised ads. Internet access is needed to deliver the ads and for app updates (section 4a).

9. Your rights

You have the right to obtain access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18) and data portability (Art. 20), as well as the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21). Please contact the address given in section 1.

Please note: as we hold no data about you, we cannot identify you within holdings of our own. Requests concerning ad delivery should be addressed to Google directly.

10. Right to lodge a complaint

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority about our processing of your personal data, in particular with the authority of your habitual residence, your place of work, or the place of the alleged infringement.

11. Children

The app is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

12. Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the app or the legal situation changes. The version published here at the time is the one that applies.

Last updated: 8 October 2026