Privacy Policy

Who runs hum

hum is run by Cal Nightingale, an independent developer, who decides how your data is used (in privacy-law terms, the data controller). You can reach Cal at support@humtoday.com.

What we don't do

• No third-party analytics or tracking.
• No advertising, and no selling of your data.
• No passwords. You sign in with a one-time code texted to your phone.
• No public feed, follower counts, or browsable directory. Anyone with your username or invite link, even someone not on hum, can see your name, photo, and username. If you set your badges or passport to anyone on hum, those show too. Everything else on your profile is for friends only.

What we collect

• Account info: the phone number you sign in with, and a display name, username, and optional avatar, bio, and intro clip you choose. We also keep your time zone so your day starts at the right time. If you created your account before hum moved to phone sign-in, we still hold the email address, phone number, or basic Google or Apple profile it was made with until you delete your account.
• Phone number: the number itself is held by our sign-in provider (see below). hum keeps a hashed copy with your account, which links your sign-ins to it and lets friends who already have your number find you, unless you turn off "Let friends find me" in Settings. A hash hides the number from casual view, but there are few enough phone numbers that a hash can be matched back to its number, so we protect it as carefully as the number itself.
• Contacts: when you choose to look for friends in your contacts, your contacts' phone numbers are hashed on your device, and only those hashes are sent to be checked against hum members. Names and other contact details never leave your device. The hashes, including those of people who aren't on hum, are checked and then discarded, never stored. To prevent misuse, we keep a count of how many numbers your account has checked each day, but not the numbers themselves.
• Invites and referrals: when you pick someone from your contacts to invite, their number is hashed on your device and we keep that one hash until 30 days after you last picked them. If they join hum with that number in that time, they get a friend request from you, the hash is deleted, and if yours was the first invite we note that you invited them. If they don't, the hash is deleted after those 30 days. If several people invited your number, you can choose which of them invited you while setting up. We also note who invited you when you join through a friend's link, or when you tell us yourself. Only you and the person who invited you can see that record.
• Your content: the voice memos, optional intro clip, emoji reactions, voice replies, and any prompt text or location label you add.
• Group hums: when you record a hum together, the one recording is posted to each person who joins, and friends of any of them can hear it. Listeners see only the names of co-authors they're already friends with, while everyone in the session sees each other's names and photos as it's set up. During setup we keep who joined, the recording until it's posted, and when each person's friends were notified, and we delete all of that within a day of it ending. If you delete your copy, or your account, the others keep theirs.
• Birthday: if you add one, we store the month and day only, never the year. Your friends see it on your profile, and on the day hum suggests a birthday prompt to them and mentions it in their daily reminder.
• Location label: if you allow location, your phone turns its position into a rough place name (like a city) using its built-in map service from Apple or Google. We store that place name and its country, never your coordinates. Each place is also added to your hum passport, with how many times and when you first and last hummed there, and it stays after the hum itself is gone.
• Badges: which badges you've earned and when.
• Bluetooth (hum together): if you allow Bluetooth, hum looks for a friend's group hum only while you're on the home screen and haven't hummed yet today, and announces your phone only while you host one. What it sends is a code that changes every 15 minutes and that only your friends' phones can recognise. Every account has a random secret for this, and while "Notice group hums in the room" is on (it is by default) for both you and a friend, their phone gets your secret so it can recognise yours. Bluetooth sightings are never sent to us or stored, and Bluetooth is never used for location.
• Notification tokens: if you allow notifications, your device's push token. Notifications show the day's prompt, or a friend's name and what they did (posted, replied, reacted, or sent a friend request).
• App version: which version of hum you run and your phone's operating system version, so we know when an old version can stop being supported. We keep one entry per platform (iPhone, Android), replaced each time, with no device identifier.
• Feedback: anything you submit through the in-app feedback form, which is emailed to the app owner.
• Server logs: like most online services, our hosting, database, and sign-in providers record technical details of each request, such as your IP address and the time, to keep the service running and secure. When you sign in, Firebase also checks that the request comes from a genuine copy of the app.

How it's used

Your data is used only to run the app: to sign you in, show your memos to the friends you've connected with, and send the notifications you've opted into. A friend can only hear a given day's memos once they've posted their own. We do not use your content for any other purpose. Your phone number is used only to sign you in, to let friends who have your number find you (unless you turn that off), and, when you choose, to check your contacts for friends. It is never used for advertising, and it is shared only with the services that run sign-in (Firebase, and Supabase for older accounts).

Why we're allowed to use it

Where privacy laws such as the GDPR apply, hum relies on three grounds. Running the app you signed up for covers your account, your content, your friends, and the microphone, camera, and photos you use to make them. Your consent covers the optional features your phone asks about: contacts, location, Bluetooth, and notifications. You can withdraw it at any time in your phone's settings, and in hum's Settings you can also turn off each notification type and "Notice group hums in the room". Legitimate interests cover the rest: keeping hum safe and working, such as limits on how many numbers an account can check and the server logs above, and helping friends connect. That second interest is why friends who already have your number can find you by default; you can object at any time by turning off "Let friends find me". Checking the hashed number of a contact who isn't on hum rests on the same interests, and it lasts only as long as the check. So does keeping the hashed number of someone you invite, for 30 days after you last pick them, and the record of who invited whom. hum makes no automated decisions about you.

How long we keep it

Hums, and the reactions and voice replies on them, are deleted automatically two weeks after the day they were for. The hashed number of someone you invited is deleted when they join or 30 days after you last picked them, whichever comes first. Your profile and intro clip stay until you change them or delete your account. Badges, passport places, your phone hash, the daily count of numbers you've checked, the record of who invited you, and feedback you sent through the app stay until you delete your account, and feedback emails stay in the owner's inbox. A notification token stays until you sign out on that device, it stops working, or you delete your account. The app version entry is replaced as you update and removed after 90 days without one, or when you delete your account. Our providers keep server logs and backups for their own limited periods, so deleted data can remain in them for a short time before it expires.

Where it's stored

Account data and content are stored with Supabase (database and audio storage), and hum's server runs on Vercel. Sign-in by phone and notifications run through Google's Firebase, which sends your sign-in codes, checks that requests come from the real app, and delivers notifications (through Apple on iPhone). Feedback emails are sent through Resend. Place names come from your phone's own map service.

hum and these providers are based in the United States, where your data is stored and processed. If you use hum from elsewhere, including the EU or UK, your data is transferred to the US, and the providers protect those transfers with safeguards such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Your choices and rights

Every notification type can be turned off individually in Settings, and you can update your profile at any time. You choose whether your badges and passport are visible to anyone on hum, to friends (the default), or only to you. You can turn off discoverability, which hides you from both username search and contact matching (your personal invite link still works), and turn off "Notice group hums in the room", which stops hum using Bluetooth and sharing your secret. From Settings you can also download a copy of your data (profile, hums, replies, reactions, friends, feedback, badges, and passport places) as a single file, and delete your account outright, which immediately and permanently removes your profile, your content and audio, and your sign-in identity. Group hums you recorded with others stay on their accounts, and feedback you already sent stays in the owner's email. If you'd rather we handle it, email the address below.

You can also ask for a copy of your data, have it corrected or deleted, object to or limit how it's used, or take it to another service; the download in Settings is in a reusable format (JSON) for that, and for anything it leaves out, email the address below. If you're in the EU or UK, you can complain to your local data protection authority. For any of these, use Settings or email the address below, and you'll get an answer within a month.

Children

hum is for people 16 and older and isn't meant for children. If you're under 16, please don't use it. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 16, we'll delete it, so if you think that's happened, email the address below.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the updated version is posted here with a new date at the top. If a change significantly affects how your data is used, hum will also tell you in the app.

Contact

Questions about your data, or a request about it? Email support@humtoday.com.