Privacy
This is a personal site. The homepage, projects list and contact page are public; the rest is private: to get in you ask for access and I approve it (and ask again for each project you’d like to see), and the voice recorder lets you save recordings. This page explains what that involves.
Who’s responsible
Sam Ben-David runs this site and is the data controller for the personal data it collects. For anything on this page, including deleting your data, email sam@sambendavid.com.
Browsing the site
There are no analytics, ads or tracking cookies, and no profiles are built about visitors. Like any website, the servers that deliver the pages see your IP address and browser details; see services the site uses below.
Contact form
- Your name, email address and message are emailed to me so I can read and answer it. They aren’t stored on the site; the email stays in my inbox until I delete it.
- Your IP address and the time you sent it are stored to limit how many messages can be sent and stop abuse, and deleted after a day.
Party RSVPs
The /40th page is for people invited to my 40th birthday.
- Your name, email address and whether you’re coming, plus the name and email address of a plus one if you add one (please tell them you’ve done so). They’re stored so I can plan the party, and I get an email for each reply. If you’re coming, you and your plus one get a confirmation email with a calendar invite. Nothing else is sent, and the details are never used for anything but the party.
- Your IP address and the time are stored separately, with no name or email, to limit how many replies can be sent and stop abuse, and deleted after a day.
- Replies are kept until after the party. You can ask me to remove yours at any time.
Access requests
- Your name, email address and an optional note, which you type into the request form, and your IP address and the time of the request, to limit how many requests can be made and stop abuse. I get an email with your request and decide whether to approve it.
- If you’re approved, your email is kept on the approved list so you can sign in. If you’re denied, it’s kept so the same request isn’t sent again. You can ask me to remove it at any time.
- Requests for a project or the blog: once you’re signed in, asking for one stores your email address, which one you asked for, when, and my decision. I get an email about it. If I approve, your email stays on that project’s list until I remove it or your access to the site ends.
Voice recorder: share links
If you turn on a share link for a recording, anyone who has the link can listen to it and download it, without signing in, until you turn sharing off (the link then stops working immediately). The page shows only the recording’s title (which, unless you change it, is the date and place it was made; the recorder points this out), never your account, and a download from it is named after that title. The link is long and random, and the page asks search engines not to index it, but treat it as public: don’t share it with people you don’t trust to keep it private.
Voice recorder: what’s collected
- Your email address, to send you sign-in codes and to identify your account. The part before the “@” is used as your display name. The date you signed up and the date you last signed in are stored with it.
- Sign-in codes, stored only as a one-way hash, together with your IP address and the time of the request, to limit how many codes can be requested and stop abuse.
- A session cookie (
__Host-mt_session) that keeps you signed in. Only a hash of it is stored on the server. - Your recordings: the sound you record and the sound files you add, with their title, date, length, file type and size. Files are stored exactly as they are, including any details they carry inside them. Recordings can capture other people’s voices, so please record others only with their permission. (Photos and videos saved with the earlier Memory timeline are still stored in your account until you ask me to delete them.)
- Bookmarks (moments you mark in a recording), a star if you favourite it, and the trim points that skip silence at the ends. Transcripts and summaries made while the earlier transcription feature existed, if any, stay with your account but are no longer shown or made.
- Titles, made in your browser from the date and the place, which you can change.
- Name tags added with the earlier Memory timeline, if any, stay with your account.
- Where you recorded, if Add the place is on (a choice on the recorder, on to begin with) and you allow location access: coordinates (the browser’s quick estimate, not a GPS fix), their accuracy and a place name (for example “Nørrebro, Copenhagen, Denmark”). Turn Add the place off and location isn’t asked for at all; you can also deny location access and still record. Either way the recording is then saved without a place. A sound file you add gets no place.
Web to Kindle
- The article link you paste is fetched by the site (on Cloudflare), along with the article’s pictures, so the website you link to sees a request from Cloudflare, not from you. If the website turns that away, the link is passed to Firecrawl to fetch instead (see below). The ebook is made in your browser.
- The ebook and your Kindle’s email address are sent through Cloudflare Email Service to that address. Neither is stored on the site; only the time of each send is kept, with your account, to limit sends to 50 a day (and the time of each Firecrawl fetch, to limit those to 30), and deleted after a day.
- Your Kindle’s address is remembered in your browser (
localStorage) so you don’t have to type it again.
Why, and on what basis
Your email, recordings and locations are used only to provide the voice recorder to you: signing you in, storing your recordings, and showing them back to you. This is necessary to provide the service you sign up for (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)). Location is only collected when Add the place is on and you’ve given your browser’s permission, and you can turn either off at any time.
Contact messages are used only to read and answer them, a legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)). IP addresses and sign-in attempts are used to keep the service secure and prevent abuse, which is a legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)).
Your data isn’t sold, used for advertising, used to train AI models, or shared with anyone except the services below. Your recordings are private to your account; nobody else can see them through the site. Only I, as the operator, can technically access the stored data, and I only do so when needed to run, fix or secure the service, or when you ask me to.
Stored on your device
Apart from the session cookie, the voice recorder keeps new recordings in your browser’s IndexedDB storage until they’ve uploaded, so a dropped connection can’t lose them; they’re removed from it once uploaded. Your playback speed and your noise-reduction, trimming and place choices are kept in your browser too, with a note of which account last used the recorder on that device (so it opens for that account without a connection). When you sign out, that note and the recorder’s offline copy of the page are deleted, and so is this site’s cache in your browser (which holds recordings you’ve played). A recording that hasn’t uploaded yet is the only copy, so you’re told before signing out; if you sign out anyway it stays on the device and uploads the next time you sign in there. All of this is strictly necessary for what you asked for, so there’s no cookie banner.
Services the site uses
- Cloudflare hosts the site and stores the voice recorder’s account data (D1 database) and recordings (R2 storage), sends the sign-in emails, contact form messages, party RSVP emails and Web to Kindle ebooks (Cloudflare Email Service). Cloudflare processes this data on my behalf as a data processor.
- Firecrawl fetches an article for Web to Kindle when the website refuses the site’s own request. It’s sent only the article’s link, nothing about you, and may keep a copy of the public page for a couple of days.
- OpenStreetMap Nominatim turns your coordinates into a place name. Your browser sends it the coordinates of each recording and, like any request, your IP address.
- Google Fonts serves the site’s fonts, so your browser sends Google a request (with your IP address) on every page.
- Spotify plays the albums on the homepage, which are the albums I’ve been listening to on my own Spotify account. Their covers come from Spotify through this site, so just opening the homepage doesn’t contact Spotify. Its player loads when you point at, touch or tap an album on the homepage, and then your browser connects to Spotify (with your IP address), which applies its own privacy policy. Each album also links to Spotify. If you’re signed in to Spotify in the same browser, it may play full songs instead of previews.
Some of these companies are based in, or may process data in, countries outside the EU/EEA, including the United States. Where that happens, the transfer is covered by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
Notes
- Your notes (their titles, text, checklist items, labels and paper) are stored with your account in the site’s database on Cloudflare (EU), so you see them on every device you sign in on. Only you can see them.
- Reminders: a reminder’s time, repeat and time zone are stored with the note. When it comes, it’s sent as a notification to each phone or browser where you turned notifications on, or, if none of them gets it, the note’s title and text are emailed to your account’s address through Cloudflare Email Service. The time it was sent is kept so it isn’t sent twice.
- Notifications: when you turn them on, your browser gives the site an address at its push service (Google’s for Chrome on Android, Apple’s on an iPhone, Mozilla’s for Firefox) and keys for it, which are stored with your account until the push service says they’re no longer valid, you turn notifications off in your browser, or you sign out on that device. Each reminder is encrypted for your device before it’s sent, so the push service carries only the encrypted message.
- A copy on your device: the notes page keeps your notes, and any changes not yet sent, in your browser (
localStorage) so it opens quickly and works without a connection. The copy is marked with whose it is: if someone else signs in on the same browser, it’s deleted before they see it. Signing out (on My Stuff or the sign-in page) sends any changes not yet sent, then deletes the copy, and this device stops getting your reminders. Clearing the site’s data in your browser deletes it too. The page itself (not your notes) is also kept in the browser’s cache so it opens offline, until you sign out.
How long it’s kept
- Sign-in codes expire after 10 minutes. The code record, including your IP address, is deleted once it’s more than an hour old (the clean-up runs whenever a code is requested).
- Sessions last up to 180 days, or until you sign out.
- Recordings, their locations, titles and bookmarks are kept until you delete them. Deleting a recording on the page gives you a few seconds to undo it; then the file and its details are removed from storage.
- Notes are kept until you delete them. A note moved to the bin is deleted for good after 7 days, or straight away when you empty the bin or delete it forever.
- Your account and email address are kept until you ask for your account to be deleted.
Deleted data can remain in Cloudflare’s database backups for up to 30 days before it’s gone for good.
Your rights
You can ask to access, correct, delete or get a copy of your data, object to how it’s used, or ask for its use to be restricted. To delete your account and everything in it, email sam@sambendavid.com from the address you sign in with. I’ll reply within a month.
If you’re unhappy with how your data is handled, you can complain to the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet) or the data protection authority where you live.
Security
The site is served only over HTTPS. There are no passwords to leak: sign-in codes and session tokens are stored as hashes, codes allow five wrong tries, and the session cookie can’t be read by scripts. Each account can only reach its own recordings.
Children
The voice recorder isn’t meant for children under 13, and they shouldn’t sign up.
Changes
If this policy changes, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change. If the change significantly affects how your data is used, signed-up users will be told by email first.