Privacy Policy - Circuitly

Operated by Soundica. Effective 2026-09-09. Version 1.2.

This policy explains what information the Circuitly application (the "App") and the associated pages on soundica.app process, why, and your rights under applicable laws including the EU/UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Quebec's Law 25, the Korean Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), Singapore PDPA, India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, Brazil's Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD), and the Australian Privacy Act.

1. At a glance

• No account, no login, no email required.
• No advertising identifiers are read.
• No analytics SDKs and no crash-reporting SDKs by default.
• No contacts, no location, no microphone, no camera, no SMS, no call logs.
• Circuitly does not host, rehost, copy, or transcode article content: headlines and short excerpts are read from each publisher's public RSS feed.
• We hold no personal data linked to you on our servers, so there is nothing to retain, sell, or share.

2. Scope

This policy applies to the Circuitly app on all form factors and stores it is distributed through (Google Play (smartphone and tablet), Google Play Cars (Android Automotive OS), and the Appning by FORVIA AOSP head-unit store) and to the corresponding pages on soundica.app.

3. Data we collect

Circuitly is designed to work without a user account and without tracking identifiers. Specifically:

• No account, no login, no email. We do not require you to sign up.
• No advertising identifiers. We do not read the Android Advertising ID.
• No analytics, no crash-reporting SDKs by default. If a future version adds optional analytics, you will be asked for consent first.
• No sensitive runtime permissions. The App does not request contacts, location, microphone, camera, SMS, or call-log access.

4. Data processed when you use the App

• Discovery: section RSS feeds. Circuitly discovers headlines by fetching publicly available technology and gadgets section RSS feeds directly from each publisher (section feeds only, never general-news roots). These requests carry the standard network metadata of any web request (User-Agent, your device's public IP at the transport layer). Soundica does not log or store this metadata. Each publisher's own privacy practices apply to their servers.
• Discovery: Google News topic and region queries. The App may also discover headlines through Google News topic and region queries. The same transport-level note applies; social and user-generated-content sources are blocked. Google's own privacy practices apply to their servers.
• Headline and excerpt fetch. The App reads only the headline, thumbnail, and the publisher's own short RSS summary from each feed. It does not fetch, store, or read aloud full article bodies. Tapping an article opens the publisher's own site in your device's browser, at which point that publisher's own privacy policy applies.
• Article image lookup (phone version). Many publisher feeds do not include a picture. To find one, the phone version of the App sends the web addresses of the articles currently on screen to a Soundica image-lookup service (a Cloudflare Worker at img.soundica.app). The service fetches the article's public page, reads its standard preview-image tag, and returns the picture's address; where a headline was discovered through Google News, the service first resolves the Google News link to the publisher's own address. The request contains only the article addresses, a generic app User-Agent, and your device's public IP address at the transport layer. No account, device identifier, or reading history is attached, and nothing ties a request to you. Resolved picture addresses are cached on the service for up to 30 days, keyed by the article address only; tracking parameters (utm, fbclid, gclid and similar) are stripped before caching. The image itself is still downloaded by your device directly from the publisher's CDN; Soundica does not relay or store the picture. The Android Automotive and FORVIA head-unit versions do not use this service.
• Publisher logos. Most publisher logos are bundled inside the App. Where a logo is not bundled, the App may request it from a Soundica logo service (img.soundica.app), which fetches the publisher's publicly available site icon, caches it on Soundica's edge network for up to 30 days, and serves it to the App. The request contains only the publisher's website address, never your identity, location, or reading history. Logos are shown unmodified and solely to identify the source of a headline.
• Text-to-speech. The headline and the publisher's short summary are read aloud on-device by the Android Text-to-Speech engine. This processing happens locally on your device; the on-device TTS engine's behaviour is governed by your device manufacturer's and Google's terms.
• Narration on FORVIA head units. The Appning by FORVIA head-unit version has no on-device speech engine. For that version only, Soundica pre-generates spoken audio of the public headlines and summaries on its servers and stores the audio files on Cloudflare R2 object storage; the App streams them like any other media file. This audio is generated from publisher content, not from anything you say or type, and the request carries only the file name, a generic app User-Agent, and your device's public IP address at the transport layer.
• Local-only state. Your in-app preferences (reading speed, autoplay and read-aloud toggles, selected category or language, one-time hint flags, appearance mode, and, on head units, the selected country or market) and your last position in the list are stored in the App's private storage on the device. This information is not transmitted to Soundica.
• System-level events. Android may surface playback state (the current headline and position) to the lock-screen, system notification, and on Android Automotive head units to the car's Media Center. These flows are handled by the operating system.

5. Legal basis (EU/UK GDPR)

Under GDPR Art. 6(1)(b), the limited processing described above is necessary to deliver the service you have asked for (fetching headlines in your chosen language, presenting short excerpts, reading them aloud, and resuming where you left off). No consent banner is required because we do not set tracking cookies, do not use the data for profiling, and do not share it with advertising partners.

6. Data retention

Because the App stores nothing about you on our servers, we have nothing to retain. Soundica may briefly cache feed responses at the application level, keyed by feed and source only, never by user. Local user state remains on your device until you uninstall the App or clear it from Settings.

7. International transfers

Circuitly's headlines and short excerpts are published by news outlets on infrastructure that may be located anywhere in the world, and Google News queries are served by Google Inc. from the United States and globally. If you fetch a feed whose origin is outside your country, your network request is necessarily routed across borders at the transport layer. Because no personal data is stored by Soundica, no Standard Contractual Clauses or transfer impact assessments are required for the App itself. Your relationships with each publisher's servers and with Google's servers are governed by their own privacy policies.

8. Your rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you have the right to access, correct, erase, restrict, object to processing, and request portability of your personal data. Because Soundica does not hold any personal data linked to you, requests to access or delete will be answered with "we have no data linked to you." You always have the unconditional right to delete the App from your device, which removes all locally-stored settings.

To exercise these rights, contact Soundica at admin@soundica.app. You may also lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority, for example, the ICO (UK), CNIL (France), BfDI (Germany), Garante (Italy), AEPD (Spain), PIPC (Korea), PPC (Japan), OAIC (Australia), or the relevant State Data Protection Officer under India's DPDP Act.

9. Children and explicit content

Circuitly is a general-audience technology news directory and is not directed to children under 13 (under 16 in some EU member states, under 14 in Korea). We do not knowingly collect any data from children. Headlines and excerpts come from each publisher's own feed; Soundica does not pre-screen article content, and availability and content of individual items are controlled by their publishers.

10. Third-party news content

Headlines, thumbnails, and short excerpts are read from each publisher's public RSS feed. Circuitly does not host, rehost, copy, or transcode this content, does not reproduce or read aloud full article bodies, does not strip or modify the publisher's advertising, and does not remove attribution. Google News topic and region queries are used solely for headline discovery; social and user-generated-content sources are blocked. Circuitly is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Google Inc. or any news publisher.

11. Security

The App requests only the minimum permissions needed (Internet access; foreground-service playback; optional notifications). Cleartext HTTP is permitted at the transport layer because a non-trivial minority of public news feeds are still served over HTTP; this does not affect what data Soundica stores about you (which is none). Local state is stored in the App's private sandbox.

12. Changes

If this policy changes materially, we will update the "Effective" date and, where required by law, prompt you in-app.

13. Contact and designated copyright / DMCA agent

General privacy contact (Soundica): admin@soundica.app

Designated copyright / DMCA agent: admin@soundica.app (subject line "Copyright/DMCA - Circuitly"). For U.S. notices under 17 U.S.C. § 512 see the Terms of Service.