Privacy Policy - Tickerly

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

This policy explains what information the Tickerly 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.
• No brokerage or financial-account data is read, and no financial permissions are requested. The App does not connect to any broker, bank, exchange, or trading account.
• Tickerly does not host, rehost, copy, or transcode publisher content: only headlines, thumbnails, and short publisher-supplied excerpts are surfaced.
• 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 Tickerly 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

Tickerly 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.
• No financial-account access. The App reads no brokerage, bank, exchange, or trading-account data and requests no financial permissions; it has no link to any financial account.

4. Data processed when you use the App

• News feed requests. On phones, tablets, and Android Automotive, when the App refreshes the feed it sends requests directly to each publisher's RSS feed (MarketWatch, WSJ Markets, Fox Business, BBC News Business, and similar finance, markets, and business section feeds across the language pools you select). Those requests contain only a generic app User-Agent and (inevitably at the transport layer) your device's public IP address, which the publishers may log under their own privacy policies. On FORVIA AOSP head units the App instead reads a pre-assembled feed from the Soundica backend (hosted on Cloudflare); that request carries only the feed name, a generic app User-Agent, and your device's public IP address at the transport layer. Soundica does not store IP addresses or request logs beyond what Cloudflare retains for security / abuse-prevention purposes (typically short-lived, see Cloudflare's policy).
• RSS feeds. The backend reads publicly available finance, markets, and business section RSS feeds (never general-news roots) from independent publishers to assemble the aggregated headline list.
• Discovery via Google News. The App may also discover headlines through Google News topic and region queries (public RSS). The same transport-level note applies: the request carries a generic app User-Agent and your device's public IP address. Google's own privacy practices apply to their servers. Social-media and user-generated-content sources are blocked.
• Images and thumbnails. When you view a story thumbnail, your device fetches the image from the original publisher's CDN. The App presents each item as a headline plus a short attributed publisher excerpt with a link back to the source; it does not embed the full article. Publisher CDNs may log the image fetch under their own privacy policies.
• 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. Text is synthesized by the TextToSpeech engine installed on your device (typically Google Speech Services), reading the headline and the publisher's short blurb only. We never receive or store the text or audio. Depending on your device's TTS settings, the engine vendor may process text on its own servers to provide higher-quality voices; that processing is governed by the engine vendor's privacy policy, not ours.
• 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 selected section, 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 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 (headline, artwork, 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 (showing finance and markets headlines in your chosen language, reading them aloud, 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 aggregated feed responses at the edge, keyed by source URL and section only, never by user. Local user state remains on your device until you uninstall the App or clear it from Settings.

7. International transfers

Soundica's backend runs on Cloudflare's global edge network. Requests are served from the geographically nearest Cloudflare data centre, which may be outside your home region. News thumbnails and articles are hosted by each publisher, on infrastructure that may be located anywhere in the world. If you view a story 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 CDN 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 Data Protection Board under India's DPDP Act 2023.

9. Children

Tickerly is a general-audience finance and markets news app 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.

10. Third-party content

Headlines, thumbnails, and summaries displayed in the App are retrieved from publicly available finance, markets, and business section RSS feeds published by independent outlets. The App does not reproduce full articles; only the headline and a short attributed publisher excerpt are shown, with a link back to the source. Tickerly does not host, rehost, copy, or transcode this content, does not strip or modify the publisher's attribution, and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any publisher. The App is a news aggregator only and does not consume, license, or redistribute real-time exchange-data feeds, quotes, or any exchange-licensed market-data service.

11. Security

All network traffic between the App and the Soundica backend is encrypted with TLS (HTTPS). The App requests only the minimum permissions needed (Internet access; foreground-service playback; optional notifications). 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 - Tickerly"). For U.S. notices under 17 U.S.C. § 512 see the Terms of Service.