Privacy Policy

Last updated: 1 August 2026 · Effective: 1 August 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how KnowBud ("KnowBud", "we", "us") collects, uses, and protects your personal data when you use the KnowBud mobile app and related services (the "Service"). We are committed to handling your data responsibly and in line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK GDPR.

1. Who we are (Data Controller)

KnowBud is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. For any privacy question or to exercise your rights, contact us at [email protected]. Our registered postal address is available on request.

2. The data we collect

Category	Examples
Account data	Email address; display name (optional); the identifier from your sign-in provider if you use Google or Apple sign-in.
Voice & audio	Microphone audio captured while you take a voice lesson, so we can understand what you say and respond. Audio is converted to text in real time.
Learning data	Lessons started and completed, progress, streaks, answers to in-lesson questions, and the topics you choose or create for your own journeys.
Learner profile (personalisation)	Facts you share during lessons that help us tailor content to you — for example your stated goals, interests, and background. We may infer interests from your activity.
Public content (only if you share)	If you choose to publish a journey you created — or share it by unlisted link — its curriculum — title, description, and unit & lesson titles — becomes visible to others (see §7). Your personal motivation, background, and learner profile are never part of it.
Community reactions	If you send a "thanks" (kudos) on a community journey, we record that your account did so, so the creator can see an anonymous total. Your identity is never shown to the creator or anyone else (see §7).
Organisation membership (teams)	If you join an organisation's team on KnowBud: which organisation you belong to, your role in it (admin or member), and when you joined.
Uploaded course material	Documents and images that you — or the organisation you belong to — upload so KnowBud can build courses from them, including the text and images extracted from those files (see the "Teams and organisations" section below; personal uploads are handled the same way, scoped to your account).
Usage & device data	How you interact with the app, app/feature events, approximate session information, device and operating-system details, diagnostic/crash data, and performance diagnostics such as battery level, charging status, and device thermal state during lessons.
Push notifications & reminders (only if you enable daily reminders)	A push-notification token for your device, your device's timezone, your chosen reminder time, the content of the reminder message shown to you, and a log of the reminders we sent.
Subscription data	If you subscribe, your subscription status (managed by the app stores and our billing provider). We do not receive or store your full payment-card details.

Using the KnowBud app requires an account; public journey pages on our website can be viewed without one. Your account lets us save your progress and, where you choose, sync it across your devices.

3. How and why we use your data (and our legal basis)

Purpose	Legal basis (GDPR Art. 6)
Deliver lessons, run the voice conversation, and operate the Service	Performance of a contract
Save your progress and sync it across your devices (account-based cloud storage)	Performance of a contract
Personalise your learning using your learner profile	Consent, or our legitimate interest in a useful product (you can opt out — see §10)
Show journeys you choose to publish to other users and on our website	Consent (your explicit publish action — after creation or, on community-shared plan allowances, your explicit choice at creation; you can unpublish anytime — see §7)
Provide organisation/team features: build courses from uploaded material, share them within your organisation, and show admins aggregate progress	Performance of a contract (with you and/or with your organisation)
Maintain, secure, debug and improve the Service	Legitimate interests
Product analytics and understanding feature usage	Consent, where required by law
Advertise KnowBud on third-party platforms and measure ad performance (website only — see §6)	Consent
Send you the daily learning reminder you switch on — as a push notification, sometimes featuring a headline from your daily briefing	Consent (you enable reminders in Settings and can turn them off at any time)
Send you service-related communications	Performance of a contract / legitimate interests
Meet legal and regulatory obligations	Legal obligation

4. AI-generated content

KnowBud's lessons and responses are generated by artificial intelligence. We work hard to ground the content in reliable sources, but AI-generated content can be incomplete or inaccurate and is not guaranteed to be 100% correct. KnowBud is for general learning only and is not professional, medical, legal, or financial advice — please verify anything important before relying on it.

5. Voice and microphone data

Voice lessons require microphone access. While you speak, your audio is streamed to our speech-to-text provider and transcribed so the Service can understand and respond. We use this audio and its transcript to operate the lesson and to maintain and improve quality. We retain audio and transcripts only as long as needed for these purposes (see §9). You can stop voice processing at any time by ending the session or revoking microphone permission in your device settings.

6. Who we share data with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with service providers ("processors") who help us run KnowBud, under contracts that require them to protect it and use it only on our instructions:

Provider	Purpose
Google Firebase	Authentication and account/data storage
Soniox	Speech-to-text transcription of voice input
Google (Gemini)	Generating lesson content and conversational responses
Daily.co	Real-time audio connection during lessons
Text-to-speech providers (cloud GPU/CPU)	Converting responses into the spoken voice
PostHog (EU)	Product analytics (website and mobile app; you can opt out in the app's Settings)
Email delivery provider	Sending service emails
Expo, Apple & Google push services	Delivering reminder push notifications to your device (only if you enable daily reminders)
App stores & billing provider	Subscriptions and purchases
Hosting provider (EU data centre)	Running our servers and database

We may also disclose data where required by law, to protect our rights, or as part of a business transfer.

What your organisation's admins can see

If you use KnowBud as part of a team or organisation, its admins can see aggregate course statistics only — counts and averages, such as how many members started or completed a course and average progress — never your individual lesson activity, sessions, or voice data. Aggregates are additionally suppressed for very small teams so they cannot be traced back to individuals.

Advertising and marketing analytics (website only)

Our mobile app contains no advertising SDKs and shows no third-party ads. If we promote KnowBud on advertising platforms (for example Meta or TikTok), our website may use those platforms' cookies and similar technologies ("pixels") to measure how well our ads work, to build audiences for our own advertising (including excluding existing users from seeing our ads), and to show our ads to people who have visited our site. For this data, the advertising platforms act as independent or joint controllers and may link it to accounts you hold with them.

Consent first (EEA/UK): where required by law, such cookies are set only with your consent, which you can give or withdraw at any time via the cookie controls on our website.
US state privacy laws: some laws treat this kind of disclosure as "selling" or "sharing" personal information. Where that applies, you can opt out via the website's cookie controls, by emailing [email protected], or through a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal, which we will honour.
Matched audiences: we may share hashed identifiers (such as a hashed email address) with an advertising platform solely to exclude existing users from our ads or to measure ad performance. Hashing means the platform cannot read the address unless it already holds it.
Your platform choices: you can also control ad personalisation in the settings of the relevant platform (for example Meta's "Ad preferences").

As of the "Last updated" date above, no advertising pixels are active on our website. This section takes practical effect only when they are introduced, and the cookie controls described here will be in place before that happens.

7. Publicly shared journeys

Journeys you create are private by default. From the journey page in the app you can choose to publish a journey to the KnowBud community, or share it by unlisted link. Sharing is always an explicit action — we never make your content public automatically.

What becomes public: the journey's curriculum only — its title, description, and unit & lesson titles — shown to other users in the app and on public pages of our website, including our journey gallery. Aggregate counts (such as learners or lessons completed, never with anyone's identity) may be shown alongside it.
Unlisted links: an unlisted journey does not appear in the app's community list or on our website's journey gallery, but anyone who has the link can view its curriculum on our website. The same automatic moderation review applies as for publishing. You can make an unlisted journey private again at any time.
What stays private: your personal motivation, background, learner profile, progress, and identity. Published journeys are not shown with your name or email address.
Moderation: content is automatically reviewed at the moment you publish, and other users can report a published journey. We may unpublish content that violates our Terms of Service.
Unpublishing: you can make a published journey private again at any time from the same journey page, which removes it from public surfaces. Learners who had already started it keep access until they finish or leave it, so nobody is cut off mid-course; no new learners can find it. Copies cached by third parties (for example search engines) may persist temporarily.
Takedown requests: to report content or request removal, use the in-app report option or email [email protected].
Thanks ("kudos"): if you send a thanks on a community journey, we store that your account sent it (so it counts once). The journey's creator sees only an anonymous total — never who sent it.
Share drafts: if you ask the app to draft a social post about a journey, the journey's curriculum (its title, description, and titles of lessons you completed) is processed by our AI provider to generate suggested text. Nothing is posted or shared unless you choose to share it yourself.

7a. Teams and organisations

Organisations can upload their own documents so KnowBud builds private courses from them and shares those courses with the organisation's members.

Who is responsible: for material an organisation uploads and the courses built from it, the organisation is the data controller and KnowBud acts as its processor — we process that material solely to generate and deliver that organisation's private courses.
Always private: organisation material and the courses built from it are never published publicly, never shown to users outside the organisation, and never used to build courses for other customers. They are also excluded from community discovery and journey matching.
Joining a team: you join an organisation only by accepting an invite link. Your membership (organisation, role, join date) is stored so we can give you access to the organisation's courses. What admins can see about you is described in §6 above — aggregates only.
Leaving: you can leave an organisation (or be removed by an admin) at any time; you then lose access to its private courses. Your personal learning data remains yours.

8. International transfers

Our core servers are hosted in the European Union. Some providers listed above process data outside the EU/UK (for example in the United States). Where data is transferred internationally, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or an applicable adequacy decision.

9. How long we keep data

Account, learning, and learner-profile data: while your account is active, and for a limited period afterwards, then deleted or anonymised.
Voice audio and transcripts: kept only as long as needed to run the lesson and to maintain quality, then deleted or anonymised.
Usage/diagnostic data: kept for a limited period for analytics and reliability.
Organisation material and courses: deleted within 30 days of the organisation being deleted or its contract with us ending.
Journeys you delete: hidden immediately and retained for up to 90 days so we can review what went wrong and improve course generation, then permanently removed. If other learners are still using a journey you shared, it stays available to them (no longer publicly listed) until they finish or leave it, and is then removed on the same schedule.
Journeys you published, if you delete your account: a journey you chose to publish to the community stays in the catalogue, because other people are learning from it. Before it does, we unlink it from your account and erase the personal parts you wrote (your motivation, background, and any focus notes), so what remains is anonymous course content rather than your personal data. Journeys that are private, or shared only by link, are removed with your account on the schedule above.

We delete or anonymise data when it is no longer needed, when you delete your account, or when you ask us to (subject to any legal retention obligations).

10. Your rights

Under the GDPR/UK GDPR you have the right to: access your data; have it corrected; have it erased; restrict or object to its processing; data portability (receive a copy in a portable format); and, where we rely on consent, withdraw that consent at any time without affecting prior processing. You can opt out of personalisation and analytics. To exercise any right, email [email protected] — we will respond within the time limits set by law. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

11. Personalisation and automated processing

We use your learning data and learner profile to personalise the content you see. This does not produce legal or similarly significant effects about you, and you can turn personalisation off. We do not use your data for automated decisions that would significantly affect you.

12. Security

We protect your data with measures including encryption in transit, access controls, and reputable infrastructure providers. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect your data and to address issues promptly.

13. Children

KnowBud is not directed to children or teens. You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18; if you believe a minor has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Deleting your data

You can delete your account and associated personal data at any time directly in the app (Settings → Delete Account), or by emailing [email protected]. We will delete or anonymise your data, except where we must retain it to meet a legal obligation. Deleting your account also removes you from any organisation you have joined; accounts that administer an organisation are closed via [email protected] so the organisation's data can be handled under its agreement.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will revise the "Last updated" date above and, for material changes, provide notice in the app. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated policy.

16. Contact

Questions or requests about your privacy? Email [email protected].