This Privacy Policy describes how OAK TEK - FZCO ("we," "us," or "our") handles information in connection with the Open Chord mobile application for Android and iOS ("the App"). We are the data controller for the information we collect through the App. Google, as the provider of the advertising service described below, decides for itself how it uses advertising data, and is responsible for that use.
Your use of the App is also governed by our Terms and Conditions.
Open Chord is offered only in selected countries. It is not offered in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, and it is not designed to comply with the data protection laws that apply specifically in those places. If you are in one of those places and use the App anyway, we will still honour any data protection right that the law of your country gives you, and you can contact us at the address below.
Open Chord is intended for users aged 13 and older. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at the email address below and we will remove it.
| What | Who receives it | Can you stop it? |
|---|---|---|
| Your progress, streaks and settings | Nobody. They stay on your device. | Yes, "Clear all data" or uninstall |
| Microphone audio for the tuner | Nobody. It is analysed on your device and never recorded. | Yes, revoke microphone permission |
| Anonymous usage events and error details | PostHog, for us | Yes, analytics toggle in the App |
| Crash reports (Android only) | Google Firebase Crashlytics, for us | No in-app switch. Uninstalling stops it. |
| Advertising data (advertising ID, IP address, device details, ad interactions) | Google AdMob | Partly, through the consent choices and your device ad settings |
| Instrument sound files download | jsDelivr (your IP address) | Only by not using the sounds |
Open Chord does not require you to create an account. We do not collect your name, email address, or any other personal contact information. The App has no free text entry fields, so there is no written content for us to collect.
All of your learning progress, including which Test questions you have answered and which ones you find difficult, your preferences, and your settings, including your chosen reminder time, are stored locally on your device. This data is not transmitted to us. You can delete all of it at any time using the "Clear all data" option in the Guitarist tab, under My Profile, in the My Data section. Clearing your data also gives your installation a new anonymous identifier, as explained under Usage Analytics below.
The App also caches its instrument sound files on your device so they need not be downloaded again. These files contain no information about you and are removed when the App's data is cleared or the App is uninstalled.
The App includes an instrument tuner that requires access to your device's microphone to detect pitch in real time. All audio captured by the microphone is analysed entirely on your device using on-device signal processing. No audio is recorded, stored, cached, or transmitted to any server, third party, or external service at any time. Microphone access is used solely for the tuner and for no other purpose. You can revoke microphone permission at any time through your device settings without affecting any other feature of the App.
If you turn on the daily practice reminder, the App asks your device for permission to show notifications and schedules a notification on your device at the time you choose. The reminder is created and shown entirely on your device. No information about it is sent to us or to anyone else. You can turn it off in the App or in your device settings.
When you tap a share button, the App opens your device's own share sheet, and you choose where the message goes. If no share sheet is available, the App copies the message to your clipboard instead. We do not see who you share with or what app you choose. We record only that a share took place, and from which screen, as an anonymous usage event.
We use PostHog to understand how the App is used, so that we can see where learners get stuck or stop practising and improve those parts of the App. PostHog processes this data for us, under a data processing agreement, on servers located in the United States.
We collect a fixed set of events that we have defined ourselves. We do not use automatic click tracking, so we do not record every tap or interface element you touch. The events describe:
Alongside these events, PostHog records standard technical information such as your device type, operating system version, and App version, and the screen of the App on which an event happened. It assigns a randomly generated identifier to your installation, which is stored on your device, so that repeat visits can be counted. This identifier is not linked to your name or to any account, but we treat it as personal information because it singles out one installation.
PostHog necessarily receives your IP address in transit, as any internet service does. We have configured our PostHog project not to store IP addresses and not to perform geographic lookup, so we do not collect or derive your country, city, or coordinates.
We do not record your screen. Session replay is switched off in the App.
Analytics are optional. You can switch them off at any time using the toggle in the Guitarist tab, under My Profile, in the Analytics section. When switched off, no further events are sent from your device. Analytics are on by default until you switch them off. The toggle controls usage analytics only. It does not control crash reporting or advertising, which are described below.
On Android, we use Google Firebase Crashlytics to be told when the App crashes, so that we can fix it. When a crash occurs, Crashlytics collects technical details of the failure, including device model, operating system version, App version, and the internal state of the App at the moment it stopped working. It also assigns a randomly generated installation identifier. This information is technical and is not used to identify you. Crash reporting runs automatically and the App has no switch to turn it off. The iOS version of the App does not use Crashlytics.
Open Chord is free, with no subscriptions and no paywalls. It is supported by advertising. Adverts are supplied by Google AdMob and appear as a banner at the bottom of the screen on both Android and iOS.
To serve adverts, Google collects information from your device through its advertising software. This includes your device's advertising identifier, your IP address, device and operating system details, the App's name and version, and information about how adverts are displayed and whether you interact with them. Google can derive your approximate location from your IP address. Google uses this information to select and show adverts, which may be personalised, to measure them, to prevent fraud, and for its own purposes described in how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and in the Google Privacy Policy. Google decides how it uses this information, and is responsible for that use. We do not receive your advertising identifier, and we receive only aggregate advertising reports, such as the number of impressions and earnings by country.
Open Chord is not directed at children under 13, and we do not ask Google to treat the App as child-directed.
The instrument sounds used in the App are downloaded once from a public content delivery network, jsDelivr, and then stored on your device. As with any request to a website, this reveals your device's IP address and general technical details to that network, which handles them under its own privacy policy. We send no information about you or your practice with the request, and the files are static and identical for every user.
Google Play and the Apple App Store collect their own information about your download and use of the App, under their own privacy policies. They may give us aggregate statistics about installs and crashes. We do not control how they handle your information.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Data stored on your device | To run the App and remember your progress |
| Usage analytics | To see where learners get stuck and improve the App |
| Crash reporting and error details | To detect and fix faults that stop the App working |
| Instrument sound downloads | To deliver the sounds the App needs to function |
| Advertising | To keep the App free of charge |
Where the law of your country requires your consent for any of these, we rely on the choices you make in the App, in the consent form, and in your device settings.
We do not sell your information for money. Advertising, through Google, involves the disclosures described above, which some laws treat as a sale, a share, or targeted advertising, and the "US State Privacy Rights" section below applies. Apart from that, we do not share your information with third parties for their own purposes. PostHog and Google Firebase Crashlytics handle data on our behalf, as our service providers.
The App uses the following third-party services, each of which has its own privacy policy:
The App also links to our website and to our Instagram and X pages. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which we do not control.
We are established in the United Arab Emirates. PostHog stores analytics data in the United States, and Google processes data in the United States and other countries. By using the App, you understand that information about you is processed in countries other than your own, which may have different data protection laws.
Data stored locally on your device remains there until you use "Clear all data" in the App, clear the App's data through your device settings, or uninstall the App.
We do not maintain our own separate copy of any of this data.
Depending on the law that applies to you, you may have the right to know what information we hold about you, to have it deleted or corrected, to object to or restrict how it is used, to receive a copy, to withdraw your consent, and to complain to the data protection authority of your country.
If you are in the United Arab Emirates, you have rights under Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data, and may complain to the UAE Data Office.
In practice, you can:
Because the App has no accounts, the only way we can locate your analytics records is the anonymous installation identifier shown in the My Data section. Without it we hold nothing that would let us identify you, and we may be unable to act on your request. Please copy your identifier before you clear your data, because clearing it creates a new identifier that is not connected to the old one. We cannot delete data that Google holds for advertising. You must use Google's controls for that.
This section applies to residents of California and of other US states whose laws give similar rights.
| Category of personal information | Examples | Disclosed to |
|---|---|---|
| Identifiers | Anonymous installation identifier. Advertising identifier, where you allow it. | PostHog, Google |
| Internet or other electronic network activity | Usage events, screens visited, ad interactions | PostHog, Google |
| Device and technical information | Device type, operating system version, App version, crash and error details, IP address in transit | PostHog, Google |
| Approximate location | Derived by Google from your IP address for adverts. We do not collect or derive it. |
We collect this information from your device, for the purposes described in this policy. We do not collect sensitive personal information as the law defines it, and we do not use the information to make decisions about you. We keep it for the periods set out under Data Retention.
We do not sell personal information for money. Showing personalised adverts through Google may count as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising, or as "targeted advertising," under some state laws. You can opt out by declining personalised adverts in Google's consent form where it appears, or by turning off tracking or ad personalisation in your device settings, as described under Advertising. Personalisation happens on Google's systems, so we cannot switch it off for you ourselves, and the App does not currently read browser-based opt-out signals such as Global Privacy Control.
You may ask us to tell you what personal information we hold about you, to delete it, to correct it, or to stop selling or sharing it, to the extent we are able to, given that Google controls its own advertising data. We will not treat you differently for doing so. You may use an authorised agent, and we may ask for proof of authority and for your anonymous identifier, as explained under Your Rights. If we refuse a request, you may appeal by replying to our decision, and you may then contact your state attorney general. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16 years of age.
Data transmitted between the App and our service providers is encrypted in transit. Learning progress stored on your device is protected by your device's own security features. We do not operate our own servers and do not hold a separate copy of your data. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Effective Date" at the top of this page and add an entry to the change history below. Where a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will tell you in the App where practicable. We encourage you to review this page periodically.
For any question about this Privacy Policy, or to exercise any of the rights described above, please contact us at:
OAK TEK - FZCO
Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Trade Licence No. 90142, issued by the Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority
Email: oaktechnologiesfze@gmail.com
We aim to respond to any request within 30 days.