Last updated: 14 October 2026

This policy describes what personal data is processed when you use this website (Part A) and the PlayTales app (Part B), for what purposes, on what legal basis, who receives it, and what rights you have.

The provider is based in Germany, so the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to every visitor and every user, wherever you live. Sections 14 and 15 add the points specific to the United States.

1. Controller and contact

The controller within the meaning of the GDPR is:

Peter Kurzok Photography
c/o MDC#990
Welserstraße 3
87463 Dietmannsried
Germany

E-mail: playtales@peterkurzok.de

No data protection officer has been appointed, as the statutory conditions for doing so are not met. Please send all privacy matters to the address above.

2. Overview

PlayTales is an iOS app that lets children listen to audio plays and audiobooks from Apple Music. It is expressly aimed at children and is normally set up by a parent.

There is no server of the provider’s own on which your data is stored. That does not mean no data is transmitted: the app uses third-party services that receive data. Section 6 lists all of them.

The bulk of your data — favourites, recently played albums, playback positions and all settings — stays on the device and, if you use iCloud, is synced only into your own private iCloud.

This version fully replaces the policy of 3 January 2024. It describes every service that actually receives data; earlier versions were no longer accurate on that point.

Part A – Using the website

3. Hosting, delivery and server logs

This website is served as a static site via GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc., 88 Colin P Kelly Jr Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA) and delivered through the content delivery network of Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA).

Opening a page necessarily transmits data, which is processed in server logs, in particular:

• the IP address of the requesting device,
• the date and time of access,
• the address requested,
• the browser type transmitted (user agent) and the referrer URL.

Purpose: technically correct delivery, security, and defence against attacks. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest in a secure and available service.

No cookies are set, no tracking pixels are embedded, no audience measurement is performed and no forms are offered. This website does not analyse your browsing behaviour.

4. Content loaded from third parties

The pages embed some components from external servers. Loading those components necessarily transmits your IP address to the provider concerned — even if you otherwise have nothing to do with that provider.

Purpose: rendering the page and displaying current App Store details (name, price, icon). Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest in a functional and consistently presented site.

The page also contains a Smart App Banner (<meta name="apple-itunes-app">). This is evaluated by iOS itself; the request to Apple originates from your device, not from this website.

These embeds could technically be avoided by serving the files ourselves. For as long as they remain, they are disclosed here.

Part B – Using the app

5. Processing in the app in detail

5.1 Data that never leaves the device

The following is stored only locally on your device and is not transmitted to the provider:

• favourites (saved artists) and recently played albums including playback position,
• all settings (search, filters, speech output, demo mode, the switches for statistics and crash reports),
• the parental controls: the configured daily and weekly limit, how much has already been listened to today and this week, any release that has been granted (until midnight at the latest), and — if one is set — the parent’s PIN. The PIN is not stored in the clear: only a salted cryptographic digest (SHA-256) is kept. The digits themselves never leave the device and are not retained locally either,
• the cache for album artwork and for generated speech audio files,
• the local search index (Spotlight) and in-app tips.

Deleting the app removes this data from the device.

5.2 Apple Music / MusicKit

The app accesses your Apple Music account to search for content, play it and display artwork. This requires your permission for “Media & Apple Music”, which iOS requests separately. Search terms, playback activity, your subscription status and artwork requests are transmitted to Apple in the process.

To show your favourites and recently played albums, the app looks up their catalogue identifiers with Apple Music. For the suggestions in the search area it also searches the catalogue of your Apple Music country for well-known audio play series (a fixed query, the same for every user) and requests the artists Apple Music considers similar to your favourites; the catalogue identifiers of your favourites are transmitted to Apple for this. The suggestions are held in the app’s memory only and reach neither us nor any analytics service.

Purpose: the core function of the app. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — performance of the contract; without this processing the app has no function.

Apple’s own privacy policy additionally applies to Apple’s processing.

5.3 Syncing via iCloud / CloudKit

If you are signed in to iCloud on your device, favourites, recently played albums and playback positions are synced via Apple iCloud (CloudKit) into your private iCloud database so they are available on your other devices. The provider has no access to that database.

Purpose: use across devices. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

You can stop syncing at any time by disabling iCloud for PlayTales in the iOS system settings.

5.4 Purchases via the App Store (StoreKit)

Apple StoreKit is used for in-app purchases (pro features, voluntary support). The purchase itself runs entirely at Apple; the provider receives no payment data. The app only reads whether a purchase exists and which app version the app was originally bought with (originalAppVersion) — the latter so that existing customers keep the pro features permanently.

Purpose: handling purchases, grandfathering existing customers. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

5.5 Speech output

The app can read artist and album titles aloud so that children who cannot yet read can find their way around. Two methods are available:

• Apple speech output (local): works entirely on the device. Nothing is transmitted.
• Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (default): the title to be read out — the name of the artist or the album — is transmitted, together with the language and the desired voice gender, to Google (Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA), which generates an audio file from it. That file is cached on the device, so the same title is not transmitted again.

Purpose: the read-aloud feature. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

You can avoid this transmission entirely by selecting Apple speech output under Settings › Speech output.

5.6 Usage statistics (Mixpanel)

Purpose: to see which features of the app are actually used, so development and improvement can be directed accordingly.

Data processed: the names of triggered events (e.g. “Settings tapped”, “Added Favorite”) together with related technical attributes (such as which speech method was used, whether a filter is active, the number of favourites), the app version originally purchased, and a device-bound identifier (the vendor ID assigned by Apple) that groups the events of one device.

For the parental controls, the only things transmitted are whether a daily or weekly limit was switched on or off, which of the two it was, whether a PIN is set, and that a release was used — without saying whether it was for the rest of the day or for a few minutes. The configured duration, the time actually listened to and the PIN itself are not transmitted — how long a child may listen is a parenting decision, not a technical fact about the app.

This identifier is pseudonymous, not anonymous. It is not linked to a name, an e-mail address or an account — the app knows none of these — but it remains personal data under the GDPR. It is reset once you remove all of this provider’s apps from your device.

No content is transmitted: neither search terms nor the names of the artists or albums you listen to. A spoken title that used to be sent along has been removed.

Recipient: Mixpanel, Inc., 1 Front Street, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA. The data is sent to and stored in the European data centre (api-eu.mixpanel.com).

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest. The balancing test: the provider has a legitimate interest in knowing which features are used, because an app cannot be developed sensibly without that knowledge. No overriding interests conflict with it, because only technical usage events and a resettable device identifier are processed — no content, no contact details and no combination with third-party data — because the processing takes place in the EU, and because it can be objected to at any time and without any disadvantage.

Objection / switching off: Settings › Legal › Data Analytics & Crash Reports › Allow Data Analytics. From the moment it is switched off, no further events are transmitted.

5.7 Crash reports (Sentry)

Purpose: to detect and fix errors and crashes.

Data processed: the time of the crash, the device model, the operating system and app version, the technical call stack, and the last technical steps in the app leading up to it (breadcrumbs).

Transmission of the IP address and of additional personal attributes is explicitly switched off in the code (sendDefaultPii = false). Listening history and favourites are not part of a crash report.

Recipient: Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry), 45 Fremont Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA. The data is sent to the European region (ingest.de.sentry.io, data centre in Germany).

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest in a stable, error-free app. Since only technical diagnostic data without any content or contact reference is processed, the IP address is not transmitted, and an objection is possible at any time, no conflicting interests override it.

Objection / switching off: Settings › Legal › Data Analytics & Crash Reports › Send Crash Reports. Switching it off takes effect immediately, not at the next launch.

5.8 Backup and restore

You can export your favourites and history to a file and import them again. This is triggered solely by you; the file is saved to the location you choose. The provider does not receive it.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

5.9 A pointer to another app (Kickstart Exchange)

Purpose: In the free version, a single card appears at the very bottom of the library screen pointing to an app by another independent developer. It helps fund the development of this app.

Who sees it: only people without Pro. Anyone who has bought Pro, or is grandfathered in from an earlier purchase, sees no card — and their device then makes no connection to this service at all.

Data processed: this app’s key with the service, the app identifier (bundle ID), platform, app and build version, the version of the embedded component, and — only in builds delivered through the App Store — the Apple-signed purchase receipt of the app itself (it proves to the service that the requesting app is genuine; it concerns the app, not your purchases). When a card is fetched, the country of your App Store account is added, for example “United Kingdom”, so that only apps available there are shown. Whether a card was seen and whether it was tapped is reported back as a count.

Not transmitted: no advertising identifier, no user or device identifier, no location, and no content — neither search terms nor the names of the artists or albums you listen to. The service matches apps, not people; no profile is built and no cross-provider tracking takes place. That is also why the app never asks for tracking permission: there is nothing to track.

Recipient: Hudson Heavy Industries Ltd, 37 Great Pulteney Street, Bath, BA2 4DA, United Kingdom (company number 11883499), operator of Kickstart Exchange (api.kickstart.tools). The provider states that delivery runs over Cloudflare’s network.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest. The balancing: the provider has a legitimate interest in funding the free version without collecting data about the people who use it. No overriding interests stand against this, because only details about the app are transmitted and not a single detail about the person in front of it — no identifier, no location, no content — so no profile can arise, and because buying Pro removes the card permanently.

Switching it off: Pro removes the card entirely; from then on no data is sent to this service. Independently of that, you may object under Art. 21 GDPR at any time at the address in section 1.

5.10 Feature requests (Kickstart Signal)

Purpose: a board on which parents can suggest new features for PlayTales, vote on other people’s ideas and comment on them, so that development follows what families actually need. It is only reachable through the app’s settings, behind the arithmetic challenge or PIN, and only on iOS 18 and later.

Who reaches it: nobody who does not open Settings › Feature Requests. Until then, no connection is made to this service at all. Merely browsing the board transmits only the app’s own identification, nothing about the person.

Data processed: this app’s key with the service, the app identifier (bundle ID) and the version of the embedded component — and, only if the service asks for it, the Apple-signed purchase receipt of the app itself (as in section 5.9). On the first vote, idea or comment, the app creates a random installation identifier that is sent with every further contribution; it is not derived from the device and is used for nothing else. Also transmitted: the text you write (the title and description of an idea, or a comment), your votes, and whether Pro is active, so that ideas from paying customers can be marked. The service uses your IP address temporarily to prevent abuse and, by its own account, does not store it.

Not transmitted: no name, no e-mail address, no account, no advertising or device identifier, and no listening content — neither search terms nor the names of the artists or albums you listen to. Please do not write anything personal into an idea or comment.

Moderation: every idea and every comment stays private until we have reviewed and published it. We may edit or delete contributions. Nothing is ever shown with a name.

Recipient: Hudson Heavy Industries Ltd, 37 Great Pulteney Street, Bath, BA2 4DA, United Kingdom (company number 11883499), operator of Kickstart Signal (api.kickstart.tools). The provider states that delivery runs over Cloudflare’s network.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — legitimate interest in showing the board and in learning which features are wanted. Submitting is voluntary: you decide whether to write anything and what.

Retention: ideas, comments and votes are kept for as long as the board exists. Because the service cannot tell who wrote what, a contribution cannot be deleted from within the app; write to the address in section 1 and we will delete it.

Avoiding it: simply do not open the row. Without it, no data is sent to this service.

6. Overview of recipients

No data about you is disclosed for advertising purposes. Since version 1.5.1 the free version does show a pointer to another app (section 5.9) — but only details about this app are transmitted for it, and not a single one about the person using it. We do not sell personal information. There is no cross-provider tracking; the device identifier from section 5.6 is not combined with third-party data and never reaches the advertising service.

7. Transfers to third countries

Some of the recipients named above are based in the USA. Art. 44 et seq. GDPR applies to those transfers:

• Apple, Google, Cloudflare and GitHub (Microsoft) are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and/or additionally base the transfer on standard contractual clauses pursuant to Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR.
• Mixpanel: this app’s data is processed and stored in the EU (api-eu.mixpanel.com). Standard contractual clauses are in place for supporting access from the USA.
• Sentry: this app’s data is processed in the EU region (data centre in Germany). Standard contractual clauses are in place for supporting access from the USA.
• Kickstart Exchange and Kickstart Signal are based in the United Kingdom. The European Commission has adopted an adequacy decision for the United Kingdom under Art. 45 GDPR, so the transfer requires no additional safeguards. The provider states that delivery runs over Cloudflare’s network; it does not state in which country the data is stored.

As matters stand, the USA does not offer a level of protection fully equivalent to that of the EU; in particular, access by US authorities cannot be ruled out in every case. You can switch off the transfers to Mixpanel and Sentry in the app (sections 5.6 and 5.7), and you can avoid the transfer to Google for speech output by selecting Apple speech output (section 5.5).

8. Retention

• Data stored on the device is kept until you delete it in the app or remove the app.
• iCloud data remains until you delete it or stop syncing.
• Crash reports are kept only for as long as they are useful for debugging, then deleted automatically by Sentry. The governing period is the retention period set on the Sentry project; it is at most 90 days from receipt of the report.
• Usage statistics are kept only for as long as they are needed to compare usage across app versions, then deleted automatically by Mixpanel. The governing period is the retention period set on the Mixpanel project.
• Records relating to the pointer to another app (section 5.9) are kept by the provider for approximately 30 days by its own account. Daily totals per pair of apps (app identifiers, date, platform, country, impression and click counts) are kept for analysis without a fixed deletion date; they contain no reference to a person.
• Feature requests (section 5.10) — ideas, comments and votes — are kept for as long as the board exists. On request we delete a contribution earlier.
• Server logs at Cloudflare and GitHub are deleted after the short periods applicable there.

We will tell you the periods currently configured on request, at the address in section 1.

After an objection, no further data is collected; data already transmitted is deleted once the respective period expires. On request we will arrange for earlier deletion — see section 10.

9. Children

This app is aimed at children, which calls for particular restraint:

• There is no user account, no registration and no sign-in.
• No contact details are collected — no name, e-mail address, phone number or postal address.
• The free version shows a single card pointing to another app (section 5.9). It sits at the very bottom of the library screen, interrupts nothing, does not blink, opens nothing by itself and is only visible if you scroll that far. There are no advertising identifiers, no profile and no cross-provider tracking — not a single detail about the child is sent to the service. Tapping it leads to the App Store, where a purchase requires confirmation via the Apple account as always. Pro removes the card entirely.
• The only place in the app to write anything is the feature-request board in the settings (section 5.10). It sits behind the arithmetic challenge or PIN and is meant for parents. Nothing written there is visible to anyone until we have reviewed and published it, and nothing is ever shown with a name.
• The app’s settings are protected by an arithmetic challenge — or, if you have set a PIN of your own, by that PIN — so that children cannot change them themselves. Purchases additionally require confirmation via the Apple account.
• You can set a daily and a weekly listening allowance. The counting this needs happens entirely on the device; neither the configured duration nor the time listened to is transmitted to the provider or to any third party.

The holder of parental responsibility decides on the use of the app and on the processing described in sections 5.6, 5.7, 5.9 and 5.10 (cf. Art. 8 GDPR). Please contact the address in section 1 if you wish to request deletion of your child’s data. Section 14 adds the specifics under US law.

10. Your rights

You have the following rights against the controller:

• Access to the data processed about you (Art. 15 GDPR),
• Rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR),
• Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR),
• Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR),
• Data portability (Art. 20 GDPR),
• Withdrawal of any consent given, with effect for the future (Art. 7(3) GDPR).

Right to object under Art. 21 GDPR

You have the right to object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to processing of your data carried out on the basis of Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. This concerns the usage statistics (5.6), the crash reports (5.7) and the processing involved in operating the website (Part A).

For the app you can exercise this objection yourself, directly, without contacting us:

Settings › Legal › Data Analytics & Crash Reports — switch off Allow Data Analytics and/or Send Crash Reports there.

Otherwise an informal message to playtales@peterkurzok.de is sufficient. We need no login details to handle your request; please tell us which processing your request concerns.

Right to lodge a complaint under Art. 77 GDPR

Independently of the above, you may lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the Member State of your habitual residence, place of work, or the place of the alleged infringement. The authority responsible for the controller is:

Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA)
Promenade 18
91522 Ansbach
Germany
https://www.lda.bayern.de

11. Data security

Connections to this website and to all the services named are protected by transport encryption (TLS/HTTPS). Please note that no transmission over the internet and no electronic storage can be completely secure.

12. Links to other websites

This website and the app contain links to third-party offerings (such as the App Store). The respective provider is responsible for their content and data processing; this policy does not apply to them.

13. Changes to this policy

This policy is adjusted whenever the processing described here changes — in particular when a service is added or dropped. The version published here, bearing the date shown above, is the one that applies.

Part C – Notices for the United States

14. Children’s privacy (COPPA)

PlayTales is directed to children, including children under 13, and is built so that it needs nothing from them. In the terms of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA):

• We do not collect personal information from children in the sense of contact or identifying details: there is no account, no registration and no sign-in, and no name, e-mail address, phone number, postal address, photo, voice recording or geolocation is collected.
• There is no chat, messaging or social feature. The only place to write anything is the feature-request board (section 5.10), which sits behind the parental arithmetic challenge or PIN and is meant for parents. Every contribution is moderated — nothing is visible to anyone until we have reviewed and published it — and nothing is ever shown with a name. The board’s random identifier is not created at all unless a parent submits an idea, a comment or a vote.
• Advertising is limited to one contextual card in the free version (section 5.9), and it is not behavioural: no advertising identifier is read, no persistent identifier is sent to the service, and nothing about the child is collected, retained or used to select what is shown. Which app appears is chosen from the App Store account’s country alone. There is no behavioural profiling, no retargeting and no cross-service tracking. Pro removes the card entirely.
• The only identifier processed is the device-bound Apple vendor ID described in section 5.6, used solely for internal usage statistics — never to contact a user, build a profile, or track anyone across services.
• The app’s settings are protected by an arithmetic challenge — or by a PIN of the parent’s choosing, if one is set — so that a child cannot change them unsupervised; purchases require confirmation through the parent’s Apple account. A parent may also cap daily and weekly listening time; that counting stays on the device and is never transmitted.

Parents: the card described in section 5.9 is the one thing in the app a child can tap that leads outside it, and it leads only to the App Store. You may at any time ask us to confirm what data associated with your child’s device exists, to have it deleted, and to refuse any further collection. Write to playtales@peterkurzok.de. You can also stop the collection yourself, immediately and without contacting us, by switching off Allow Data Analytics and Send Crash Reports under Settings › Legal › Data Analytics & Crash Reports. Deleting the app removes the locally stored data from the device.

15. California (CCPA/CPRA)

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We have not done so in the preceding twelve months. No data broker receives data from this app or this website.

Since version 1.5.1 the free version does embed one advertising component, Kickstart Exchange (section 5.9). What it receives is information about the app, together with the App Store account’s country — no advertising identifier, no device or user identifier, and nothing derived from a person’s activity. Under the CCPA/CPRA definitions that is neither a sale nor sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising, because nothing personal is exchanged and no profile is built across services. Buying Pro removes the component’s activity entirely.

Ideas, comments and votes on the feature-request board (section 5.10) are written voluntarily by a parent, carry only a random installation identifier, and are neither sold nor shared.

The categories of personal information processed are those listed in sections 3 to 6: identifiers (a device-bound vendor ID; IP addresses in the server logs of our hosting and delivery providers, and of the advertising service in section 5.9), internet or other electronic network activity information (which app features were used, which pages were requested), and diagnostic information from crash reports. They are processed for the business purposes stated in each section and are not used for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

Subject to verification and to the exceptions in the law, California residents may request to know, delete or correct personal information, and may opt out. The GDPR rights in section 10 are granted to all users regardless of residence and are broader in most respects; the opt-out is available directly in the app as described above. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.