Kazoo
Privacy Policy
Written to be read, not survived. We store your account, your friend list, and your voice clips in transit — nothing else.
Kazoo sends short voice messages between people who have deliberately added each other. To do that, we store your account, your chosen name, your friend list, and the voice clips in transit. We do not track you, we do not advertise, we do not sell or share anything with anyone, and we do not use your voice recordings to train anything.
What We Collect
Your account. When you sign in with Apple we receive an account identifier and an email address. If you chose Apple's "Hide My Email," we only ever see the relay address, never your real one. The email keeps your account attached to you — it is never shown to other users and cannot be used to find you.
Your display name. The name your friends see. You set it, and you can change it any time in Settings. It starts from the name Apple provides, if it provides one.
Your friends. The list of people you have connected with, and the invite codes used to make those connections. Codes are random six-character strings with no personal information in them.
Your voice clips. The audio you record, its length, and delivery information: when it was sent, whether it was delivered, and whether it was heard.
Your availability. Whether you are currently reachable, and if not, the general reason (for example, that a Focus mode is on). We receive only that you are in some Focus, never which one, and never anything else about it.
Your notification token. An identifier Apple gives us so we can send a chirp to your watch.
What We Don't Collect
- Your contacts or address book — Kazoo never reads them. Friends are added by a code you choose to share, which is a deliberate design decision, not an oversight
- Your location — not precise, not approximate, not at all
- Analytics or usage tracking — there is no analytics SDK in the app
- Advertising identifiers — there is no advertising in Kazoo and no ad network in the code
How Long We Keep Things
Voice clips are deleted 24 hours after they are heard. A clip nobody has heard waits for up to 7 days, then is deleted anyway, so nothing sits in storage indefinitely. Deletion runs automatically every hour and removes the audio file itself, not merely a record of it.
The one exception is a clip attached to a report (see below), which is held until the report has been reviewed and then deleted under the normal rules.
Your account, name, and friend list remain until you delete your account.
Who Can See Your Voice Clips
Only you and the one person you sent it to. This is enforced at the database level, not just in the app: every record carries a rule that permits access solely to its sender and its recipient. Removing a friend revokes their access immediately.
Our backend provider (Supabase) stores this data on our behalf and cannot use it for their own purposes. Apple delivers the notifications. Nobody else receives your data.
Reports
Every friend's screen has a Report button. Reporting someone removes them as a friend immediately, and they are not told who reported them.
When you report someone we store the report (who, the reason you picked, and when) and, unless you switch it off, the most recent voice clip that person sent you, so there is something to review. That clip cannot be deleted by the person who sent it while the report is open. Once the report is closed, the clip is released and deleted under the normal 24-hour rule.
Reports are reviewed by us, and are used only to decide whether someone should be removed from Kazoo. They are never shared with the person reported.
Children
Kazoo is rated 4+ and is designed to be safe for children by construction rather than by policy: there is no discovery, no public channels, no strangers, no text chat, and no way for anyone to contact a user who has not first accepted their code. We do not knowingly collect information from children beyond what is described above, which is the same minimum we collect from everyone.
If you are a parent who set up a watch for your child and you want their account and data removed, email us and we will delete it.
Your Choices and Rights
- Change your name any time in Settings
- Remove a friend to immediately revoke their access to anything you sent them
- Report someone from their screen, which also removes them
- Turn off notifications in the Watch app — you will still see messages when you open Kazoo
- Delete your account and everything in it by emailing us; we action it within 30 days and confirm when it's done
Depending on where you live you may have additional rights over your data, including access, correction, export, and deletion. Email us and we will honour them regardless of where you live.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our backend provider. Voice clips live in a private store that is not publicly reachable and issues only short-lived, single-purpose links. No system is perfect, and we would rather say that than claim otherwise.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect or who can see it, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect, not merely update this page.
Contact
Questions about this policy?
If this ever changes, the "last updated" date will change with it.
Kazoo is developed by OceanWithin Studio, LLC