Privacy Policy

Last updated 30 July 2026. Applies to the Podland iOS app and the Podland backend service.

Who runs Podland

Podland is built and operated by Steven Aranjo as an independent project. The backend runs on a single server rented from DigitalOcean. There is no company behind it and no staff other than one person.

There is no account

Podland never asks you to sign up. It does not collect your name, email address, phone number, date of birth, password, or payment details, because it has nowhere to put them and nothing to charge you for.

The first time the app launches, it asks the backend for a credential and stores it in the iOS keychain. That credential is attached to a randomly generated install ID. The install ID identifies a keychain item, not a human being. If you delete the app and reinstall it, or install Podland on a second device, you get a fresh install ID, and there is no mechanism that links the old one to the new one.

What stays on your phone

These never leave your device:

• Your podcast subscription list, as displayed in the app.
• Playback positions and which episodes you've finished.
• Downloaded audio files.
• Your settings, including whether Smart Ad Skip is switched on.
• Any corrections you make to an ad range that was skipped incorrectly.

What the backend records

Podland's backend is a proxy podcast server. Your app asks it for feeds and for episode audio, and in doing so the backend necessarily learns what you asked for. It keeps that information. Specifically:

Against your install ID

• The date and time the install ID was created.
• The IP address the app was using when the install ID was created.
• An optional label, only if one was set manually for a test device.

Which podcasts your install follows

• An identifier for each podcast feed your install has fetched.
• When it first fetched that feed, when it last fetched it, and how many times.

Which episodes your install has requested

• An identifier for each episode whose audio your install requested.
• When it first requested that episode and when it last did.
• A count of distinct half-hour windows in which it made requests. This is a rough measure of demand, not a precise log of when you were listening, and it is not a count of listening sessions.

Taken together this is a subscription list and a listening history. It is described here plainly rather than buried, because that is what it is.

Server logs

The web server keeps ordinary request logs. These include the IP address of each request, the time, the path requested, and the response status. IP addresses are personal data in some jurisdictions, which is why they are called out here.

Why any of this is kept

Analysing an episode for ads costs real money in transcription and inference, so the backend needs to know which episodes are actually wanted in order to analyse those and not the entire internet. The per-install records are also what allow a single misbehaving or leaked credential to be revoked without affecting anyone else. They are not used to build a profile of you, and they are not used for advertising.

Podcast audio and transcripts

To locate ad breaks, the backend downloads episode audio from the publisher, stores it temporarily, and sends it to a third-party inference provider (DeepInfra) to be transcribed and classified. Transcripts are stored on the backend so that an episode never has to be analysed twice.

This is podcast audio published by podcasters. It is not recorded from your microphone, and Podland never requests microphone access. Nothing you say or do is captured. What is sent out is the show, not you.

How long it's kept

The subscription and episode records are kept indefinitely. The database is replicated to Cloudflare R2 object storage as a backup, so deleted rows may persist in a backup copy for a period after deletion. Cached episode audio is cleared out on a routine schedule to reclaim disk space; transcripts and ad ranges are kept.

What Podland does not do

• No third-party analytics SDK. No Google Analytics, no Firebase, no Mixpanel, no Amplitude.
• No advertising SDK, no ad identifier, no IDFA, and no App Tracking Transparency prompt, because there is nothing to track you for.
• No tracking of you across other companies' apps or websites.
• No sale, rental, or sharing of your data with data brokers, advertisers, or anyone else, and no plan to start.
• No access to your contacts, photos, location, calendar, health data, or microphone. The app never asks for these permissions.
• No cookies on this website, and no analytics on it. The site is plain static files and runs no JavaScript at all — its content security policy blocks scripts outright, including any the host might try to add.

Others involved

Running the service requires a small number of providers, each of which handles data in the course of doing its job:

• DigitalOcean — hosts the server the backend runs on.
• Cloudflare — sits in front of the backend and serves this website. It sees request traffic, including IP addresses. It also stores the database backups in R2.
• DeepInfra — receives podcast audio for transcription and classification. It receives the episode audio, not your install ID or any information about you.
• Apple — distributes the app through TestFlight and collects its own installation, crash, and usage data under Apple's privacy policy, not this one.

Apple's privacy labels

The app ships a privacy manifest, and this policy is written to say the same thing it does. In Apple's terms, Podland collects three things, all linked to your install ID and none of them used for tracking:

• Product Interaction — the feed and episode records described above. Declared for app functionality and for analytics.
• User ID — the developer-assigned install ID. Declared for app functionality.
• Other data — your IP address. Apple publishes no data type for IP addresses, so it is declared under "Other" rather than left out. Declared for app functionality, specifically to bound how many installs can be created.

"Analytics" here means counting how often the same episode is wanted by more than one install, so that it only gets analysed once. It does not mean an analytics product, a dashboard of your behaviour, or a profile. Nothing is used for advertising and nothing is used to track you across other companies' apps or websites.

Your choices

• Switch off Smart Ad Skip. The app then plays the publisher's audio directly and the backend stops being asked for that episode.
• Delete the app. The keychain credential goes with it, along with everything stored on your device. Records already on the server remain until you ask for them to be removed.
• Ask for deletion. Write to the address below. There is no identity attached to your record, so nothing needs to be proved about who you are — but something has to identify which install is yours. Get in touch and you'll be told what to send.
• Ask for a copy. The same address, and the same caveat. You'll get whatever rows are attached to your install.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal data, and to complain to a data protection authority. Requests are handled by one person and answered as promptly as is realistic.

Children

Podland is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes to what is collected will be described in the app's release notes rather than slipped in quietly.