Privacy Policy

The short version

You can listen to every song in the archive without an account, on the website or in the app. Signing in only matters if you want to keep something — a liked song, a playlist, a comment. We don't run ads, we don't sell your data, and we don't track you around the rest of the internet. You can delete your account at any time, from either the app or the website, and it takes effect immediately.

Who this is

Topics Archive is an independent project built and run by Roman Hancel, part of the OpenVerb ecosystem. There is no company behind it beyond that. Questions about this policy go to sgthancel@gmail.com.

What we collect

Listening itself needs none of this. If you create an account, we hold:

• Account details: your email address, a hashed password (we never store the password itself, only a one-way hash of it), and, if you add them, a display name, a profile picture, and links to other sites you make music on.
• What you make and keep: songs you've liked, playlists you've built and whether you've published them, and comments you've written.
• Basic activity: when a song, a person's page, or a playlist is played, viewed, or shared. If you're signed in, that's attached to your account, which is what lets a play in the app show up on the same person's page on the website. Signed out, it's just a count.
• Sign-in sessions: to keep you signed in without asking for your password every week, the app holds a long-lived sign-in token in the phone's secure storage. We keep a one-way hash of it on our side — not the token itself — so that if a phone is lost, that one session can be ended without touching any other device you're signed in on.
• Abuse prevention: we keep IP addresses briefly around sign-up and sign-in, only to slow down automated abuse (mass account creation, guessing passwords). We don't use it to build a profile of where you are.
• What you send us directly: if you use the contact form or request a song, whatever you write there, plus the email address you give us to reply to.

What we don't collect

• No precise location. We don't ask for or use GPS.
• No access to your contacts, camera, microphone, photos, or files on your phone. The app doesn't request any of those permissions.
• No advertising identifiers, and no ad networks of any kind.
• No data brokers. We have never sold, rented, or traded anyone's data.

What's public, and what isn't

• Your liked songs and private playlists are visible only to you. Nobody else, including other users, can see them.
• If you publish a playlist, its title, description, songs, and your display name become visible to anyone — that's the point of publishing it. You can make it private again whenever you like, which removes it from public view at once.
• Comments you post are public under your display name. Anyone can report a comment; we can remove one that shouldn't be there. You can delete your own at any time.
• Your email address is never shown publicly, to other users or in the app.

How we use it

Only to run the archive:

• Signing you in, and keeping the app and the website showing the same likes, playlists, and comments.
• Showing a song's or a person's play count, and crediting a published playlist to whoever curated it.
• Looking into a reported comment and, where it's warranted, removing it.
• Slowing down automated abuse — repeated sign-in attempts, mass account creation, that kind of thing.
• Replying to you, if you've written to us.

That's the whole list. We don't use your data to train AI models, build an advertising profile, or for anything beyond what's written here.

Who we share it with

We don't sell or rent anyone's data. A few outside services run parts of the archive on our behalf, and each sees only what it needs to do its job:

• Suno streams the audio itself, through its own embedded player. Suno doesn't receive your Topics Archive account, email, or identity — only the ordinary technical information any web request carries, like your IP address, the same as visiting any other website. Playback there is subject to Suno's own privacy policy, not this one.
• Hosting and the database (Vercel and Neon) store and serve everything described above. They're infrastructure providers — they don't use your data for their own purposes.
• Email delivery (Resend) sends verification and password-reset emails. It sees the email address and the message, and nothing else about your account.
• Vercel Analytics on the website counts page visits in aggregate. It doesn't use cookies and doesn't identify you individually.

We'd also share what the law requires — if we're legally compelled to, or to protect the archive and the people using it from fraud or abuse. That hasn't come up, and if it ever does, only what's specifically required goes out.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time, from the app (Library → Delete account) or the website (Settings, or directly here). It removes your account, your likes, your playlists (published or not), your comments, and every device you're signed in on — at once, not after a waiting period, and it can't be undone. The archive's own songs aren't affected. Listening figures are kept as totals with your name taken off them, so they stay accurate without belonging to anyone. Full details are at topicsarchive.openverb.org/delete-account.

A handful of accounts hold part of the archive itself — songs, biographies, or matches someone has been credited with creating. Deleting one of those would take that work down with it, so those are handled by hand rather than through the self-service page; contact us and we'll sort it out.

How long we keep it

For as long as your account exists. Deleting your account removes the things listed above immediately. A report against a comment, and the record of a takedown, are kept a while longer even after the comment itself is deleted, so the same thing can't simply be reposted — that record carries no more than what was already public.

Security

Passwords are stored as a one-way hash, never in plain text. Sign-in tokens are stored the same way. The app keeps its copy of your session in the phone's own secure storage, not in a place other apps can read. No system is completely secure, and we can't promise perfection — but we don't store more than the archive needs, which is itself a big part of keeping it safe.

Children

Topics Archive isn't directed at children under 13, and accounts aren't knowingly created for anyone under that age. Listening itself needs no account and has no age restriction. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we'll delete it.

Where your data is stored

Our hosting and database providers operate in the United States. If you're elsewhere, your information is transferred there to run the service, the same as almost any website or app you use.

Your choices

• Listen to the whole archive without ever creating an account.
• Ask us what we hold about your account, or ask us to correct it — email us and we'll help directly.
• Delete your account yourself, at any time, as described above.
• Block another person whose comments you'd rather not see; that's reversible from the same menu.

Third-party links

Some pages link out to other platforms — Suno, YouTube, Spotify, Bandcamp, and similar. Once you leave for one of those, its own privacy policy applies, not this one.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that matters — what we collect, or who we share it with — we'll update the date at the top and, for a significant change, say so on the site. Continuing to use Topics Archive after a change means you've accepted the update.

Contact

Questions, requests, or anything about your data: sgthancel@gmail.com or the contact page. See also our Terms of Service and how to delete your account.