Privacy policy · Home Station

Who we are

MCusson runs Home Station: the website gethomestation.com, the family web app and the Home Station app for Android. MCusson is responsible for your information. For anything on this page, write to us at hello@gethomestation.com. The person in charge of protecting personal information can be reached at the same address.

What we collect about you

When you create an account and use the family web app, we keep:

Your name, email address and language, and your password, stored scrambled so no one can read it.
The radios you look after: the name you give each one (such as “Mom”), its stations, its settings and the family members who help with it.
The voice messages you record or upload, with their length and when they were first heard.
The email addresses of the people you invite to help.
If you turn on alerts in a browser: the address its push service gives us for it, and the browser’s name.
If you pay: your plan, how many radios it covers, and your customer number at Stripe. Link, Stripe’s payment service, takes your card, and your name and billing address for the tax. We see that name and address, and at most the card’s brand and last 4 digits.
While you’re signed in: your IP address and browser, kept with your session.

What the radio sends us

The person who listens has no account, and we never ask for their name, age or health. The Home Station app on their phone or tablet sends us:

The device’s model and Android version, the version of the app, and a random code that tells our server which radio it is.
A push token from Google, so we can wake the radio when the family changes something.
Every minute while the app is open or playing: whether it’s playing, which button, the volume, the battery level, whether it’s charging, which voice message is playing, whether it can come back on by itself after the phone restarts, its time zone, and how long ago someone last tapped its buttons. We keep only the latest, plus how long each button played each day for a week, which the family sees.

The app doesn’t use the microphone, camera, contacts or location. It has no ads, and no tracking or analytics tools. A log of what the app does stays on the device, unless a family member chooses to send it to us from the setup menu, or we ask the radio for it to fix a problem a family told us about.

Cookies

We use only the cookies the site needs to work: one that keeps you signed in and remembers your language, one that protects forms, and, if you tick “Keep me signed in on this device”, one that does just that. No advertising or analytics cookies, and nothing that follows you from site to site. Our fonts and images come from our own server.

Your browser also keeps a few of the pages’ settings on your device, such as hiding the card that offers the app. They never reach us.

How we count visits

To know which pages help families find us, and what helps them set up a radio, we count visits with Umami, a counting tool we run on our own server. It uses no cookies. It uses your IP address only for a moment, to tell visits apart and to find the country, region and city it points to, and doesn’t keep it: it can tell visits apart, but not who you are. It’s never linked to your account. If your browser asks sites not to track it (Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track), nothing is counted.

For each page it gets the page’s address, without what was typed in it, the site you came from, your browser, system, type of device, screen size and language, and how long the page took to show and to respond. If you came from one of our emails, it also gets which kind of email. Once you’re signed in, it gets only the kind of page, such as “a radio’s page”: never a name, a radio or what the page shows.

It also gets a few things you do, never what you write:

On the home page and the guides: how far down you read, the buttons to create an account, the questions you open, the language or currency you pick, the Google Play badge, the link to email us, links to other sites (only their domain name), and whether you try the radio or the dial on the home page.
Setting up: an account created (in which language, and whether for an invitation) or the fields refused and why, a radio connected or why its code didn’t work, and whether its QR code was scanned, a station chosen (from the popular ones or a search, and whether it broadcasts from another country than the one you’re in, never which station), a radio’s stations all chosen, a voice message sent, the “Before you leave” list put away and the steps it still had, alerts turned on and the family web app added to the home screen.
Afterwards: an invitation sent or accepted, “Fix it”, a change that waits for a paid plan, a radio more than your plan covers, a plan chosen (which one, for how many radios, at what price, in which currency, and whether before or during the free trial or after it), switched or changed, a radio disconnected, and an account deleted (and whether it had paid).

Nothing is counted on an invitation, a password reset or the page that turns our emails off, nor on the pages we use to run Home Station. Visit counts are deleted after 6 months.

Why we use it

To run the service you asked for: connect the radio, send it your stations and messages, show you its status, alert you when it goes offline, a station stops or, if you asked, nobody has tapped it by a time you chose, email you how long it played each week and, if setting it up stops halfway, remind you once or twice; you can turn both off. This is our contract with you.
To check that stations still play and switch to a working stream, keep the service secure and fix problems. This is our legitimate interest in a service that works.
To send notifications to your browser, only if you turn them on. This is your consent, and you can take it back at any time.
To bill you and keep the records that tax law requires. This is a legal obligation.
To count visits, without cookies and without knowing who makes them. This is our legitimate interest in knowing which pages help families find us and what helps them set up a radio.

We email you only about your radios and your account. We never sell your information, and never use it for advertising.

Who else sees it

Only the family members of a radio see its status and its messages. We look at an account or a radio ourselves only to answer you or to fix a problem, and the pages we use for that don’t play voice messages. Beyond that, a few companies help us run Home Station, and use your information only for that:

Our hosting provider, which keeps the service’s data on its servers.
Cloudflare, which carries the traffic between your browser or the radio and our server, and protects it from attacks. It sees your IP address and what passes through it.
Our email service, which delivers your alerts, invitations, password resets, weekly listening emails, reminders to finish setting up a radio, reminders before your free trial ends, and notices when a radio isn’t paid for.
Stripe, through its Link service, which sells you the plans for us: Link is the seller on your receipts and card statement, takes the payment, and collects and pays the sales tax or VAT. It also answers questions about payments, and uses payment information for its own legal duties and to prevent fraud, as its privacy policy explains.
Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which delivers wake-ups to the radio. It gets the radio’s push token and a note that something changed, never your stations or messages.
Your browser’s push service (from Google, Mozilla, Apple or Microsoft), if you turn on notifications. Alerts are encrypted, so it can’t read them.

The radio plays each station straight from the broadcaster, so the broadcaster sees the device’s IP address, as with any internet radio. When a station starts, the radio also tells radio-browser.info, the free station directory, so it can count plays. When you search for a station, our server asks radio-browser.info without sending anything about you. When you listen to a station while choosing it, your browser plays it straight from the broadcaster, which sees your IP address.

We share information with the police or the courts only when the law requires it. If Home Station is ever sold or merged, your information would move with it under this policy, and we would tell you first.

Other countries

Some of these companies work in other countries, including the United States. Where the law requires it, your information is protected there too, for example by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

Your account: until you delete it.
A radio and its status: until its owner disconnects it, or deletes their account when no one else looks after it.
How long the radio played each day: a week, then it’s deleted by itself. The weekly emails stay in your inbox until you delete them.
An event log a radio sends us: 30 days.
Voice messages: each radio keeps its 20 newest, and older ones are deleted by themselves. You can delete any of them sooner.
Invitations: with the radio they’re for, and deleted with it.
Billing records: as long as tax and accounting law requires, usually 6 to 10 years, at Stripe and with us.
Technical logs: up to 30 days.
Visit counts: 6 months, then we delete them.
Backups: something deleted can stay in our backups for up to 30 days, until they’re replaced.

Your rights

You can see, correct and delete your information, and get a copy of it:

Your name, email, password and language are on the Account page.
To delete your account and everything in it, use “Delete your account” on the Account page. It happens straight away.
For a copy of your information, or anything else, write to hello@gethomestation.com. We answer within 30 days.

Depending on where you live, you can also object to how we use your information, ask us to use less of it, and complain to your data protection authority. We would like the chance to help first.

The person who listens

If you set up a radio for someone, tell them what Home Station does and what the family can see, and set it up only with their agreement, or that of someone who may decide for them. They, or that person, can write to hello@gethomestation.com to find out what we keep about their radio, or to have it deleted.

Children

Home Station accounts are for adults. We don’t knowingly collect information about children.

Security

Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored scrambled. Voice messages are kept private and reach the radio through links only the radio gets. Among the people who use Home Station, only the family members of a radio can see it. If a breach ever put your information at risk, we would tell you, and the authorities, as the law requires.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will email you before it applies. The date at the top shows the last change.