VibeGrid Privacy Policy

Welcome to VibeGrid (developed by Mithinvel). We are dedicated to respecting and protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy outlines how your information is collected, used, and safeguarded when you use our mobile application, backend synchronization services, and official websites.

By creating an account or accessing VibeGrid, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.

• User-Initiated Playback: Foreground media playback begins solely when a user initiates playback of a local audio track or joins an active real-time listening room.
• Persistent Notification: While active, a standard Android system notification is displayed featuring real-time playback controls (Play, Pause, Skip, Track Title, and Room Status).
• Compliance & Integrity: We strictly adhere to Google Play policies. The foreground media service is never used for unauthorized background scraping, covert data transmission, or non-user-initiated activities.

• Account & Profile Data: Email address, User ID (UID), display name, and avatar preference provided during Firebase Authentication.
• Room & Playback States: Temporary room identifiers, host timestamp sync offsets, and track queues necessary to synchronize playback among connected peers.
• Device Storage Permissions: Read Media Audio permissions (to index and play user audio files stored locally on the phone). Local files never leave your device and are never uploaded to our servers.
• Date of Birth (optional): collected during sign-up. Only the year is used, to suggest music from the era a listener is likely to enjoy. It is never used for advertising or shared with anyone.
• Chat & Room Content: room names and settings you create, chat messages you send inside a room, song requests, and reports you file. Messages are visible to the other members of that room.
• Notification Token: one Firebase Cloud Messaging token per device, used only to deliver app notifications. It is invalidated when you sign out or delete your account.
• Playback Sync Identifier: the track and position you are on, together with an identifier the app generates for your installation, so playback can resume on your other devices. This is not an advertising identifier and not a hardware serial number.
• Technical & Diagnostic Data: IP address, device model, operating system version and error logs, collected by our infrastructure providers to keep the service running and to protect it from abuse.

We work with trusted industry leaders to operate our cloud infrastructure:

Songs and playlists shown in VibeGrid are indexed from third-party platforms and belong to the people who uploaded them. Those uploaders — not VibeGrid — control that content, and they may edit, restrict, or delete it at any time without notice. A song may therefore stop playing, and a playlist may lose tracks or disappear entirely, even though it worked earlier. VibeGrid does not host this content and is not responsible for its removal, unavailability, or accuracy.

• A track that becomes unavailable was removed at the source; it was never stored by us.
• Playlists are owned by their original uploaders, so their contents can change or vanish at any time.
• We receive no advance notice of removals and cannot restore removed content.
• Music stored on your own device plays from the Local tab and never depends on a third-party platform.

You possess full sovereignty over your personal information, and VibeGrid implements rigorous safeguards to protect user privacy and system security. You may ask us for a copy of the data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or withdraw consent for optional data such as your date of birth or notifications, by writing to the address in section 13. We aim to respond within 48 hours, and in any case within 30 days.

VibeGrid uses YouTube API Services to search for music and to play it through the official YouTube embedded player. By using VibeGrid you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service.

Google's handling of any data collected through those services is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

You can review and revoke VibeGrid's access to your data through Google's security settings page at any time.

• What we request: search results, trending music charts, and public playlist contents — titles, thumbnails, channel names, video identifiers and durations.
• What we store: only that metadata, cached on our servers for at most 24 hours to stay within YouTube's daily request limits. Cached data is refreshed or discarded well inside the 30-day maximum the YouTube API Services Developer Policies allow.
• What we never do: we do not download, rip, extract, or store any YouTube audio or video. Playback happens entirely inside YouTube's own embedded player, and advertising shown by that player is served by YouTube, not by us.
• Your YouTube account: VibeGrid does not ask you to sign in to YouTube and has no access to your YouTube account, subscriptions, or watch history.

VibeGrid does not show advertising. We do not sell your data to advertisers, and we do not use your personal information for ad targeting or profiling.

Advertising that appears inside the embedded YouTube player is served by YouTube itself, under Google's own policies, and we receive nothing from it.

If advertising is ever introduced, this policy will be updated before it appears, and we will say here what identifiers the advertising provider uses.

Account and profile data is kept for as long as your account exists, and is deleted when you delete your account.

Listening rooms & lounge sessions: Rooms created on VibeGrid remain active as long as they are regularly used. To preserve server resources and keep room codes accessible, any listening room with no active playback or participant engagement for 14 continuous days is automatically marked as expired and permanently deleted from our database.

Inactivity alerts & reminders: Before an inactive room is automatically deleted, our system sends automated push notifications to the room creator at approximately 7 days and 12 days of inactivity, allowing the host to revive the room by opening the app and starting playback.

Room chat messages are deleted when the room host closes the room or when an expired room is cleaned up.

Cached music metadata from YouTube is discarded within 24 hours.

A record that a device has claimed the free trial is kept indefinitely. It contains only an anonymous device identifier and the date, and exists solely to stop the same phone claiming the trial repeatedly.

Favourites, playlists, notification history and search caches are stored on your own device and are removed when you uninstall the app.

VibeGrid is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. The app is rated for a general audience and is not part of the Google Play Families programme.

We ask for a date of birth during sign-up so that we can suggest music from the era a listener is likely to enjoy. It is not used for advertising or shared with anyone.

If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, write to us at the address below and we will delete the account and its data.

Your account data is held in Google Cloud Firestore and protected by security rules that allow only your own signed-in account to read or change it. Room chat is readable only by members of that room.

Traffic between the app, our servers and Google's services is encrypted in transit, and data at rest is encrypted by Google. Our providers operate data centres in several countries, so your data may be processed outside the country you live in, under their standard contractual protections.

No system is perfectly secure. If we ever become aware of a breach affecting your data, we will notify affected users.

We may update this policy as the app changes. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version, and material changes will be announced inside the app before they take effect.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, our data practices, or compliance inquiries, please contact:

Developer: Mithinvel (VibeGrid)
Support Email: support@vibegrid.com / developer@vibegrid.com