Privacy Policy
Last updated: 30 August 2026 · Version 2.0
1. Who we are
Sonaya is operated by Dinkel AI & Media Tech GmbH, a company registered in Vienna, Austria. Registered office: Simmeringer Hauptstraße 24/220, 1110 Vienna, Austria. Commercial register number: FN 659333 h, Commercial Court of Vienna (Handelsgericht Wien). Contact for any privacy question: support@sonaya.ai. We are the data controller for the personal data described here.
2. What Sonaya does with your data, in one paragraph
You tell Sonaya what is on your mind. You record about twelve seconds of your voice. We use both to generate a guided meditation spoken in a synthetic copy of your own voice. That is the entire purpose. We do not sell your data, we do not advertise to you, and we do not build advertising or scoring profiles of you. The only automated check on your text is a safety screen before a script is generated (section 10).
3. What we collect
Your account. Email address and a securely hashed password, or your Apple or Google sign-in. If you start without an account, we create an anonymous record on our side. We do not ask for your name. When you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive your email address (or Apple's private relay address) and a sign-in identifier from that provider. Apple or Google may also pass on your name — we do not store it; there is no name field in our database.
Your voice. A short recording, about twelve seconds. From it a synthetic voice model is created. Both the recording and the model are treated as biometric data. Be aware that a voice can reveal sensitive information about you — such as ethnicity, health or age. This is one of the reasons we treat it with the strictest care and ask for your explicit consent before recording anything.
What you write. The text you enter to describe how you feel or what you want the session to be about, and the meditation script generated from it. What you write may reveal information about your mental or physical health — which is why we ask for your explicit consent before you write anything, and send it to our AI provider only under that consent (section 4). This text is stored with the meditation and is erased when you delete the meditation.
Your meditations. The generated audio, its theme, length, language, whether you marked it a favourite, and the title you gave it. Your own words serve as the meditation's title in your library unless you rename it, which is why they are stored with it.
How you use the app. Which meditations you created and when, your monthly usage against your plan, your subscription status and purchase history, and — if you answer it — how you felt after a session.
Payments. Purchases run entirely through Apple and Google. We never see or store your payment card details — we only receive your subscription status and transaction identifiers.
Your consents. When you tick a consent box or confirm your age, we record what you agreed to, the version of this policy, the time, your IP address and your device's identification string (user agent). This is our proof that you consented.
Technical data. Device type and operating system version, app version, IP address, a device fingerprint attached to your sign-in session, and crash and performance information from our servers and from the app. On Apple devices we also set a one-bit marker through Apple's DeviceCheck service to record that a device has already used its one free meditation. On Android devices we record a one-way cryptographic hash of the device identifier for the same purpose; the identifier itself is never stored, and the record is not linked to your account. RevenueCat's purchase component inside the app also records an identifier for your installation of the app and your app-store purchase information (section 5).
4. Our legal bases — why we may process your data
Your explicit consent — Article 9(2)(a) and Article 6(1)(a) GDPR — for your voice recording and voice model, and for the text you write about how you feel, which may reveal health information. You give this consent through one separate, explicit tick — covering your voice and your text together — before you record or write anything. You are not legally obliged to provide this data, but Sonaya cannot create a meditation without it. Because voice and text are covered by that one consent, withdrawing it withdraws both: your voice recording, the voice model and every meditation made with them — including the text you wrote for each — are deleted, and new meditations cannot be created until you consent again and record a new voice. Your account, subscription and settings remain. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before it. Performance of our contract with you — Article 6(1)(b) — for your account, your subscription and your usage against your plan, and for keeping the meditations you created in your library for as long as you keep them. Because every meditation is made from your voice and your text, the library is also deleted if you withdraw that consent. Legal obligation — Article 6(1)(c) — for keeping the accounting records that Austrian tax and commercial law require us to keep, for seven years. Our legitimate interests — Article 6(1)(f) — for keeping the service secure and preventing abuse: IP addresses in security logs, the device fingerprint attached to your sign-in session, login-attempt limits, the one-bit DeviceCheck marker on Apple devices and the hashed device identifier on Android that record a device has used its free meditation, and keeping records of the consents you gave, as proof that we had them (Article 7(1)). You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests; because these measures protect the service and other users, we will usually have compelling grounds to continue them, and we will tell you if so.
5. Who else sees your data
We use a small number of service providers. The two AI providers — ElevenLabs and OpenAI — never receive your identity; what each provider gets is listed below.
| Provider | What we send | Where | What they may do with it |
|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs (US) | your voice recording, under a random name; no user ID, no email, no name | US | create and store the synthetic voice, generate audio. Training on our workspace data is switched off in our account |
| OpenAI (US) | the text you wrote and the generated script; no user ID, no email | US | generate the script and screen it for harmful content. OpenAI does not train its models on data sent through its API. By default it keeps abuse-monitoring logs, which may contain this text, for up to 30 days |
| DigitalOcean Spaces | your voice recording, meditation audio, data-export archives | Frankfurt, EU | storage only |
| Railway | our database | Amsterdam, EU | hosting only |
| SendGrid | your email address and the message | US | delivery of account emails only |
| Sentry | error reports from our servers and from the app; no personal data, no IP address | EU (Germany) | error tracking only |
| RevenueCat | your Sonaya user identifier and purchase events; its component inside the app also passes your app-store purchase information and app-instance identifiers | US | subscription management |
| Apple / Google | sign-in and payment, handled by them | — | as per their own terms |
| Apple DeviceCheck | an anonymous per-device bit meaning "the free meditation was used"; no account data | Apple | stored by Apple against the device, readable only by us |
Because we never send your name, email or user identifier to ElevenLabs or OpenAI, those providers cannot tell whose voice or whose text they are processing. Note two honest limits: a voice recording can in principle identify a person by itself, and anything you choose to write about yourself is sent as you wrote it.
ElevenLabs, OpenAI, SendGrid and RevenueCat process data in the United States. ElevenLabs is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Our transfers to the others rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, which form part of our data processing agreement with each of them. Apple and Google act on their own behalf for sign-in and payments, under their own privacy terms. You can request copies of our safeguards at support@sonaya.ai. What we say above about a provider's own practices reflects its published terms and our account settings on the date of this policy.
6. How long we keep it
While your account exists: your account, your voice recording and voice model, your meditations with their texts, your usage and subscription data. Sign-in sessions last until they expire or you sign out; expired session records are removed automatically 30 days after they expire or are revoked. Email codes and password-reset links: seven days. Server logs containing IP addresses: 30 days.
When you delete a meditation: its audio, the text you wrote for it and its script are erased together.
When you withdraw your voice-and-text consent: your voice recording, voice model and all meditations are deleted immediately — if a provider is unreachable at that moment, deletion is retried automatically, as described below. Your account stays.
When you delete your account: everything is removed from our live systems immediately. Anything that cannot be removed at that moment — for example if a provider is unreachable — is retried automatically until it is gone; a note that something remained to be deleted is kept until it succeeds, then for 90 days. Copies in weekly database backups expire within one month. Only the following outlive your account:
- your consent records (what you agreed to, version, time, IP address, user agent) — three years, as proof of consent;
- your session ratings and app feedback — without your user ID, IP address or free text; only the rating or category, the time, and the app and operating-system version remain;
- subscription events from the app stores — ninety days, under a number no longer linked to any account;
- aggregated store payout records we must keep under Austrian tax and commercial law — seven years; they do not identify you.
7. Security
All traffic runs over encrypted connections. Voice recordings, meditation audio and export archives are stored in the European Union (Frankfurt). Your voice recording is never public: it is reachable only through a short-lived private link issued to you. Access to production systems is restricted, and security is reviewed internally whenever the system changes. The third-party components inside the app are RevenueCat's purchase module and Sentry's error reporter, which sends crash reports without personal data or IP addresses (section 5). There are no advertising or analytics trackers in it.
8. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right of access (Article 15), rectification (Article 16), erasure (Article 17), restriction of processing (Article 18), data portability (Article 20) and objection (Article 21). You are also protected against decisions based solely on automated processing (Article 22) — see section 10 on how automation is used here.
In the app you can, without contacting anyone: withdraw your voice-and-text consent and have the voice and everything made from it erased · delete your account entirely · request an export of your data, delivered as a download link sent to your email — or, if you use Sonaya without an email address, shown in the app.
For anything else, write to support@sonaya.ai — we respond within one month; where a request is complex, the law allows us to extend this by up to two further months, and we will tell you if so.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Datenschutzbehörde), Wickenburggasse 8, 1080 Vienna, Austria · +43 1 52 152-0 · www.dsb.gv.at — or with the supervisory authority of the EU country where you live; in Germany, that is the data protection authority of your federal state. We encourage you to contact us first so we can address your concern directly.
9. Age
Sonaya is for adults. You must be 18 or older to use it, and we ask you to confirm this before you record or write anything. We do not collect your date of birth; we store only the fact and date of your confirmation. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal data, contact us at support@sonaya.ai. We will verify the request, delete all personal data associated with the account, terminate the account, and confirm deletion to you within one month.
10. Automated processing
Your meditation is generated by artificial intelligence: a text model writes the script, a voice model speaks it in a copy of your voice. Before a script is written, the text you entered is checked automatically for harmful content; if the check blocks it, no meditation is created for that text. If that happens and you think it is wrong, write to support@sonaya.ai and a person will look at it. Neither step is a decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you. Sonaya is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition.
11. If something goes wrong
If a personal data breach is likely to put your rights and freedoms at risk, we will notify the Austrian Data Protection Authority without undue delay and, where feasible, within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. If the breach is likely to result in a high risk to you, we will inform you directly. We will take immediate measures to contain it.
12. Changes
We will publish any new version at this address. When a change is significant, we will tell you in the app and, where we hold your email address, by email, and seek renewed consent where the law requires it. This policy is published in English and German; if the two versions differ, the English version prevails.