Your voice, handled with care

ummute is run by an individual based in the United Kingdom, who is the data controller for what you record and the details you give it. Their name and postal address are available on request by email. If you have a question about your data, or want to exercise any of the rights set out below, email contact.ummute@gmail.com and a person will answer.

Your recordings, and the transcript and scores worked out from them. If you sign in, the name and email address from your Google account, so your history is yours to return to. If you practise over WhatsApp, your phone number, the messages exchanged with you, and a note of what you were last asked to practise. While you are still on the free trial, an anonymous identifier held in a cookie so your free take can be counted — no name, no email, nothing that points back to you.

Only to do the one job: to measure your speech, show it back to you, and — once you have signed in — keep your history so you can practice the same line weeks apart and watch it improve.

The lawful bases under UK GDPR are simple. Processing your recordings to give you feedback is necessary to provide the service you asked for. Keeping a signed-in account rests on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by asking for the account to be closed.

ummute uses only the cookies it needs to work: one signed, anonymous cookie that counts your free trial, and the session cookie that keeps you signed in. There are no advertising cookies and no tracking cookies — so there is nothing to consent to, and no banner to dismiss.

To understand how the site is used, ummute uses privacy-friendly analytics that set no cookies and store nothing on your device. They count visits without identifying you — no name, no email, and no selling of data.

When we advertise, we measure whether it worked. If you arrive from an ad, our server may tell the advertising platform — Meta, for instance — that a step was completed, such as finishing a take or signing in, so we are not paying to reach the same person twice. This is sent from our server, not through advertising cookies in your browser, and any email is hashed beyond recognition before it leaves us. We never sell your data, and you can ask to be left out of this at contact.ummute@gmail.com.

On AWS, in the United Kingdom (the London region), encrypted in transit and stored encrypted at rest. AWS is the infrastructure ummute is built on.

To turn a recording into feedback, parts of it pass through a small number of specialist processors, each handling only what its task needs: a speech-analysis service that measures the sound, a voice service that generates the reference audio you hear, and the language model that writes the notes on your delivery. None is given more than the work requires.

If you practise over WhatsApp, your messages and voice notes also pass through Meta, which operates WhatsApp and delivers them in both directions. What you send there reaches ummute through Meta’s systems, and is subject to Meta’s own privacy terms as well as these.

Some of these processors operate outside the United Kingdom. Where data leaves the UK, it is covered by the safeguards UK law requires for international transfers, and it is only ever the part of the recording that the task in hand actually needs.

You can practise by sending voice notes to ummute on WhatsApp. Messaging the number, or tapping through from an advert, opens an account identified by that number — there is no form to fill in, and no password.

Two different things happen there, and they rest on different grounds. Replying to something you sent — scoring a voice note, answering a question — is part of providing the service you asked for. The practice reminders that arrive on their own are marketing under the UK’s electronic-communications rules, and they rest on your consent, given by starting the conversation and kept only as long as you want it.

Reply STOP at any point and the reminders end immediately. You can still send voice notes and get them scored afterwards; STOP switches off the messages that come to you unprompted, not the service itself.

Your recordings and transcripts are never sold, and never used to train anyone’s models. There is no advertising here, and nothing to share.

The microphone records whatever you say, and your transcript is sent to the model that writes your feedback. Treat it as you would any open mic — don’t record anything you would not want measured and described back to you.

Trial recordings made before you sign in are removed automatically after a short period if the account is never claimed. Once you have signed in, your recordings are kept until you ask for them gone, or close your account.

If you practise over WhatsApp, your number and the messages exchanged with you are kept for as long as the account is open, so your progress and the thread stay in step. Replying STOP ends the messages immediately; the record of what was already sent remains, because it is also the evidence of what you agreed to and when.

Because ummute is built and hosted in the UK, you have the rights UK GDPR gives you: to see the data held about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to receive a copy, and to object to or restrict how it is used. To act on any of these, email contact.ummute@gmail.com and it will be seen to — usually within a month.

If you ever feel your data has been mishandled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk), the UK’s data-protection regulator. We would rather you came to us first, so we can put it right.

ummute is open to anyone. UK data-protection law sets 13 as the age at which someone can agree to a service like this on their own, so below that a parent or guardian has to agree instead. If you believe a child has used it without that, email contact.ummute@gmail.com and the data will be removed.

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date below changes with it.