Privacy Policy — Bilu
1. What the App does
Bilu is a live voice translator. You wear one earbud; what the other person says is translated into your language and played in your earbud; what you say is translated and spoken aloud from your phone’s speaker. The App only listens while you have pressed Start, and it shows a live indicator the whole time.
2. What we process, and why
| Data | Where it comes from | Why | Kept? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your voice and the voices around you while a session runs | the phone microphone and the earbud microphone | to recognise speech and produce the translation — this is the service itself | No. Audio is streamed for real-time processing and is not recorded or stored by us. |
| Transcripts and translations (the text shown on your screen) | produced during a session | so you can read what was said | No. Kept in the App’s memory while the session runs and discarded when it ends; never stored on our servers. Our diagnostic logs record how long a sentence was, never its words. |
| An anonymous account identifier | created by the App on first launch (a random ID; no name, e-mail or phone number) | to keep your minutes and settings across launches | Yes, until you delete it (Settings → Delete my data). |
| Sign in with Apple (optional) | you, if you choose it when buying minutes or in the Wallet | so your minutes survive a new or reset phone (Apple does not restore consumable purchases by itself) | Yes: Apple’s anonymous user identifier is attached to your account. We do not ask for your e-mail. Declining keeps everything on the phone you are using. |
| Your settings (the languages you chose, Arabic preferences, text size, voice quality for Listen) | you | so the App remembers them | Yes, with your account, until deleted. |
| Names you add to My Trip (a hotel, a person, a station) | you | so the interpreter keeps them exactly | Yes, with your account, until you remove them or delete your data. |
| Purchases and minutes (which minute pack you bought, minutes used per session, expiry dates) | Apple’s App Store via RevenueCat; our servers | to give you what you paid for and to count minutes only while a translation is actually being spoken | Yes, as required for billing and by law. We never see your card details; Apple handles payment. |
| Session diagnostics (start/end time, durations, response times, which speech service was used, error codes, the region of the server, network round-trip) | our servers | to keep the service working and fast | Yes, up to 30 days, without audio or text. |
| Product usage events (for example: onboarding finished, a purchase made, minutes ran out — as identifiers and numbers only) | the App | to see where people get stuck and what they buy | Yes, with your account, up to 12 months; never text or audio. |
| Crash reports (device model, OS version, App version, the steps before a crash — never audio or text) | the App and our servers, via Sentry | to fix crashes | Yes, up to 90 days. Only your anonymous account identifier is attached; free-text fields are removed before a report leaves your phone. |
We do not collect your location, your contacts, your photos, or advertising identifiers, and the App contains no advertising or tracking SDKs. We do not identify the people you talk to, build voice profiles, or store anyone’s voice.
3. Who helps us process it
Audio is processed in real time by speech and translation services the App runs on. They receive the audio stream and return text or a synthesised voice. They are used under business API terms that do not permit training on this data:
- Google Cloud — speech recognition for Arabic, text translation, and the synthesised voices
- Deepgram — speech recognition for English and other non-Arabic languages (model-improvement programme opted out)
- OpenAI — speech-to-speech translation for some language pairs
- Supabase — your anonymous account, settings, My Trip names, minutes and usage events (servers in Frankfurt, Germany)
- Fly.io — our relay servers (Frankfurt, Germany and Singapore)
- RevenueCat — purchases and minute packs, and Apple — payment and, if you choose it, Sign in with Apple
- Sentry — crash reports (European Union data centre)
Your audio may therefore be processed outside your country, including in the European Union, Singapore and the United States, under the safeguards those providers offer.
4. Your responsibilities when listening to others
Talk mode plays the translation aloud, so the person you talk to always knows an interpreter is at work. Listen mode (a lecture, a meeting, the TV) has no such structure: the App tells you on first use that you are responsible for lawful use where you are — in many places people must know when they are being listened to. The App does not offer, and will not accept requests for, any feature that conceals the fact that it is running.
5. Your rights
You can see and change your settings and My Trip names in the App at any time. Settings → Delete my data deletes your anonymous account and everything attached to it on our servers immediately; the App then starts fresh. Unused minutes are lost when you delete your data. For anything else — access, correction, objection, complaints — write to privacy@crafht.com. If you are in the EU/EEA or the UK you also have the right to complain to your data-protection authority; in the UAE, to the UAE Data Office. Refunds are handled by Apple through your App Store purchase history.
6. Children
The App is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly process their data.
7. Changes
We will post changes here with a new effective date; material changes are announced in the App.