Privacy Policy
Effective Date: August 24, 2026
Last Updated: August 24, 2026
Controller: Yonda Project or Blake Carter (drksci.com)
Contact: ,
Welcome to Yonda ( or ). We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling all user data, geospatial telemetry, and community cultural knowledge with integrity and transparency.
This Privacy Policy applies to the Yonda mobile applications (iOS, Android, CarPlay, Android Auto), web applications (yonda.fm), and static documentation portal (yonda.wiki).
This policy complies with:
- Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
- EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- United States State Privacy Laws (including California CCPA or CPRA, CalOPPA, VCDPA).
- Apple App Store and Google Play Store Location and Media Safety Requirements.
- Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) protocols for sacred cultural stories and heritage records.
A. Location and Telemetry (Foreground and Background)
- What We Collect: High-precision and approximate GPS coordinates (latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, and heading).
- Why We Collect It: Yonda acts as an Invisible Passenger audio companion. Continuous location access is necessary to calculate geofence intersections, dynamically adjust narration length based on driving speed, and pre-fetch upcoming stories before entering cellular dead-zones.
- Storage and Retention: Geolocation frames are processed ephemerally in volatile memory or local SQLite device cache. We do not maintain historical travel route logs on central servers, nor do we sell or monetize location streams.
B. Voice and Microphone Data (Optional VAD Companion)
- What We Collect: Real-time microphone audio snippets when the conversational companion is enabled.
- Why We Collect It: To detect passenger queries and synthesize contextual answers.
- Processing: Audio is processed via on-device Voice Activity Detection (VAD). Transcribed questions are routed to our LLM synthesis gateway and immediately discarded. Raw audio recordings are never stored on persistent cloud databases.
C. Community and Curator Contributions
- What We Collect: Geotagged stories, articles, titles, photos, audio voice models, and reviewer credentials submitted by community members or institutional curators (e.g., local councils, cultural elders).
- Attribution: Contributors may publish under verified organizational titles or anonymous aliases.
3. How We Use and Protect Your Data
We process your data strictly to:
- Trigger location-based audio narratives as you travel.
- Preemptively cache offline map tiles and soundscapes for safety in regional areas.
- Manage multi-tenant drafting workflows for verified cultural institutions.
- Maintain platform reliability and edge caching performance.
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal or location data to third parties, advertisers, or data brokers.
4. International Data Transfers and Third-Party Service Providers
To deliver zero-cold-start performance and high-fidelity audio synthesis, we partner with trusted infrastructure providers governed by Data Processing Agreements:
- Hosting and Edge Delivery: Vercel Inc. and Cloudflare Inc.
- Backend and Database Services: Google Cloud Platform or Firebase.
- Speech Synthesis (Cloud Tier): ElevenLabs Inc. (for licensed voice synthesis).
- Mapping and Tiles: OpenStreetMap, MapLibre.
5. Your Rights and Choices
Depending on your jurisdiction, you have the right to:
- Disable Location Tracking: Revoke location permissions at any time in your device settings.
- Disable Microphone Access: Toggle off conversational passenger mode.
- Access and Portability: Request a copy of any personal data or community submissions tied to your account.
- Erasure or Right to be Forgotten: Request deletion of your account and submitted content.
- Non-Discrimination: We will never discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at .
Yonda includes a dedicated Family Mode designed for educational trivia and wholesome road trip entertainment. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 13 (or under 16 in the EU).
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. Significant changes will be announced on and within the mobile app.