BABELME

Information We Collect

• Account Information: When you register for BabelMe Messenger, we collect your email address and display name. Your username is auto-generated. If you choose to enable phone discovery, BabelMe stores a hashed version of your normalized phone number and the last four digits for display/status; your raw phone number is not stored by BabelMe for this feature.
• Guest (Anonymous) Accounts: If you make a purchase without signing in, the app creates a guest account tied to a random identifier generated on your device for that installation; the account has no name, email address, or phone number. Guest accounts have no Messenger or social features (friends, messaging, groups, contact and phone discovery, profile photos, blocking and reporting, or creating Broadcasts); they exist to hold your purchases and usage balance. A guest account is deleted the same way as any other account. If you later add a verified email address, the guest account becomes a full account under the same username and keeps its purchases.
• Audio and Voice Data: Speech audio is processed for live translation, dictation, voice messages, text-to-speech playback, optional dictation refinement, and optional voice setup. Audio may be processed on your device or sent to trusted third-party service providers where configured solely to provide requested speech recognition, transcription refinement, audio isolation, voice setup, voice conversion, or text-to-speech functionality.
• Messages and Conversation Content: Messages, translated text, sender and recipient identifiers, language choices, and related delivery metadata are processed so BabelMe can deliver Messenger, group, Party Room, and Broadcast experiences. Some message data may be temporarily stored or queued on our servers to deliver messages to offline recipients, synchronize conversations, or support notifications. Message history may also be stored locally on your device.
• Contacts and Friend Discovery: BabelMe stores your in-app contacts, friend requests, group memberships, and invite relationships. If you choose to find friends from your phone contacts, BabelMe asks for Contacts permission at that moment, reads contact emails and phone numbers on your device, hashes them on your device, and sends only those hashes to BabelMe to find matching BabelMe users. Raw address-book values are not uploaded. If a contact is not on BabelMe, you can choose whether to invite them through your device's share, SMS, or email tools.
• Dictation and Notebook Content: Dictation text, transcript blocks, note titles, note type, evidence labels, translated text, and related session metadata may be processed to provide Dictation, Notebook, companion, cleanup, and export features.
• AI Formatting of Your Notes: When you choose to format a transcript with AI (for example, turning a captured conversation into a structured recipe, lecture, meeting, or appointment note), the relevant transcript and note content is sent to a trusted third-party AI service provider solely to generate the requested formatted result and returned to you. This processing happens only when you tap to format; it is not automatic. The AI is used to organize what was said — it does not add facts, and formatted notes are drafts for you to review and edit.
• Health-Related Content (Medical Appointment notes): BabelMe offers an optional “Medical Appointment” note type intended for a clinician to draft a visit summary. If you use it, the recorded audio and transcript — which may contain health information — are processed like other Dictation content, including optional AI formatting, solely to produce the note you requested. A consent reminder is shown before recording, and every medical note is labeled a draft to review and confirm before charting or sharing — BabelMe is not a medical record system and does not provide medical advice. BabelMe does not require or store patient names or identifiers for this feature; any identifying details are only those you choose to speak or type.
• Camera and Photo Content: Camera input may be used to scan QR codes, translate visible text, capture video text for Dictation, or add photos as local Dictation evidence. Photo evidence is stored locally unless you choose to share or export it.
• Device Token: If you enable push notifications, we store your APNs or FCM device token to deliver message, friend request, and room invite notifications.
• Language Preferences and Voice IDs: Your selected languages, voice playback preferences, and optional voice identifiers may be stored locally and on BabelMe servers so your current voice profile can be recovered and used consistently across sessions.
• Cloned Voice (“My Voice”): If you set up My Voice, the voice sample you record is sent to ElevenLabs, our voice provider, to create a voice model that can speak translations in a voice like yours. BabelMe stores the model’s identifier; the model itself is held by ElevenLabs under a label that includes your BabelMe username. Recording a new sample replaces the previous model (any older model is deleted), and the model is deleted when you delete your account.
• Companion Session Data: If you use Dictation Companion or nearby Mac pairing, BabelMe processes active session data such as session codes, companion tokens, note titles, note type, transcript text, and connection state so your phone and companion stay in sync.
• Advertising Attribution (iPhone and iPad): If you installed BabelMe after tapping an Apple Search Ads advertisement, Apple may provide BabelMe with an attribution record describing that advertisement — for example the campaign, ad group, keyword, ad, country or region, and the date of the click. BabelMe uses this only to understand which advertising is worth paying for. It contains no name, email address, contacts, message content, or advertising identifier, and BabelMe does not use it to build an advertising profile of you or to target ads. On a device that did not arrive from an advertisement, Apple returns a record saying so. To record this, the app generates a random per-install identifier (this is not Apple’s advertising identifier, and it is used only for this record) and sends it together with the attribution record to BabelMe’s server once per installation; if you sign in later, the record is sent once more so it can be associated with your account. Attribution records associated with your account are deleted when the account is deleted. This applies to Apple platforms only.
• Usage and Quota Data: BabelMe may process feature usage, provider request metadata, and quota counters to operate the service, prevent abuse, control costs, and enforce usage limits.
• Crash Reports (iPhone and iPad): If the app crashes, the next time it launches it sends a crash report to BabelMe’s server: the app version and build, the iOS version, the device model, the crash signal, exception type and code, the system’s termination reason, and a stack trace of the code that was running. A crash report contains no message content, transcripts, or audio. If you were signed in, the report is associated with your account. BabelMe’s server keeps only the most recent 300 crash reports in total, and reports associated with your account are deleted when the account is deleted. The Android app does not currently send crash reports to BabelMe.
• Local Network Data: If you use nearby device pairing, BabelMe may access devices on your local network to discover and connect your iPhone and Mac.

How We Use Your Information

• To provide real-time speech translation services
• To deliver and synchronize messages between BabelMe users
• To help you find BabelMe friends from your phone contacts only when you request that lookup
• To send push notifications for new messages
• To verify your identity via email OTP during registration
• To verify a phone number you choose to add for social features, by sending a one-time passcode via SMS through a third-party SMS provider; the phone number you enter is shared with that provider solely to deliver the code
• To provide optional personalized voice playback and voice setup
• To generate AI-formatted note drafts from your transcripts when you request them
• To operate usage limits, safety controls, and service reliability protections
• To pair your iPhone with a nearby Mac or browser companion for live Dictation editing
• To keep active companion sessions synchronized across connected devices
• To diagnose and fix crashes using the crash reports the iPhone and iPad app sends after a crash
• To hold purchases and usage balances under a guest account when you buy without signing in

Third-Party Services

BabelMe may use trusted third-party service providers to operate requested app features, including speech recognition, translation, AI note formatting, text-to-speech playback, voice setup, authentication, email delivery, SMS delivery (for phone verification codes), payments, safety controls, hosting, analytics, service infrastructure, and advertising attribution measurement (Apple’s AdServices API on Apple platforms).

Each provider processes data according to its own privacy policy. Audio, text, and related request data sent to these providers is used to provide the requested service, such as speech recognition, translation, voice setup, audio cleanup, or text-to-speech playback.

The providers BabelMe currently uses, and what each receives, are:

• Deepgram: live microphone audio and voice-clip audio, with the selected language, for speech recognition and transcription; for podcast transcription it receives only the episode’s public audio address.
• Google Cloud (Translation and Speech): text and its language pair for translation, and audio for server-side speech recognition where BabelMe uses it.
• Anthropic: the transcript, note, and instruction text used for AI note formatting, and the text being translated for AI-assisted translation.
• OpenAI: the notebook recording, with a short text prompt, for optional dictation audio refinement.
• ElevenLabs: your My Voice sample, the text to be spoken for text-to-speech playback, and audio for voice conversion and audio isolation.
• Twilio: the phone number you enter and its verification code, for SMS phone verification.
• Resend: your email address and its one-time code, for email verification and account recovery.
• Cloudflare: hosts BabelMe’s servers and storage; Cloudflare’s real-time network also relays live Party Room voice audio.
• Apple: push notifications (your device token, the sender’s name, and the message text), App Store purchase verification, Sign in with Apple, Apple Search Ads attribution, podcast search and charts from Apple’s public podcast catalog (the search term is sent to Apple), and the speech recognition built into iOS for free-tier live speech recognition, which may process audio on Apple’s servers.
• Google / Firebase: push notifications on Android through Firebase Cloud Messaging (your device token, the sender, and the message text), Google Play purchase verification and Play Integrity device checks, Google sign-in, the speech recognition built into Android for free-tier live speech recognition (which may process audio on Google’s servers), and the ML Kit SDK described below.

On-device translation and text recognition (Google ML Kit): Offline translation on iPhone, iPad, and Android, and camera text recognition on Android, use Google’s ML Kit SDK. The translation and text recognition run on your device, and the language models are downloaded from Google when needed. The SDK also sends usage and performance telemetry to Google — Google’s SDK declares this as a device identifier, product-interaction, performance and diagnostic data, and other data and content, none of it linked to your identity and none of it used for tracking — which Google handles under the Google Privacy Policy. BabelMe does not receive this telemetry.

Data Storage

• Server-side: Your account information, username, display name, email, optional phone-discovery hash/last-four status, language preference, device token, voice identifier, message delivery data, friend/contact state, crash reports and Search Ads attribution records (iPhone and iPad), and active room or session metadata may be stored or processed on BabelMe service infrastructure to operate the app.
• Active and Queued Sessions: Party Room, Broadcast, Messenger, and Dictation Companion data may be temporarily relayed or queued so connected devices stay synchronized and offline recipients can receive messages. BabelMe limits server-side storage to what is needed to operate the service, deliver messages, enforce safety controls, and maintain reliability.
• On-device: Message history, contacts, language preferences, voice identifiers, notebook drafts, dictation evidence, and companion-session drafts may be stored locally on your device using standard iOS storage mechanisms.

Dictation Companion & Local Network

BabelMe includes optional Dictation Companion workflows that let you pair an iPhone with a nearby Mac or join a live Dictation session from a browser. These workflows use session codes, companion tokens, local network discovery, or active relay connections only to keep the current session running and synchronized.

Any transcript exports or saved notes created from a companion session are stored where you choose to save them. Live session content may still be temporarily relayed while the companion connection is active.

User Safety & Content Moderation

BabelMe provides the following safety features:

• Block Users: You can block any user from contacting you. Blocked users cannot send you messages.
• Report Users: You can report users for harassment, spam, inappropriate content, impersonation, or other concerns. Reports are reviewed and appropriate action is taken.
• Account Deletion: You can permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time from the app's Settings or by following the instructions at babelme.app/delete-account.

Your Rights

• Access: You can view your account information in the app's Settings.
• Deletion: You can delete your account at any time from Settings. This permanently removes your account, contacts, group memberships, and all associated data from our servers, including crash reports and advertising attribution records associated with the account and the My Voice model held by our voice provider. If you cannot access the app, use the public deletion page at babelme.app/delete-account.
• Portability: Your message history is stored locally on your device and can be accessed through standard iOS backup mechanisms.

Children's Privacy

BabelMe is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have collected information from a child, please contact us.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify users of any material changes by updating the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page.

September 1, 2026: added crash reports (iPhone and iPad), the per-install identifier used for Apple Search Ads attribution, telemetry sent by Google’s ML Kit SDK, how My Voice models are handled, guest accounts for purchases made without signing in, and a named list of service providers.

Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy, your data, or app support, please contact us at:

privacy@babelme.app

For app support information, visit babelme.app/support.