Privacy

Last updated: 1 November 2026

This privacy policy explains how the Murmure mobile app ("the app") and the murmure.travel website collect, use and protect user information. It is based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, EU 2016/679) and the French Data Protection Act.

1. Data controller

Michel-Marie Maudet, natural person, publisher of Murmure in a personal, non-professional capacity (Google Play developer account travel.murmure.app).
Contact: contact@murmure.travel
No Data Protection Officer (DPO) has been appointed: any question is handled directly at this address.

See also the legal notice.

2. Data collected and purposes

2.1 Geolocation

• When: only when you enable Walk Mode (Mode Balade) or open the "Nearby" screen. Collection stops as soon as you turn the mode off or leave the screen. Walk Mode does not require an account. It also works with the screen off, through a foreground service shown by a permanent notification. It stops automatically after 4 hours, after 1 hour without significant movement, or when the battery drops below 10%.
• Use: your coordinates (latitude and longitude) are sent to our server to return nearby heritage places. They are also used to display your position on the map, on your phone.
• Storage: your location is not saved in our database and is not linked to your account. It stays on your phone, except for the nearby-places request, which is neither stored in our database nor written to the server's technical logs: the coordinates are removed from them (see 2.5).
• Sharing: no transmission to third parties other than our hosting provider, which runs the server.

2.2 User account (optional)

If you create an account to contribute memos:

• Data: email address, display name, password (stored only in hashed form), profile picture (optional). If you sign in with Google, we receive your email address, name and profile picture from Google.
• Use: authentication, contribution attribution, address-verification and password-reset emails.
• Storage: OVH servers (France), encrypted in transit (HTTPS).
• Retention: as long as the account exists. When you ask for deletion, the account is deactivated, then permanently deleted after a 30-day grace period.
• Deleting your account: in the app, open Profile, then "Delete my account". The account is deactivated immediately, then permanently deleted after 30 days, along with your email address, name and profile picture; you can cancel by signing in again during that period. Your published memos stay online with an anonymized author ("By a contributor"). You can also request deletion by email at contact@murmure.travel.

2.3 Contributed audio memos (optional)

If you record an audio memo tied to a heritage place:

• Data: audio file, title, metadata (place, language, listening profile), author.
• Transcription and moderation: the audio is transcribed automatically by a Whisper service operated for the project, on a dedicated server. The title and the transcript (text, not audio) are then analysed by a language model to detect inappropriate content and personal contact details, and reviewed by a person when needed. See the table in section 4.
• Sharing: published memos are publicly accessible to other app users. This is the core principle of contribution.
• Deletion: you can delete your own memos at any time.

2.4 Favorites

List of places you bookmark. Stored locally on your phone only, never transmitted to our servers. Removed on uninstall.

2.5 Server logs

Our server logs incoming requests (IP address, timestamp, requested address) for security and troubleshooting. When the request is used to find nearby places, the coordinates sent are removed before the log is written. These logs are kept for 30 days at most, are not cross-referenced with user accounts and are used only for security and troubleshooting.

2.6 Notifications

The app sends local notifications when Walk Mode detects a nearby place. These notifications are generated on your phone only: no push from our servers, no notification-token collection.

2.7 The murmure.travel website

The website uses no cookies and no audience-measurement tool. The home page, the places index, the About page and the place pages load fonts from Google Fonts: your browser then sends your IP address to Google. The privacy, legal notice and credits pages load no external resource.

2.8 Reporting an error

The "Report an error" button sends our server the place concerned, the reason you choose, the comment you write (optional, 500 characters at most) and, where applicable, the ID of the memo you were listening to and the app language. Your location is not sent. If you are signed in, the report is linked to your account; if you delete your account, it is detached and becomes anonymous.

To limit abuse, your IP address is turned into a short, non-reversible fingerprint that changes every day, kept for 30 days and then erased; the address itself is not stored with the report (it only appears in the technical logs, see 2.5). The comment is read only by the publisher to correct the content and is never published.

Legal basis: legitimate interest (content quality, abuse prevention). To have a report erased, write to contact@murmure.travel.

3. No tracking, no advertising

Murmure contains no analytics SDK (Firebase Analytics, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, etc.), no advertising ID, no tracking cookies, no ads.

4. Processors and external services

These are the services that may process personal data to run Murmure:

The place pages' texts are produced from Wikipedia and Wikidata, using language models (Anthropic, OpenAI or Lucie) and then synthetic voices (ElevenLabs, Qwen-TTS model). These steps only process place texts: no user data is sent to them.

Your GPS location is not sent to any of these services. The Whisper service only receives the recordings you choose to contribute.

5. Transfers outside the European Union

Resend, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google (Firebase App Distribution) are based in the United States. The data sent to them (email address for Resend, memo text for the language models, email address of the testers invited to the Android beta for Google) may therefore be processed outside the European Union, under the safeguards of chapter V of the GDPR offered by these providers.

6. Your rights (GDPR)

You have the right to:

• access your personal data
• rectify inaccurate data
• erasure ("right to be forgotten")
• portability (export of your data in a structured format)
• object to processing
• restrict processing

To exercise these rights: contact@murmure.travel. We respond within 30 days maximum.

You may also lodge a complaint with the CNIL, the French data protection authority (www.cnil.fr), or with your national authority.

7. Security

• TLS 1.2+ encryption for all transmission.
• Passwords hashed (bcrypt) server-side.
• No superfluous collection (GDPR data-minimisation principle).

8. Minimum age

The app is intended for people aged 15 and older, the age of digital consent in France. It does not knowingly collect data from people under 15. If you believe someone under 15 has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

9. Changes to this policy

Substantial changes will be notified in the app or by email (existing accounts) at least 30 days before taking effect. The current version is always available at this address.

10. Applicable law

This policy is governed by French law. Any dispute will be brought before the competent courts in France.