Why We Don't Sell Your Data (And Never Will)

We do not sell your data. We have never sold your data. We will never sell your data.

That statement should be unremarkable. It should be the default. But in an industry where user data is routinely harvested, packaged, and sold to the highest bidder, a straightforward commitment to not selling your personal information has become a differentiator. The fact that this needs to be said at all tells you everything about the state of consumer technology.

This article explains exactly what we mean when we say we do not sell your data, how our business model works without it, what we actually collect and why, and how you can verify these claims for yourself.

How Most Apps Actually Make Money From Your Data

To understand why our approach is different, it helps to understand what most apps do with your information.

The Ad-Supported Model

The dominant business model for consumer apps is advertising. You download an app for free, use it without paying anything, and in exchange, the app collects data about you (your behaviour, your preferences, your location, your device, your browsing patterns) and uses that data to show you targeted ads. The advertisers are the real customers. You are the product.

This is not a cynical interpretation. It is the literal business model. Companies like Meta, Google, and thousands of smaller app developers generate revenue by building detailed profiles of their users and selling access to those profiles to advertisers. The more data they collect, the more precisely they can target ads, and the more they can charge for that targeting.

Data Brokers

Beyond advertising, there is an entire industry devoted to buying and selling personal data directly. Data brokers aggregate information from multiple sources (apps, websites, public records, purchase histories) and compile comprehensive profiles that they sell to marketers, insurance companies, employers, and other interested parties.

Your health app, your weather app, your flashlight app: if they are free and ad-supported, there is a reasonable chance your data is flowing to brokers you have never heard of. A 2024 report by the Federal Trade Commission found that major data brokers collected and sold data on nearly every adult in the United States, often without meaningful consent or transparency.

Behavioral Tracking

Even apps that do not show ads or sell data directly often engage in extensive behavioural tracking. They monitor how you use the app, what features you engage with, how long you spend on each screen, and what actions you take. This data is used internally for product optimization, but it is also frequently shared with analytics platforms and third-party SDKs embedded in the app. Each of those third parties has its own data practices, and users rarely have visibility into this chain.

The Hidden Cost of "Free"

The pattern is consistent: when an app is free, the revenue has to come from somewhere. In most cases, that somewhere is your data. The transaction is not "you get a free app." The transaction is "you pay for this app with your personal information, and we decide how much that information is worth and who gets to buy it."

What siasola Actually Collects

We believe in being specific rather than vague about what we collect, because vague privacy statements are how companies create room to do whatever they want.

Here is what we collect:

• Account information. If you create an account, we store your email address and authentication credentials. This is necessary for you to log in and sync your data across devices.
• App preferences and settings. Your sound configurations, saved presets, and in-app settings are stored so your experience persists between sessions. In Siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds, this includes your frequency match and sound mixer settings. In Siasola Cycling Beats, this includes your music preferences and workout history.
• Subscription status. We track whether you have an active subscription so we can provide access to premium features. This is handled through Apple and Google's payment systems. We do not store your payment card details.
• Basic analytics. We collect anonymized, aggregated usage data to understand which features are being used and to identify bugs. This data cannot be tied back to individual users and is used exclusively for product improvement.

Here is what we do NOT collect:

• No behavioural profiles. We do not build profiles of your habits, preferences, or patterns for advertising or any other purpose.
• No location tracking. We do not access or store your location data.
• No contact list access. We do not request or store access to your contacts.
• No microphone or camera data. We do not access your microphone or camera for any purpose beyond explicit, user-initiated features.
• No cross-app tracking. We do not track your activity across other apps or websites.
• No third-party advertising SDKs. We do not embed ad networks, tracking pixels, or third-party data collection tools in our apps.
• No data sharing with brokers. We do not share, sell, license, or otherwise distribute your personal information to data brokers, advertisers, or any other third parties.

This is not a curated list of highlights. This is the complete picture. If it is not listed above, we do not collect it.

Our Business Model: Fair Pricing Instead of Data Exploitation

Our business model is simple enough to explain in one sentence: we build useful apps and charge a fair price for them.

Both Siasola Tinnitus Masking Sounds and Siasola Cycling Beats offer meaningful free tiers, not crippled demos, but genuinely usable versions of the app that provide real value. Users who want the full feature set subscribe at a price that covers our development costs, server infrastructure, and ongoing content creation.

That is the entire model. No advertising revenue. No data licensing fees. No "strategic partnerships" that are really data-sharing agreements wrapped in corporate language.

This approach has a direct consequence: our incentives are aligned with yours. We make more money when you find the app valuable enough to keep subscribing. We do not make more money when you spend more time in the app, when you click on things, or when you share personal details. We have no financial reason to be manipulative, invasive, or deceptive, because none of those behaviours generate revenue in our model.

Why Subscription Pricing Is More Honest

Some people push back on subscription-based apps, preferring the "free" alternative. But the economics are clear: if you are not paying for the product, someone else is paying for access to you. A subscription is a transparent exchange: you pay money, you receive a service, and the transaction is complete. No hidden costs, no invisible third parties, no data flowing to places you did not consent to.

We price our subscriptions to be accessible. We would rather have more users paying a fair price than fewer users paying a premium. And we offer free tiers specifically so that cost is never a barrier to getting real value from our apps.

Privacy Is Not a Marketing Gimmick

We are aware that "we respect your privacy" has become one of the most meaningless phrases in technology. Every company says it. Most of them do not mean it, or at least, their definition of "respect" involves extensive data collection that would surprise their users if they understood the full scope.

At siasola, privacy is not a feature we added because it tests well in surveys. It is a structural decision baked into our business model. We do not sell data because our revenue does not depend on selling data. We do not track behaviour because we have no advertising system that benefits from tracking. We do not embed third-party SDKs because we have no partnerships that require them.

The best privacy practice is not collecting data in the first place. Every piece of information we do not collect is a piece of information that cannot be leaked in a breach, subpoenaed by a government agency, sold to a broker, or misused by a rogue employee. Data minimization is not just a principle; it is a security practice.

How You Can Verify Our Claims

We do not ask you to take our word for it. Here are concrete ways to verify our privacy practices:

Read our privacy policy. Our Privacy Policy is written in plain language, not legal jargon designed to obscure. It states specifically what we collect, why, and what we do with it. It does not contain the broad "we may share your data with partners" clauses that are standard in the industry.

Check app permissions. On both iOS and Android, you can review exactly what permissions our apps request. You will find that we ask for the minimum permissions necessary for the app to function. No location access. No contacts access. No camera or microphone access beyond explicit features you initiate.

Monitor network traffic. For the technically inclined, you can use tools like Charles Proxy or Wireshark to inspect the network traffic from our apps. You will not find calls to ad networks, data brokers, or third-party analytics platforms beyond basic, anonymized crash reporting.

Ask us directly. If you have a specific question about our data practices, email us. We will give you a straight answer, not a boilerplate response drafted by a legal team to avoid committing to anything.

Compliance With Privacy Regulations

Our data practices comply with major privacy regulations including GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) in California. But we want to be clear: we do not treat these regulations as the ceiling of our privacy practices. They are the floor.

GDPR and CCPA establish minimum standards for data handling, consent, and user rights. Many companies do the bare minimum to avoid fines while still collecting as much data as the law allows. Our approach goes further because our privacy commitments are not driven by legal compliance. They are driven by principle.

Under both GDPR and CCPA, you have the right to know what data we hold about you, to request its deletion, and to opt out of data sales. Since we do not sell data and collect minimal information in the first place, exercising these rights with us is straightforward. We do not need a team of lawyers to process your data request because there is not much data to process.

Why This Matters Beyond siasola

The broader tech industry will not change its data practices because of public shaming or viral outrage. It will change when consumers consistently choose products that respect their privacy and when those products prove that privacy-respecting business models are financially viable.

Every subscription to a privacy-respecting app sends a market signal. It says that users are willing to pay for products that do not exploit them. It proves that responsible data practices and sustainable business are not mutually exclusive.

We are not the only company taking this approach, and we do not need to be. The more companies that prove this model works, the harder it becomes for the industry to argue that data exploitation is a necessary evil.

Your data is yours. It should not be a revenue stream for companies you have never heard of. We built siasola around this conviction, and it is not going to change.

For more on our approach to responsible technology, read What 'Built for Good' Means at Siasola.