BeatCadence Privacy Policy
Version: Interim version 2026-10-31 · In effect from: 31 October 2026
This policy explains what personal information BeatCadence collects, why, how long we keep it, and who helps us process it. It is written to meet the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) for people in the EU, the EEA and the UK.
Who we are
BeatCadence is run by the operator of BeatCadence, based in Australia ("we", "us"). For GDPR purposes we are the controller of the personal data described here.
Privacy contact: beatcadenceapp@gmail.com.
We have not appointed a representative in the EU or the UK. You can contact us directly at beatcadenceapp@gmail.com wherever you are.
The short version
You sign in with Patreon. We keep your Patreon account number and your membership facts. We never store your name or your email address.
Your browser uploads a prepared copy of your song. We delete it when your job ends, and in any case no later than 24 hours after upload.
We keep the map data we make for you for at most 24 hours, or 15 minutes after you first download it, whichever comes first. There is no history.
We do not use your audio or your maps to train or test any AI. We do not sell your information. We run no analytics or advertising trackers.
Our servers are in the United States (Amazon Web Services, us-east-1).
What we collect, why, and how long we keep it
1. Your Patreon sign-in
| What | Your Patreon user ID, whether your Patreon email is verified, and an internal BeatCadence account ID. We ask Patreon for permission to see your identity, your email and your memberships, but we read only whether the email is verified. We do not store your name or email. Patreon's sign-in access token is used once and thrown away. |
| Why | To sign you in, to give each verified Patreon account one free allowance, and to link your membership to your account. |
| How long | Until you delete your account with "Delete my account" on the site, or ask us to. To stop the free allowance being claimed twice, we then keep a scrambled (keyed hash) form of your Patreon user ID, an internal account number that keeps that month's map count linked, and any paid-through date and paid tier. This small record, called a tombstone, stays until the later of the end of your allowance month and your paid-through date. Deleting your account does not reset your free allowance. If your account was blocked, we keep that scrambled ID and the block until the block is lifted. The tombstone also keeps our private note about the block and when it was set; lifting the block does not shorten the allowance-month or paid-through retention above. Deletion does not remove account data from existing backups; it remains there until each backup's 62-day expiry (item 11). That is the expiry of the current backup copy; older copies kept by backup versioning can remain for another 62 days, and Amazon S3's daily expiry checks and deletion processing can delay removal (item 11). We do not remove accounts automatically when they go unused; your account stays until you delete it or ask us to. |
| Who processes it | Patreon (sign-in), Amazon Web Services (our server). |
2. Your membership facts from Patreon
| What | For our Patreon campaign only: your member ID, patron status, the amount you are entitled to, the status and date of your last charge, your next charge date, how often you are billed, whether it is a free trial or a gift, and which tiers you have. We never see or store card or bank details. |
| Why | To work out your plan and monthly maps, to keep your paid access until the end of a paid period after you cancel, and to drop access when a payment fails. |
| How long | Replaced each time we check with Patreon (before a new job if our copy is older than a minute, on Patreon's change notices, and every 6 hours). When you delete your account, these facts are deleted, except any paid tier and paid-through date, which stay in the tombstone described in item 1. Copies in existing backups remain until those backups expire (item 11). |
| Who processes it | Patreon, Amazon Web Services. |
3. Your map allowance records
| What | For each map you start: the job ID, your account ID, your plan and tier, the song-length limit, when it was started, and whether it was used or credited back and why. |
| Why | To count your monthly maps, give credits back for failed jobs, and apply fair-use limits. |
| How long | Deleted 62 days after the map was started. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. |
4. Your sign-in session and cookies
| What | Two cookies, both needed for the service to work: a session cookie (lasts 8 hours, sent only over HTTPS, not readable by page scripts), and a short sign-in cookie used only while you are sent to Patreon and back (lasts 10 minutes). On our server we keep a scrambled (hashed) copy of the session token, your account ID, and when the session started, ends or was signed out. Our page stores nothing else in your browser (Cloudflare's bot-check widget, item 9, works under Cloudflare's own terms). |
| Why | To keep you signed in and to protect your requests from forgery. |
| How long | The session works for 8 hours. Our server deletes its session records 30 days after the session ends or you sign out. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. |
We use no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies.
5. The song you upload
| What | The prepared Ogg Vorbis copy of your song that your browser makes, and a fingerprint (hash) of it used to check the file was not changed. We do not accept the file name with the upload. A song may contain voices; we treat the audio as personal information in case it identifies anyone. |
| Why | Only to make your map. |
| How long | We delete it when your job ends: when the map is made, or the job fails, is cancelled or expires. Our server works through pending deletions every second, and stops taking new jobs if any upload is still not deleted 15 minutes after its job ended. However a job ends, the upload cannot be kept more than 24 hours after it finished uploading. On the generator, the audio is deleted before the map is sent back, and the generator's whole working folder is removed when it finishes. Deleting means removing the file; we do not promise to overwrite the disk. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services (our server, and the generator on AWS Batch / Fargate). |
We never send your audio back, and we do not keep copies in backups.
6. Your map settings
| What | The map title (the page suggests one from your file name; you can change it), the seed, the difficulties and the mapping settings you chose. We also keep a fingerprint (hash) of the request so a repeated click does not start a second job. |
| Why | To make the map you asked for. |
| How long | The title, seed and settings are removed as soon as the job can no longer run. The fingerprint stays with the job record (item 8). |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. The generator receives the title, seed and settings with the audio, but not your account, Patreon details or IP address. |
7. The map data we make
| What | The map data for your song (note charts and map settings, including the title and the AI-generated marker). |
| Why | To deliver your map. |
| How long | Up to 24 hours after it is made. Your first download shortens that to 15 minutes from the download. Then it is deleted. There is no way to see past maps. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. |
8. Job records
| What | For each job: its ID, your account ID, its state and the times it changed, the upload size and audio facts (sample rate, length), any error code, and records of the one-time upload and download permissions. These records do not hold audio, map data, or your title once the job ends. |
| Why | To run the queue, handle failures and credits fairly, and investigate problems or abuse. |
| How long | 30 days after the job ends. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. |
9. Your IP address and the bot check
| What | Your IP address, and a token from Cloudflare Turnstile, a bot check that runs in your browser when you sign in and when you start a map. |
| Why | To stop bots and abuse. We send the token and your IP address to Cloudflare to check it. We also count requests per network for a few minutes, in memory, to slow down bursts; we never block on an IP address alone. |
| How long | The request counts cover a 10-minute window and are kept in memory only, never saved to disk. Our server does not store your IP address in its databases. Logs may contain it (item 10). Cloudflare handles what it receives under its own terms and its privacy policy, published on cloudflare.com. |
| Who processes it | Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services. |
10. Logs
| What | (a) Web server access logs: the address you connected from, the time, the path requested (job IDs are random), the response status, and browser request headers such as the browser type. Cookies and access tokens are removed from these logs. (b) Application logs: error reports and some events, for example when a network is slowed down (with its IP address or IPv6 /64 range) or a map is credited back (with the job ID). (c) Generator logs: one line per job with the outcome, failure code and result size and fingerprint, and no customer content. |
| Why | To keep the service secure and working and to fix problems. |
| How long | Web server access and application logs share a 14-day journal retention policy, with files rotated at least daily. Removal operates on whole log files rather than individual entries. Generator logs: 14 days. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. |
11. Backups
| What | Copies of our two databases: the job database (items 4 and 8, plus item 6 for jobs still running) and the account and allowance database (items 1 to 3, without the short sign-in states). Backups never contain audio, audio fingerprints or map data. |
| Why | To restore the service and the allowance you are owed after a failure. |
| How long | Backed up daily. Job backups are kept 7 days; account and allowance backups 62 days, the length of the allowance window. Deleting your account does not erase it from existing account and allowance backups: those copies persist until each backup's 62-day expiry. These 7/62-day periods apply to current copies. Our bucket also keeps older copies (called noncurrent versions) for 7 days for job backups or 62 days for account and allowance backups after they become older copies. The two periods can add up to 14 and 124 days respectively before removal is due; Amazon S3's daily expiry checks and deletion processing can delay removal further. Stored encrypted in a private Amazon S3 bucket in the United States. |
| Who processes it | Amazon Web Services. |
The separate key used to recognise deleted accounts from their keyed hashes (the tombstone key) is not included in backups and is not restored from S3. If the host and its key are lost, restored tombstones cannot recognise returning accounts or recover their deletion-time allowance and block state. Restoring an older backup can also bring back account data deleted since it was made.
What we do not collect
We do not collect your name, email address, postal address, payment card or bank details, or precise location. We do not use analytics, advertising or social media trackers. We do not buy data about you.
Why we are allowed to use it (GDPR lawful bases)
To provide the service you asked for (Art 6(1)(b), contract): items 1 to 8.
Our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure, preventing abuse and fraud, fixing faults and recovering from failures (Art 6(1)(f)): items 8 to 11. We have weighed these against your rights, and we keep the data small and short-lived.
Legal obligations (Art 6(1)(c)), where a law requires us to keep or disclose something.
We do not make decisions about you based only on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects. Our fair-use limits apply automatic rules (such as pausing an account after 3 failed jobs in 24 hours); you can contact us if you think one was applied wrongly.
If you do not give us the information in items 1 to 7, we cannot provide the service.
Who processes your information
We use these providers. They act on our instructions, except where noted.
| Provider | What they do | Where | What they receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (Lightsail, Batch / Fargate, CloudWatch Logs) | Run our web server, store the databases and temporary files, run the map generator, and keep generator logs | United States (us-east-1, Northern Virginia) | Everything our server and generator hold (items 1 to 11) |
| Patreon | Sign-in, memberships and billing. For billing and its own account data, Patreon is an independent controller under its own privacy policy | Where Patreon's own privacy policy says | Your sign-in and membership. Patreon tells us your membership facts (item 2) |
| Cloudflare (Turnstile) | Bot check on the sign-in and generate steps | Where Cloudflare's own privacy policy says | The Turnstile token, your IP address, and what its widget collects in your browser |
Our domain's DNS is hosted by VentraIP, and our web server gets its security certificates automatically from a certificate authority. Neither receives customer information. We use no email service and no analytics service.
We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.
We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect our rights or someone's safety.
Sending information overseas (APP 8 and GDPR transfers)
Our servers are in the United States, so your information is sent to and stored in the US, whether you are in Australia, the EU, the UK or elsewhere. Patreon and Cloudflare may also process it outside your country.
For Australian users (APP 8): we take reasonable steps to make sure these overseas recipients handle your information consistently with the APPs, through their contract terms and security commitments.
For EU, EEA and UK users: we rely on the transfer safeguards in each provider's own data processing terms (for example the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum, or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension where a provider is certified under it). You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards.
Your rights
Everyone can ask us to:
tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
correct information that is wrong.
People in the EU, EEA or UK can also ask us to delete your data, restrict or object to our use of it, and receive it in a portable format. Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object at any time.
To ask, write to beatcadenceapp@gmail.com from a way we can link to your account. Because we do not store your email, we may ask you to sign in, or to confirm through Patreon, so we know the request is yours. We will answer within one month of receiving your request; if the law lets us take longer for a complex request, we will tell you within that month and explain why. There is no charge, unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.
To delete your account and allowance records, use "Delete my account" on the site, or email beatcadenceapp@gmail.com. Uploaded audio and map data are deleted automatically, as described above, so there is usually nothing of that kind left to delete.
Complaints. Contact us first and we will try to fix it. If you are not satisfied:
in Australia, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au);
in the UK, to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk);
in the EU or EEA, to the data protection authority where you live or work.
US residents. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are used in US state privacy laws.
Security
All connections use HTTPS.
Session tokens, sign-in states and one-time upload and download permissions are stored only as scrambled (hashed) values.
The generator has no way in from the internet; it connects out to our server over mutually authenticated TLS.
Uploads are never put in backups or snapshots, and are deleted automatically.
Backups are stored encrypted (item 11).
No system is perfectly secure. If a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm, we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.
Children
BeatCadence is not meant for children under 13. If you think a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
We will post any change here with a new date. If a change is significant, we will give notice on the site before it takes effect.
Contact
BeatCadence is run by the operator of BeatCadence, based in Australia.
Privacy: beatcadenceapp@gmail.com