Cookie policy

1. What cookies and local storage are

Cookies and similar technologies (such as localStorage, sessionStorage or IndexedDB) are small pieces of data that a website saves in your browser. Some make the website work or remember a choice you made; others are used by advertising to recognise a browser and measure ads. This policy complements the Privacy policy and the Terms of use.

2. Storage used by the website itself

The website itself does not use analytics cookies or tracking cookies. It stores only the following, and none of it is sent to advertisers:

• heardy-ads-consent (localStorage): Remembers your choice about advertising (accept or reject), only where consent is requested. Duration: 180 days.
• heardy.termsAcceptance (localStorage): Remembers that you accepted the terms before downloading (terms version and date), so you are not asked on every download. Duration: 30 days.
• heardy-lang-decided (localStorage): Indicates that you already chose a language, so you are not redirected again based on your browser language. Duration: No expiry (until you clear the site data).
• heardy:latest-version (sessionStorage): Briefly keeps the latest published app version so it is not requested again on every page. Duration: Only while the tab lasts.
• Forum sign-in session (browser storage of the forums site, foros.heardy.vainastech.com, separate from the main website’s; usually IndexedDB): it exists only if you sign in on the forums. It is managed by the authentication service (Google Firebase Authentication) to keep your session open, and it stays until you sign out or clear the site data. Your choices on each address (advertising, language) are stored separately, so the forums site may ask them again.

The first four are needed to remember choices you make on the website; you can delete them at any time and the site keeps working (it will ask again).

3. Third-party advertising

The website shows advertising from third parties to help fund the project. The ads come from a third-party ad network and its advertising partners, who may use cookies or identifiers of their own, under their own policies, which Heardy does not control. They may do so on their own domains and on a subdomain of vainastech.com that serves the ads. The notification-style ad runs in the page itself, so it may also store data in the browser storage of this site.

The banner ads are loaded in a frame served from a subdomain of vainastech.com. That ad service receives the address of the page you are visiting (the referrer) and may store cookies and identifiers of its own under the vainastech.com domain.

The footer also includes a text link to a third-party advertiser, labelled as advertising. The link itself loads no third-party code in the page; if you click it you leave this website for an advertiser’s page, which is covered by its own policies.

The website also uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits in aggregate (pages viewed, country, browser and device type). It works through a small script served by Cloudflare, uses no cookies and does not track individuals across sites. It is not loaded on the forum address.

When you confirm a download, a window with advertising from a third-party advertiser may open in the background (at most once every 24 hours per browser, and only if you have accepted advertising where that is required). That page is not Heardy’s, and the only Heardy file is the one you download from this site, so do not install anything or enable notifications if that page asks you to.

• Where consent is required (European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland, or when your region cannot be determined): ads load only after you accept. If you reject, they are not loaded and access to the website is not conditioned on accepting.
• Elsewhere: ads load without asking for prior consent, and the website may ask you to turn your ad blocker off to use it. The legal pages can always be read without doing so.
• Where ads do not appear: no ads are shown on this page or on the forum moderation screen, and the notification-style ad is never loaded on forum pages. The forums are served from their own address (foros.heardy.vainastech.com), where no third-party advertising code runs in the page itself; banners appear there only in a separate frame, so the sign-in session is not in the storage that the notification-style ad can use on the main website. On other pages, including the other legal pages, ads can appear if the rules above allow them.
• The Heardy application (Android and Windows) shows no ads and includes no ad or analytics SDK.

4. How to manage or withdraw your choice

• Ad preferences: where consent is requested, the footer shows an “Ad preferences” link that reopens the choice so you can change it at any time. It does not appear where consent is not requested.
• Browser settings: you can block or delete cookies and site data from your browser. Deleting the site data also deletes your saved choices listed above.
• Content blocker: an ad blocker or tracking-protection extension limits third-party advertising. Outside the regions that require consent, the website may ask you to turn it off.

5. Contact

Questions about this policy: vainastech@gmail.com · Vainastech, Colombia.