Last updated: August 2, 2026.
This policy explains what personal data PianoMode collects, why, on what legal basis, who else sees it, how long we keep it and what you can ask us to do about it. It covers pianomode.com and every feature on it.
The short version: you can read, listen, play and download most of PianoMode without an account and without analytics, because analytics stay switched off until you accept them. We do not sell personal data, we do not run advertising profiles, and we do not share your recordings.
Your contract with us, including billing, cancellation and the 30-day money-back guarantee, is a separate document: see our Terms of Service.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is Clément Courdier, sole trader (entrepreneur individuel) established in France, 19 rue Greuze, 75016 Paris, France, registered under SIRET 847 822 103 00028, operating under the trade name PianoMode.
Contact for any privacy question or request: [email protected]. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer, which our size does not require; that address reaches the person who decides.
Because the controller is established in France, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to this processing, wherever you live. If you are in California, section 8 adds what is specific to you.
2. What we process, why, and for how long
Each row is one purpose. “Legal basis” is the GDPR ground we rely on for that purpose.
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serving the site and keeping it secure (pages, downloads, error and security logs) | IP address, user agent, requested URL, timestamps | Legitimate interest (running a working, non-abused service) | Server and CDN logs: up to 12 months |
| Creating and running your account | Email address, username, display name, password hash, avatar if you set one, sign-up date. We do not offer Google or any other social sign-in, so no third-party account identifier is created | Performance of a contract (our Terms) | For as long as the account exists, then erased when you delete it |
| Saving your learning progress and your work | Lesson and course progress, XP, levels, streaks, quiz and game scores, sight-reading sessions, favorites, playlists, reading history, score downloads, Studio and scanner files you save | Performance of a contract | For as long as the account exists. You can reset all progress yourself from Settings |
| Taking payment and managing your subscription | Subscription status, plan, billing interval, renewal date, payment history, card brand and last four digits, Stripe customer and subscription identifiers. We never receive your full card number | Performance of a contract, and legal obligation for accounting records | Accounting and invoicing records: 10 years, as French commercial law requires. Everything else is erased with the account |
| Answering you when you write to us | Name, email address, message content, and a delivery log of the emails we send (recipient, subject, status) | Legitimate interest (replying to the person who contacted us) | Correspondence: up to 3 years after the last exchange. The delivery log keeps only the most recent entries and prunes itself automatically |
| Sending the newsletter and product updates | Email address, first name if given, the date and proof of your opt-in | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time | Until you unsubscribe, plus proof of consent kept for 3 years |
| Audience measurement (Google Analytics) | Pseudonymous identifiers, pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP at country or region level, device and browser type | Consent, given through the cookie banner. Denied by default | Up to 14 months, then deleted by Google |
| AI coach and sheet music scanner | The prompt or the image or audio you submit, plus a usage counter for the fair-use quota | Performance of a contract, at your request | Processed to answer you and not used to train our own models. The usage counter is kept with your account |
| Anti-abuse and fair use (rate limits, quotas, spam filtering on forms) | IP address, account identifier, counters | Legitimate interest (protecting the service from abuse) | Short lived, typically hours to days |
| Remembering your choices (theme, cookie consent, guided-path level chosen before signing up) | The values in the cookies listed in section 3 | Necessary for a service you asked for, or consent for the analytics category | See the durations in section 3 |
We do not carry out automated decision-making that produces legal effects for you, and we do not build advertising profiles. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13; if you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we will delete it.
3. Cookies and similar storage
Analytics and marketing storage are denied by default. Nothing in the analytics or marketing rows below is set until you accept it in the banner, and you can change your mind at any time with the button at the bottom of this page.
| Name | Set by | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary. Always active, no consent required | |||
pm_cookie_consent | PianoMode | Stores your cookie choices so the banner does not ask again | 1 year |
wordpress_logged_in_*, wordpress_sec_*, wp-settings-* | PianoMode (WordPress) | Keeps you signed in and remembers interface settings. Only set once you log in | Session, or up to 14 days if you tick “remember me” |
pm_login_origin | PianoMode | Remembers the page you were on so you land back there after signing in | 15 minutes |
pm_guest_level | PianoMode | Remembers the level you chose in the placement quiz before creating an account, so the guided path opens at the right place | 30 days, deleted as soon as it is transferred to your account |
pm_guest_likes | PianoMode | Remembers which articles you liked while signed out, so the heart stays filled and cannot be counted twice | 1 year |
pm_ab | PianoMode | Keeps you on the same version of a page while we test two layouts, so the page does not change under you between visits. Contains a single letter, A or B | 1 year |
__cf_bm, cf_clearance | Cloudflare | Distinguishes humans from bots and protects the site from attacks | 30 minutes to 1 year, set by Cloudflare |
__stripe_mid, __stripe_sid | Stripe | Fraud prevention on the checkout and billing pages. Set only on those pages | 1 year and 30 minutes respectively |
| Analytics. Denied until you accept | |||
_ga | Google Analytics | Distinguishes one visitor from another for audience statistics | 2 years |
_ga_<container id> | Google Analytics | Keeps the session state for audience statistics | 2 years |
| Marketing. Denied until you accept, and currently unused | |||
| None at present | We run no advertising or retargeting cookies today. The category exists so that the banner keeps a real choice if that ever changes | ||
We also use your browser's local storage and IndexedDB to keep things that never leave your device: your light or dark theme, game settings, unsaved Studio takes and the offline copy of pages kept by the app's service worker. That is not shared with anyone. Clearing your browser data removes it.
Embedded videos (YouTube) and other third-party embeds set their own storage once you play them, under their own policies.
4. Who else sees your data
We never sell personal data and we do not rent or trade mailing lists. We share data only with the service providers we need to run PianoMode, each acting on our instructions under a data processing agreement:
| Provider | Role | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger International Ltd. | Web hosting and outgoing email (SMTP) | Everything stored by the site, including the database and the mail we send you | European Union |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Content delivery network, DNS and security | Connection metadata for every request: IP address, user agent, URL | Global network, including servers outside the EU |
| Stripe, Inc. and Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd. | Payment processing and subscription billing | Email address, payment details you enter on Stripe's own form, subscription and payment history | European Union and United States |
| Google Analytics | Audience measurement | Pseudonymous analytics events, only after you accept analytics cookies. Nothing is sent to Google before that, and consent is denied by default | European Union and United States |
| OpenAI | Powers the AI coach voice and its written answers | The text of your question or the practice context sent to generate a reply. No account identifier is attached | United States |
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, to establish or defend a legal claim, or to a buyer if the business is ever transferred. If that last case ever happens we will say so on this page before it takes effect.
5. Where your data is stored, and transfers outside the EU
Our servers and our database are hosted by Hostinger, inside the European Union. That is where your account, your progress and your files actually live. Earlier versions of this page said the servers were in the United States or Canada; that was wrong, and this sentence corrects it.
Some traffic and some processing still leave the EU, and you should know which:
- Cloudflare sits in front of the site as a CDN, so requests are handled by whichever of its data centers is closest to you, which for most of our visitors is in North America.
- Stripe, Google and OpenAI are United States companies and process the data described in section 4 there.
These transfers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where the provider is certified, on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, together with the additional safeguards those providers publish. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant clauses.
6. How we protect it
All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Passwords are stored as salted hashes and never in clear text. Payment card details are handled by Stripe and never touch our servers. Access to the production database is limited to the controller. Uploads are validated by content, not by file name, before they are accepted.
No system is perfect. If a breach ever affects your rights, we will notify the French data protection authority within 72 hours and tell you directly when the law requires it.
7. Your rights, and how to use them
Under the GDPR you have the right to:
- Access your data and get a copy of it.
- Rectify anything inaccurate or incomplete.
- Erase your data, sometimes called the right to be forgotten.
- Restrict processing while a dispute about it is being resolved.
- Object to processing based on our legitimate interest, and to direct marketing at any time, with no reason to give.
- Portability: receive the data you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format and have it sent elsewhere.
- Withdraw consent at any time, for analytics cookies and for the newsletter. That does not affect what was lawfully done before you withdrew it.
- Define what happens to your data after your death, a right specific to French law.
Three of these you can exercise yourself, right now, from your account dashboard:
- Settings, then Download my data exports your profile, statistics, achievements, favorites and billing history as a JSON file.
- Settings, then Reset progress erases your statistics and history without closing the account.
- Settings, then Delete account cancels any subscription and erases your personal data, keeping only what accounting law obliges us to keep.
For anything else, write to [email protected] from the address on your account. We answer within one month, and tell you if we need longer, which the GDPR allows for complex requests. We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting, but only as much as is needed to be sure it is you.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can lodge a complaint with the French data protection authority, the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés), 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, France, at cnil.fr. If you live elsewhere in the European Union, you may also complain to your own national authority. Complaining costs nothing and does not require a lawyer.
8. If you live in California
PianoMode is well below the revenue and volume thresholds that make the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) binding on a business, so it does not currently apply to us. We are telling you what we do anyway, because the answer is short:
- We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. There is nothing to opt out of.
- The categories we collect are the ones listed in section 2: identifiers, internet activity, approximate location derived from IP, and commercial information about your subscription.
- The rights in section 7 are offered to every visitor, wherever they live. That covers the right to know, to delete, to correct and to non-discrimination. Use the same address: [email protected].
9. Changes to this policy
We update this page when the way we handle data changes, for instance when a provider is added or dropped. The date at the top always reflects the current version. If a change materially affects your rights, we announce it on the site and, for account holders, by email before it takes effect.
10. Contact
Privacy questions and requests: [email protected], or the contact page. Postal mail reaches us at Clément Courdier, 19 rue Greuze, 75016 Paris, France. Publisher and hosting details are on our Legal Notice page.
Last updated: August 2, 2026.
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