Privacy Policy

1. Scope of This Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Cretiq LLC ("Cretiq," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, discloses, retains, and protects personal information when you access or use the Cretiq mobile application, our websites, or any related service that links to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the "Services"). It also describes the choices and rights that may be available to you under applicable law.

For purposes of this Policy, "personal information" means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with an identified or identifiable person. The meaning of the term may vary under applicable law.

This Policy does not govern a third party’s independent products, websites, applications, or services, even when they are accessible through the Services. Those parties’ privacy notices govern their own processing.

2. Personal Information We Collect

The personal information we collect depends on the Services and features you use, the information you choose to provide, the permissions you grant, your account and subscription status, and the way you interact with the Services.

A. Information You Provide

We may collect the following categories of information that you provide to us or through the Services:

• Account and identity information. Your name or display name, email address, authentication identifiers, account preferences, and information provided through Apple, Google, email, or another supported sign-in method.
• Profile and onboarding information. Your learning goals, interests, experience level, communication preferences, learning objectives, and other responses you choose to provide.
• User Content. Practice responses, written submissions, saved materials, reflections, imported material, prompts, and information included in support, legal, or privacy requests.
• Voice and communication data. Audio recordings that you choose to create or submit, transcripts, timing and pacing measurements, detected filler words, pronunciation or delivery indicators, scores, and AI-generated coaching feedback.
• Communications. The contents of messages, attachments, and other information you provide when you contact Cretiq.

B. Information Collected Through Your Use of the Services

We may collect the following categories of information when you use the Services:

• Learning and activity information. Completed lessons, practice history, saved content, progress, streaks, scores, preferences, and feature interactions.
• Device and technical information. Device type, operating system, app version, language, time zone, network and connection information, notification token and preferences, and similar technical attributes.
• Usage, diagnostic, and security information. Feature interactions, timestamps, crash and performance information, error reports, authentication events, and records used to detect abuse, protect accounts, and maintain reliability.
• Subscription information. The product, entitlement, renewal, trial, and transaction status that we receive from an app store or subscription-management provider. Cretiq does not receive or store your full payment-card number for App Store purchases.
• Website information. Depending on our website configuration and the choices available to you, browser type, device information, referring pages, pages viewed, approximate location derived from network information, and information associated with cookies or similar technologies.

C. Information From Other Sources

We may receive personal information from authentication providers, app stores, subscription-management providers, service providers, and other parties that help us operate the Services. The information we receive from these sources is governed by your settings and by the applicable provider’s terms and privacy notice.

3. How We Use Personal Information

We use personal information as reasonably necessary to:

• create, authenticate, administer, maintain, and secure accounts;
• provide lessons, practice tools, saved progress, personalization, recommendations, playback, notifications, and other features you request;
• process voice recordings and text for requested transcription, articulation analysis, scoring, and coaching feedback;
• administer subscriptions, entitlements, trials, purchase restoration, and customer support;
• monitor reliability, diagnose errors, maintain compatibility, and understand feature performance;
• protect you, Cretiq, and others; prevent fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, and violations of our Terms of Service;
• communicate about the Services, security, support, transactions, legal notices, and material policy changes;
• comply with legal obligations, respond to lawful process, establish or defend legal claims, and enforce our agreements; and
• develop and improve the Services using aggregated, de-identified, or otherwise lawfully processed information.

We do not use your voice recording to train a general-purpose artificial-intelligence model unless we first provide additional notice and obtain consent where required by applicable law.

4. Voice Recordings and AI-Assisted Features

Cretiq’s voice and AI-assisted features operate only when you choose to use them. When you request one of these features, we may process your recording, transcript, prompt, and related technical information to provide the feature. This processing may include transmission to service providers that perform storage, transcription, speech processing, or AI analysis on Cretiq’s behalf.

Results may include transcripts, communication metrics, scores, and coaching observations. These results are intended for educational practice and self-improvement. They may be incomplete or inaccurate. They are not a medical, psychological, biometric, employment, credit, insurance, legal, financial, or other professional assessment.

Cretiq does not use the Services to identify you through a voiceprint. We do not intend to infer protected characteristics, diagnose a condition, or infer emotion for a high-impact decision. We do not use the Services to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you, including decisions about employment, credit, housing, insurance, medical treatment, or education.

Record only yourself unless each other person has been informed and has provided any notice or consent required by law. Do not submit confidential, privileged, regulated, or sensitive information that is not reasonably necessary for the feature you choose to use.

5. Legal Bases for Processing

Where applicable law requires a legal basis for processing, Cretiq processes personal information on one or more of the following grounds:

• Performance of a contract. Processing is necessary to provide the Services you request and to administer your account or subscription.
• Legitimate interests. Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests in operating, securing, supporting, analyzing, and improving the Services; preventing misuse; and protecting our rights and users, in each case balanced against your rights and reasonable expectations.
• Consent. Processing is based on permission you give, including device permissions or optional communications, where consent is required. You may withdraw consent prospectively, although withdrawal may affect a feature that depends on the relevant processing.
• Legal obligation and protection. Processing is necessary to comply with law or lawful process, meet tax or accounting duties, establish or defend legal claims, or protect rights, safety, and security.

6. How We Disclose Personal Information

We disclose personal information only as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, including to the following categories of recipients:

• Service providers. Vendors that provide cloud hosting, database and authentication services, object storage and content delivery, transcription and AI processing, analytics, crash diagnostics, notifications, communications, customer support, and security services. They may process personal information only to perform contracted services for Cretiq and subject to appropriate contractual or other safeguards.
• App stores and subscription providers. Apple and providers that validate purchases, manage subscription entitlements, restore purchases, or provide billing-related functions.
• Professional advisers. Lawyers, auditors, insurers, accountants, and consultants when reasonably necessary and subject to professional or contractual duties.
• Legal and safety recipients. Courts, regulators, law-enforcement authorities, government authorities, or other parties when we reasonably believe disclosure is required by law or is necessary to protect rights, safety, security, or the integrity of the Services.
• Business-transaction recipients. A buyer, investor, lender, adviser, or successor in connection with a proposed or completed financing, merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, insolvency, or similar transaction, subject to appropriate confidentiality and notice where required.
• Parties at your direction. Other parties when you ask us to disclose information or otherwise consent to the disclosure.

7. Sale, Sharing, and Targeted Advertising

Cretiq does not sell personal information in exchange for money. The Cretiq mobile application does not display third-party behavioral advertising, and we do not use IDFA or similar mobile advertising identifiers to create cross-app advertising profiles.

Privacy laws may define "sale," "sharing," and "targeted advertising" more broadly than their ordinary meanings. If Cretiq adopts a practice that falls within one of those definitions, we will update this Policy and provide any notice and opt-out mechanism required by applicable law before the practice begins. Cretiq does not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 18.

8. Cookies and Similar Technologies

Our websites may use cookies, local storage, software development kits, pixels, or similar technologies to operate pages, remember preferences, maintain security, understand performance, and, if introduced with appropriate notice and choice, measure engagement. The controls available to you depend on the technologies actually deployed and your location. Browser settings can block or delete some technologies, but doing so may impair essential functions.

Where required, we will subject optional technologies to consent or an equivalent legally recognized choice. We will honor legally required opt-out preference signals, including Global Privacy Control where applicable to the relevant website processing. A site-specific cookie notice, preference center, or Cookie Policy may provide the current technology inventory and applicable controls.

9. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, including to provide the Services, maintain security and business records, comply with law, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements. The appropriate retention period depends on the nature and sensitivity of the information, the feature involved, the risk of harm, legal and contractual requirements, and whether the purpose can be achieved by other means.

• Account and profile information is generally retained while your account is active and for a limited period afterward when needed for security, legal, accounting, dispute-resolution, or fraud-prevention purposes.
• Voice recordings are retained only as needed to process the requested feature, provide recording history where supported, maintain reliability, and satisfy legitimate legal or security needs. Audio and its derived transcript, scores, and feedback are distinct records and may have different retention periods.
• Learning history and saved results are retained while associated with your account or until deleted through available controls, subject to limited legal, security, and backup exceptions.
• Diagnostic and security records are retained for periods appropriate to troubleshooting, system integrity, fraud prevention, audit, and legal requirements.
• Backups and provider systems may retain deleted information for a limited period in encrypted backups, disaster-recovery systems, logs, or a provider’s systems until ordinary deletion cycles complete, unless longer retention is required by law.

We may retain aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be linked to you. We will not attempt to re-identify that information except as permitted by law to test our de-identification measures.

10. Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect personal information, including authentication controls, access restrictions, encrypted communications, restricted service credentials, and time-limited access mechanisms where appropriate. No security measure, network, storage system, or transmission method is completely secure. You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and promptly notifying us of suspected unauthorized access.

11. Your Choices and Controls

• Account information. You may review or update available profile information through the Services.
• Device permissions. You may manage microphone, notifications, and other device permissions in your device settings. Some features will not operate without the permissions they require.
• Recording deletion. Where available, deleting an individual recording removes the associated audio reference and initiates deletion of the audio object. This action may not automatically delete a separate transcript, score, coaching result, diagnostic record, backup, or provider record.
• Account deletion. You may initiate account deletion through Profile > Settings > Delete Account. Account deletion and cancellation of an Apple subscription are separate actions.
• Subscriptions. You may manage or cancel an Apple-billed subscription through your Apple account settings. Deleting the app or your Cretiq account does not itself cancel the subscription.
• Marketing communications. You may use the unsubscribe mechanism in optional marketing emails, if any. We may still send service, security, transactional, and legal communications.

12. Privacy Rights and Requests

Depending on where you live and subject to legal exceptions, you may have the right to request access, confirmation, correction, deletion, portability, restriction, or objection; withdraw consent; opt out of certain sales, sharing, targeted advertising, or profiling; appeal a decision; and receive equal service without unlawful discrimination for exercising a right.

To submit a request, email [email protected] and describe the right you wish to exercise. We may request information reasonably necessary to verify your identity and authority. An authorized agent may submit a request where permitted by law, but we may require proof of authorization and direct verification with you.

If we deny an appealable request, you may appeal by replying to our decision with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line. Your rights are not absolute. We may deny or limit a request when an exception applies, including where information is necessary for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, exercising or defending legal claims, completing a transaction, or protecting another person’s rights. We will explain our decision where required by law.

13. Additional Information for United States Residents

State privacy laws may require additional disclosures about categories of personal information. During the preceding 12 months, Cretiq may have collected the categories described in Section 2, used them for the purposes in Section 3, and disclosed them to the recipient categories in Section 6. These categories may include identifiers, customer records, commercial information, internet or network activity, audio information, inferences derived from activity, and sensitive information contained in content you choose to submit.

Cretiq does not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you beyond what is reasonably necessary to provide requested features, secure the Services, and perform purposes permitted by applicable law. Cretiq does not use the Services to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about users.

Residents of certain U.S. states may have additional rights, including rights relating to a list of certain third parties, profiling, or data used in certain decisions. The rights and instructions in Section 12 apply to those requests to the extent required by applicable law.

14. International Users and Transfers

Cretiq is based in the United States. Personal information may be processed in the United States and other countries where Cretiq or its service providers operate. Those countries may have data-protection laws that differ from those in your location. Where applicable law requires a transfer mechanism, we will use an approved mechanism, contractual safeguards, or another lawful basis for the transfer.

For individuals in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, Cretiq LLC is the controller of personal information processed under this Policy. You may contact [email protected] to exercise applicable rights and may lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority. Individuals in Canada and other jurisdictions may have comparable rights under local law.

15. Age Restrictions

The Services are intended for adults aged 18 and older and are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a person under 18 through an account intended for adult use. If you believe a person under 18 has provided personal information, contact [email protected] so that we can investigate and take appropriate action. Higher age requirements may apply in some jurisdictions.

16. Third-Party Services

The Services may link to or interoperate with third-party products, websites, app stores, authentication providers, or content. Their privacy practices are governed by their own notices. Cretiq is not responsible for the privacy or security practices of an independent third party.

17. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Policy to reflect changes in the Services, law, technology, or our practices. We will post an updated version with a revised effective date and provide additional notice when required. Material changes apply prospectively unless applicable law permits otherwise.

18. Contact and Notices

For privacy and data-rights requests, contact [email protected]. For legal notices, contact [email protected]. For product support, contact [email protected]. Please do not send passwords, payment information, or unnecessary sensitive information by email.

Cretiq LLC
750 2nd Street NE
Hopkins, MN 55343
United States
https://cretiq.ai