Privacy policy

Who is responsible

The Audio Stuff decides how the data described here is handled. You can reach the person responsible at any time - there is no form queue and no privacy department, just the owner's inbox.

The identity details above match the site's legal notice and the public domain-registration record, which the legal notice shows you how to verify.

At a glance

The fastest honest summary of this policy is a list of things that do not exist here:

• Accounts None
• First-party analytics None
• Tracking cookies None
• Ad profiling None
• Fingerprinting scripts None
• Consent pop-ups None
• Personal data sold Never

The site is not directed at children, and it runs no collection aimed at anyone. The processing that does exist - delivery, security, and answering you when you write to us - is described in the sections below, and section 08 names every provider involved.

What the site stores on your device

The site saves some things in your browser's local storage so it remembers what you picked and where you got to:

• Your light or dark theme choice.
• The Simplified-view setting from the footer.
• Your text-size setting from the footer.
• The last eight reviews you opened - their address, product name and score - so the search box can offer them as shortcuts and the reviews page can hand you back where you left off.
• How far down a review you read - the heading you were last at and the time - so that when you come back, its contents list can mark the sections you already got through. Only the most recent are kept; older entries drop off.
• The Buy-if and Skip-if statements you tick on a review, and which review you ticked them on, so a later review can tell you when it goes against something you said - for example that you are treble-sensitive.
• The sound-signature result the finder tool gives you - the archetype and its coarse traits - so the tool can recall it and a review can say when a product matches your profile.
• The product you pick in "Compare with what you own", per category.
• Any inputs you choose to save in the calculators and tools, including saved rigs, the listening-dose figure in the safe-listening calculator, your scores in the ear-training tool, and any name you type onto an ABX test certificate.
• A copy of the pages you visit, held by the site's offline worker so the site still opens without a connection. This is the page content itself, not a list of what you read, and your browser clears it with the rest of the site's data.
• A flag noting that you opened the site as an installed app, for the current browser session only.

By name, so you can check this list against your browser's own storage inspector - every entry the site writes begins with tas-, except the one noted:

• tas-theme, tas-simplified, tas-text-scale - the three footer settings.
• tas-recent, tas-recent-meta - the last eight reviews you opened.
• tas-profile - your reading positions, the Buy-if and Skip-if statements you ticked, and your sound-signature result.
• tas-gear:headphone - the headphone you last picked in a tool, offered to the next tool.
• tas-tool: followed by the tool's name - one entry per tool for remembered inputs, saved rigs and presets, and the ABX and hi-res checker histories.
• tas-listening-dose, tas-ear-training-stats, abx-cert-name - the safe-listening dose, your ear-training scores, and the certificate name (the one entry without the prefix).
• tas-app - the installed-app flag, in session storage rather than local storage.
• The offline copy of pages lives in the browser's cache storage under this site, not in local storage.

All of it stays on your device and is never sent to us - we could not read it if we wanted to. You can clear it any time from your browser settings, and the site still works without it.

Cookies

We set no tracking or advertising cookies. Our host, Cloudflare, may set a strictly necessary cookie to keep the site secure and running - for example, to tell real visitors apart from automated abuse. That is not used to profile you.

This is also why there is no cookie banner: the consent rule of Directive 2002/58/EC applies to cookies that track you, and there are none to consent to.

Server and network data

Like every website, ours is delivered by a host. Cloudflare serves the pages and, in doing so, processes the request data every host sees - your IP address, browser type, and the page requested - to deliver content and block attacks.

We do not add our own analytics or tracking on top of this, and we do not see a profile of you: what reaches us is at most the aggregate picture a host shows its customer, not a record of your visit.

Videos and outside links

Our video reviews are hosted on YouTube. A video only loads after you click play, from YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain, which does not store information about your visit unless you play the video. Until you click, YouTube receives nothing from your visit, except that hovering over or touching the video poster lets your browser open its connection to YouTube a moment early, so the player starts faster if you do. Once you press play, YouTube (owned by Google) handles the video under its own privacy policy.

The site uses fonts already on your device, so no web fonts are loaded from us or a third party. Links out to manufacturers and standards bodies take you to sites we do not control, each with its own privacy practices - the legal notice covers outbound links.

If you contact us

Our email runs on Google Workspace. If you write to us, your message and address are handled there so we can read and reply. We keep the thread as long as we need it to deal with your request, then it goes the way of old email.

The WhatsApp line is optional: if you choose to message it, WhatsApp (a Meta service) carries the conversation under its own terms and privacy policy. Plain email reaches us just as fast and involves one provider fewer - the choice is yours.

Every provider that touches data

This is the complete list. Not the highlights - the list.

No analytics vendor, no ad-tech pixel, no consent-management platform, no newsletter service. If a provider is ever added, this section and the change log in section 12 are updated first.

Why this processing is lawful

We are based in the European Union, so the GDPR applies. The little processing that exists rests on these bases:

• Serving and securing the site (the Cloudflare processing in sections 04 and 05): our legitimate interest in delivering pages and keeping the site safe from abuse.
• Answering you (the email and WhatsApp handling in section 07): our legitimate interest in corresponding with people who write to us, and taking the steps you ask for.
• Your on-device settings (section 03): stored only in your browser and never transmitted, so no personal data reaches us at all.
• YouTube playback (section 06): starts only on your action - pressing play is the choice.

Where data is processed

Cloudflare runs a global edge network, so a page request is answered by the data center nearest you. Cloudflare, Google, and Meta are US-headquartered companies, which means some processing happens outside the European Union. Such transfers are subject to the safeguards EU law requires for them, under each provider's published data-protection terms.

We add no transfer of our own on top: there is no database of visitors anywhere, in any country, because none is collected.

Your rights

The GDPR gives you rights over any personal data we hold about you - which, in practice, is at most an email thread. You can:

• Ask what we hold about you, and get a copy (access and portability).
• Have it corrected if it's wrong (rectification).
• Have it deleted (erasure), or its use paused (restriction).
• Object to how it's used (objection).

Email contact@theaudiostuff.com and we will help, within the month the GDPR sets. Nothing on this site makes an automated decision about you or profiles you, so there is no algorithm to appeal against.

You also have the right to complain to the Polish data protection authority, UODO - though we'd ask for the chance to fix things first.

Changes to this policy

If a data flow ever changes - a new provider, a new feature that touches data - this page changes first, with a dated entry here. The date at the top of the document always matches the newest entry.

Sep 22, 2026

Corrected section 03. The entry below, of 19 September, said the site had stopped keeping a list of the reviews you opened. One such list was removed then - the one used to offer a comparison with the review you arrived from - but an older, separate list of the last eight reviews you opened is still kept, for the search box's shortcuts and the reviews page's continue-reading strip, and the section had been describing it as "recent searches". It now says what it is. The same section now also names the scores the ear-training tool saves and the sound-signature result the finder keeps, and closes with every storage entry by name, so the list can be checked against your browser rather than taken on trust. All of it was always on your device only. Separately, embedded videos now load from YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain, which does not store information about your visit unless you play the video, and section 08 now mentions that hovering over a video poster lets your browser open its connection to YouTube early.

Sep 19, 2026

The site no longer keeps a list of which reviews you opened. It was used for one thing - offering a comparison with the review you arrived from - and that feature has been removed, so the list went with it and the entry for it has gone from section 03. Your reading position in a review is still kept, for the contents list. If your browser still holds the old list, the next review you open deletes it.

Sep 17, 2026

Completed the on-device storage list in section 03. It named four things; the site also keeps which reviews you have opened and how far you read in each, the Buy-if / Skip-if statements you tick, the product you pick in "Compare with what you own", and the listening-dose and certificate-name values from the tools. All of it was always on your device only - nothing about where data goes changed, and nothing new is collected. What changed is that the policy now says so.

Jul 18, 2026

Expanded rewrite: added the at-a-glance summary, the complete provider list, the legal bases, the transfer notes, the full rights list, and this change log. The data flows themselves are unchanged.

Jul 2, 2026

Previous revision of this policy, describing the same data flows in shorter form.