Privacy Policy
Effective October 11, 2026
We collect as little as the site needs: nothing about you if you don't sign in, and your Google name, email and picture plus what you save if you do. We don't sell your data, and we don't use analytics or tracking today. This policy covers The Guitar Scales (theguitarscales.com), operated by Madison Wilkins ("we", "us").
What we collect
| What | When | Why | Kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your Google account id, name, email address and profile picture | You sign in with Google | To make and identify your account, and show your name on dashboards you share | Until you delete your account |
| Your plan, and when your account was made and last used | You sign in | To give you your plan's features | Until you delete your account |
| What you save: settings, presets, custom chords, dashboards (including lyrics), favourites, folders | You save them | To keep them for you across devices | Until you delete them or your account |
| Chord sheets you import (pasted text, or the page at a link you give) | You import one | To build the dashboard you asked for | The dashboard is kept like any other; the page itself isn't stored |
| How many imports you made today | You import | To apply your plan's daily limit | About 3 days |
| Chord shape picks | Anyone picks a chord shape | To rank shapes by popularity. The counts are anonymous; your IP address is kept only as a one-way hash for 10 minutes, so repeated clicks count once | Counts: indefinitely. Hash: 10 minutes |
| Standard request logs (IP address, browser, time) | Any visit | Run and secure the site, by our hosting provider | Per the provider's retention, typically weeks |
What's stored in your browser
The site keeps some things in your browser's local storage: your sign-in token (valid for 7 days), your theme and display settings, recently used chords and selections, cached feature settings, and any imports still waiting in the queue. This makes the site work and remembers your choices; it isn't used to track you. Clearing your browser data removes it.
We don't set advertising or analytics cookies today. Google's sign-in button, which loads from Google, may set its own cookies; see Google's privacy policy.
Who we share it with
We don't sell or rent your data. It goes only to the services that run the site for us:
- Google, for sign-in.
- Amazon Web Services, which hosts the site and its servers (USA).
- MongoDB Atlas, which hosts the database (USA).
Dashboards you share by link or publish are visible to anyone, with your name (never your email). We may also disclose data if the law requires it.
Your choices and rights
- See, change or delete what you saved, in the site's settings.
- Stop sharing a dashboard, or unpublish it, at any time.
- Ask us for a copy of your data, or to delete your account and everything saved with it, at admin@theguitarscales.com. We'll do it within 30 days.
- Depending on where you live (for example the EEA, UK or California), you may have further rights, such as to object or to complain to your data protection authority. Contact us and we'll help.
We use your data because you asked for the service (your account and saved work) and for our legitimate interest in running and securing the site.
Children
The site isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has made an account, contact us and we'll delete it.
Security and transfers
Data is sent over HTTPS and stored with our providers' access controls. Our providers are in the USA, so your data may be processed there.
Changes
We'll post any update here with its effective date, and tell signed-in users about significant changes.