Privacy Policy

Short version: we don't ask you to sign up, we don't sell anything about you, and we don't know who you are. Here is exactly what does happen.

🙋 Who we are

UseSounds (https://usesounds.com) is a free sound library run by an individual, not a company. For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights below, write to contact@usesounds.com.

🚫 What we never collect

There is no account system for visitors, so we hold no name, no email address and no password for anyone browsing or downloading sounds. Playing and downloading are anonymous.

📊 Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which sounds people look for and which pages are useful. It records anonymised, aggregated events — a sound was played, a search term was typed, a file was downloaded — along with approximate country, device type and referring page. IP addresses are anonymised by Google and we never see an individual visitor's identity.

You can block it entirely with the Google Analytics opt-out add-on or any tracker blocker; the site works exactly the same.

📢 Advertising

We use Google AdSense to show ads. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.

Google's use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
You can opt out of personalised advertising at any time by visiting Google Ads Settings.
You can opt out of third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info or, in Europe, youronlinechoices.eu.
If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, a consent banner asks for your choices before any personalised advertising cookie is set. You can change those choices at any time from the same banner.

We also promote our own projects on this site. Those promotions are clearly labelled, and they set no cookies and collect no data about you.

💾 What stays on your device

A few things are stored in your browser's local storage and never sent to us or to anyone else:

FavoritesThe sounds you hearted, so they're still there next visit

Play countsHow often you played each sound, used only to order your own view

Download countDrives the occasional support message after a burst of downloads

Supporter flagSet if you tell us you've supported the site, so we stop asking

Clearing your browser data removes all of it. None of it identifies you.

⬆️ If you upload a sound

Uploading is the one place we store something server-side. We keep the audio file, the title and category you chose, and a one-way hash of your IP address — a scrambled fingerprint we cannot reverse into an IP, used only to stop one person flooding the queue. We do not keep your raw IP.

Uploads are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, a privacy-focused anti-bot check that does not profile you or track you across sites. Files and data are stored on Cloudflare (R2 and D1). A rejected submission is deleted; an approved one stays until you ask us to remove it.

🔗 Affiliate and outbound links

Some links to other companies earn us a commission — all of them are labelled and listed on the affiliate disclosure page. Clicking one takes you to that company's site, where their own privacy policy applies, not ours.

⚖️ Your rights

Under the GDPR (and equivalents such as the CCPA), you can ask us to access, correct or delete any personal data we hold about you, and to stop processing it. In practice we hold almost nothing — but if you uploaded a sound, write to contact@usesounds.com and we'll remove it and its associated record. No justification needed.

You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

👶 Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has sent us data, contact us and we'll delete it.

🔄 Changes

If this policy changes materially, the date below changes with it. Nothing here is applied retroactively.

Last updated: 2026-07-28