Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Banjo is an app of short, interactive stories, operated by UpLevel Technologies LLC (“Banjo”, “we”, “us”). This policy covers the Banjo apps for iPhone and Android and this website, bnjo.tv. Publishers who use Banjo Studio are covered by their publisher agreement.

Questions or requests: privacy@bnjo.tv.

2. What we collect

Your account

You sign in with Apple, Google, Facebook or a one-time code sent to your email. We store your display name, username, email address, profile photo if you add one, the interests you pick, and your notification and marketing choices. Signed-in sessions record the IP address and device type they were started from.

Your age band, not your birthday

We ask for your date of birth once, work out an age band (13–15, 16–17 or 18 and over) and discard the date. We never store your date of birth. Where your device offers it, we also read Apple’s Declared Age Range or Google Play’s age signal; if they disagree, the more protective answer applies.

What you watch and play

The stories you watch and save, the choices you make, your votes and predictions, the endings you’ve found and your coin balance and history.

Friends, groups and messages

Friend requests and connections, groups you create or join, messages you send in groups and conversations, watch parties you join, and the reports and blocks you make.

Starring you

If you choose to verify your likeness, a live check runs in the app. We receive one reference image from it, never the video, and we don’t create face templates. The reference image is encrypted and used only to make the personalized editions you ask for. Our biometric data policy explains this in full, including how long we keep it.

Your device

A push notification token, platform, app version, language and time zone, and a check that the app is genuine (Apple App Attest or Google Play Integrity). The private key for that check never leaves your device.

Usage and crash reports

The app sends usage events (for example, “episode finished”) to our own servers with a random identifier, your platform, app version and approximate country. Crash reports go to Sentry with personal details removed: no account identifiers, emails masked, and no screenshots or screen recordings.

This website

bnjo.tv sets no cookies and loads no third-party scripts, fonts or trackers. Our hosting provider processes IP addresses to deliver pages and protect the service.

3. How we use it

• To run Banjo: your account, playback, choices, votes, predictions, coins, friends, groups and watch parties.
• To make the personalized Starring you editions you request, and nothing else, with your likeness.
• To show stories suited to your age band and keep features like Starring you to adults.
• To keep people safe: moderating reports, enforcing our Terms, detecting abuse and acting on takedown requests.
• To send notifications you’ve allowed. Marketing notifications and email are off until you turn them on, and quiet hours apply by default.
• To understand which features and stories work, using our own usage events.
• To meet legal obligations.

4. What we don’t do

• We don’t sell or rent your personal information, or share it for targeted advertising.
• We don’t show ads or use advertising trackers, in the app or on this site.
• We don’t use your face, likeness or personalized editions to train AI models.
• Publishers never see your likeness, and only get aggregated, rounded statistics about their stories, never your identity.

5. Who sees what

Other members. Signed-in members can find your name, username and profile photo. Friends you accept can see activity you share, such as a vote or a prediction. Messages in a group are visible to its members. A personalized edition is visible only to the people you share it with.

Service providers. We use the providers below to run Banjo. They process data on our instructions and may not use it for their own purposes.

Safety and the law. We report apparent child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and we disclose information when the law requires it or to protect someone from harm.

Business changes. If Banjo is sold or merged, your information may transfer to the new owner under this policy.

6. How long we keep it

• Your account and content: until you delete your account.
• Starring you reference image: deleted 12 months after verification, when you revoke your likeness, or when you delete your account, whichever comes first.
• Personalized editions: removed from our servers 7 days after they’re ready. Copies you’ve saved or shared stay with you.
• Backups: expire within 30 days.
• Usage events: 13 months.
• Push tokens for devices that stop receiving notifications: deleted after 180 days.
• Takedown and safety records: as long as needed to prevent repeat abuse (up to 3 years), or longer where the law requires.

7. Your choices and rights

• Delete your account in the app: Profile, then Settings, then Delete account. This removes your account, profile, friendships and shared content, and erases your personalized editions.
• Get a copy, or correct something, such as your email or age, by writing to privacy@bnjo.tv. We answer within 30 days.
• Revoke your likeness at any time from Starring you. Your reference image is deleted.
• Control notifications in Settings or your device settings.

Depending on where you live (for example the EU, UK or a US state with a privacy law), you may also have the right to object to or restrict processing, and to complain to your data protection authority. We don’t discriminate against anyone for using these rights.

8. Children and teens

Banjo is for people 13 and over. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we erase it. Teens get age-appropriate defaults, and some stories and Starring you are limited to members 18 and over.

9. Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Starring you reference images are also encrypted at rest with their own keys, and staff access to private groups needs a specific permission and a recorded reason. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we’ll tell you as the law requires.

10. Where data is processed

Banjo is run from the United States, and our providers mainly process data there. Where we transfer personal data from the EU or UK, we rely on approved safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top shows when this page last changed.

12. Contact

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@bnjo.tv. Everything else: support@bnjo.tv. To report intimate imagery shared without consent, use the takedown form.

UpLevel Technologies LLC
69 Pearl St
San Francisco, CA 94103
United States