Privacy Policy

Account information: when you sign in, we collect your email address.

Profile details: to complete onboarding we ask you to provide your name, a public handle, your gender (male, female, or prefer not to say), your date of birth, your nationality (country), and a contact phone number. Your handle is your public identity and appears on the surfaces described in section 6; your name is never shown publicly. These details are self-provided. We use your phone number only to contact you about your account if we need to, and we may use it in future to send sign-in codes by SMS. We use your nationality, gender and age only to understand our audience in aggregate. These details are analysed by our own team on our own infrastructure and are not shared with any third-party analytics provider, because we no longer use one.

Usage information: we collect watch history (the content you view and your playback progress) and records of any voluntary contributions you make.

Community requests and votes: if you use the requests board, we record the titles you request, the votes you cast, and any reason you optionally attach to a request. Your handle is shown publicly on the board next to titles you requested; your name and your gender are never shown. Your reason is never shown publicly and is read only by our team.

Technical and log data: we automatically collect basic technical information such as your IP address, browser type, device information, operating system, language, approximate location derived from your IP, referring pages, and log timestamps, for security, analytics, and reliability purposes.

Analytics events: we measure how the Service is used with our own analytics, running on our own infrastructure in the Kingdom. Each time something happens — a page is viewed, a video is played, a contribution is started or completed, a sign-in occurs — we record it as an event, together with the time, the page template rather than the full address, the interface language, where you arrived from (including the campaign tags of a link you followed), your browser, operating system and device type, the country and — where our edge can resolve them — the region and city derived from your IP address, on a title's page the identifier of that title, page-performance measurements and the video quality a playback used, and the visit and audience codes described in section 2. Your IP address itself is not stored with these events, and when we report places, a city that too few visits came from is shown only as somewhere in its region.

We keep these events individually, so that we can answer questions about how the Service is used — which titles hold an audience, how visitors move through it, whether people come back — and we also add them to running totals, including a lifetime view total for each title that is shown publicly on that title's page. The events are never linked to your account, your name, your email address or your watch history; they carry no contribution amount and no card data; and they are never shared or used for advertising. Your watch history, described above, is separate: that is linked to your account, and it is what lets the Service resume where you left off.

We use cookies and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember your preferences, and operate the Service. You can control cookies through your browser settings, but disabling them may affect functionality such as staying signed in.

Our analytics use one cookie of their own, the audience cookie. It holds a random code that our servers create the first time your browser sends us an analytics event, and it lets us tell that two visits came from the same browser — so that we can count visitors and see whether they return. It is set by us and sent only to our analytics address; no page can read it, ours included, and it is never shared. It is never linked to your account: we do not know which account, if any, a code belongs to, and two devices are two different codes. It expires 13 months after it is set and later visits do not extend it; the events it is attached to are kept for 25 months (section 7). A second code, the visit code, is kept in your browser's session storage: it groups the pages of one visit, and is replaced after 30 minutes without activity or when you close the tab.

You can turn the audience cookie off at any time: stop measuring this browser. Your browser then keeps a cookie that says only that you turned it off, so the choice is remembered, and your visits are still counted in the totals but with no code attached. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser the same way. Clearing your cookies removes the code too; a new one is created on your next visit unless measurement is turned off. To turn it back on: measure this browser again.

Voluntary contributions are processed by Moyasar, a third-party payment processor. Full card data (such as your card number, expiry, and security code) is collected and handled directly by Moyasar and is not stored by us. We retain only limited records of a contribution, such as its amount, date, status, and a processor reference.

Moyasar's handling of your payment information is governed by Moyasar's own privacy policy.

We rely on a small number of trusted third parties to operate the Service: Moyasar (payment processing), Google Cloud (cloud infrastructure, located in the Kingdom), Resend (transactional email such as sign-in codes), and The Movie Database (TMDB), whose catalog we query — via our servers — when you search for a title to request. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. These providers process data on our behalf and may process limited information necessary to deliver their services. We do not use a third-party analytics provider: usage analytics are collected and processed by us, on our own infrastructure. We never share card data with any of these providers.

We use the information we collect for the purposes below. Beside each is the basis on which the Personal Data Protection Law allows it.

To provide the Service you signed up for — your email address to sign you in; your handle to identify you on the surfaces section 6 describes; your name on your account; your watch history to resume where you left off; your contribution records to acknowledge and account for what you gave: necessary to carry out our agreement with you, the Terms of Service.

To keep the Service secure and reliable — technical and log data, sign-in codes and sessions, rate limiting and abuse detection: our legitimate interest in running a safe service, which involves no sensitive data and does not override your rights.

To understand how the Service is used — usage analytics, including the audience cookie, which is never linked to your account: the same legitimate interest, on the same conditions. You can object at any time by turning the audience cookie off (section 2).

To understand our audience in more depth — your gender, date of birth and nationality, when you choose to give them — and to reach you about your account by phone: your consent. These details are optional. Giving them is never a condition of using the Service, and you withdraw consent by removing them from your account or by asking us (section 8); withdrawal takes effect from then on and does not undo processing already done.

To meet legal obligations — keeping contribution records for as long as tax and accounting law requires, and answering lawful requests from public authorities: compliance with the law.

Some information is published on pages that anyone can view, including people who are not signed in, and search engines. When you create an account we publish a public profile at an address based on the handle you choose. It shows your handle, your avatar colour, the badges you have earned, the month you joined, how many episodes you have watched and completed, and the titles you have requested. If you have contributed, it also shows your frames — one frame for every SAR 10 — so it indicates your total contribution to within SAR 10. It does not show your name, your email address, your date of birth, your nationality, your phone number, which specific titles you have watched, or the amount or date of any individual contribution. Lists of members and supporters never show frames or amounts.

If you use the requests board, your handle appears next to the titles you request. If you make a voluntary contribution, your handle, avatar colour, badges and position may appear on the top-supporters board; the amount is never published.

Apart from what is published as described above, we do not sell your personal data. We share information only with the third-party processors described above, where required by law or to respond to lawful requests by public authorities, or to protect our rights, safety, and property or those of others. If the Service is involved in a merger, acquisition, or asset transfer, information may be transferred as part of that transaction.

How long we keep each kind of information:

Account and profile (email, name, handle, gender, date of birth, nationality, phone): for as long as your account exists. When your account is erased these are deleted and your handle is released.

Watch history and resume positions: for as long as your account exists; deleted with the account.

Requests and votes: your votes and any reason you attached are deleted with the account. A title you requested stays on the board, with no one attached to it.

Contribution records: kept after the account is erased, for as long as tax and accounting law requires, and only for that purpose.

Sign-in: a sign-in code expires five minutes after it is sent. A session ends when you sign out, when we revoke it, or seven days after you last used it; expired session records are removed automatically.

Usage analytics: events are kept for 25 months and then deleted. The audience cookie expires 13 months after it is set. Your IP address is used only to work out an approximate location and is never stored with these events. Running totals, which contain no personal information, are kept.

Server logs: request logs, which include IP addresses, are kept for 30 days in the Kingdom and then deleted.

Backups: we keep weekly backups for four weeks. Information you have asked us to delete can remain in a backup for up to four weeks after deletion, after which it is gone from there too.

You may ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you in a readable form, to correct it, to delete it, or to withdraw a consent you gave us where consent is the basis for the processing.

To make a request, use the Contact us page while signed in: the account you write from is how we verify it is you, and the reply goes to the email address on that account. If you cannot sign in — you no longer have an account, never had one, or are acting as a parent or guardian — email hala@shedballad.com; we will verify your identity, or your guardianship, in proportion to the request before acting. You can also change your profile details and end your sessions yourself, in your account.

We act on a verified request within 30 days. If a request is unusually complex or you have made several, we may extend that once, by at most a further 30 days, and will tell you so within the first 30, with the reason.

Deleting your account removes everything section 7 says is deleted and keeps only what it says is kept. If you are not satisfied with how we handled a request, you may complain to the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA), the competent authority under the Personal Data Protection Law.

The Service offers general-audience content and is not directed at young children. We do not verify age: the date of birth we ask for is optional and self-reported.

A person under 18 does not have full legal capacity under Saudi law. For such a person, a parent or legal guardian gives the consents this Policy describes on their behalf, may exercise the rights in section 8 for them, and is responsible for supervising their use of the Service. When a guardian contacts us we verify that they are the guardian before acting. If we learn that an account belongs to a child whose guardian has not consented, we delete it; a guardian may ask us to do so at any time. A person who reaches legal capacity exercises these rights themselves from then on.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from a child in a manner that violates applicable law. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information without the required parental or guardian consent, please contact us using the details below and we will take appropriate steps to address it. We also intend to introduce parental controls in the future.

We are based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Service runs on infrastructure located in the Kingdom: your account, your watch history, our records of your contributions, and our usage analytics are all stored and processed there.

Two kinds of email leave the Kingdom, both delivered by Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.), which processes them in the United States. Sign-in emails: the address the code is sent to, the code itself, which expires five minutes after it is sent, and a delivery record that Resend keeps for 30 days. Messages you send through the support page: they are relayed to our team by the same provider, so your email address, your handle, the topic and the text of your message pass through it, and Resend keeps that delivery record for 30 days too. Both happen only because you asked — to sign in, or to reach us — are necessary to do what you asked, and are covered by a data processing agreement with Resend. Card details go from your browser directly to Moyasar, in the Kingdom, and never pass through us (section 3). If you pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay, your wallet talks to its own provider under that provider's terms.

The network that delivers video and images has locations outside the Kingdom, and a viewer outside the Kingdom is served from the nearest one. That location handles the viewer's connection — the IP address and the request — for as long as it takes to serve it. Those locations hold cached copies of public media only, never account data, and the access logs they produce are kept in the Kingdom (section 7).

Our analytics never leave the Kingdom.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, the date at the top changes and the new text is posted here; for a material change we will tell you in the Service before it takes effect. Where a change needs your consent, we will ask for it — continued use is not consent.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your rights, please contact us through the Contact us page.