Privacy Policy

Last updated: April 29, 2026

1. Introduction

ScribeHawk ("we," "our," "the Service"), operated at scribehawk.com, provides AI-powered transcription, captioning, translation, and monitoring tools. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have regarding your data.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Account Information

When you create an account, we collect:

• Email address — used for account identification, login, and email alerts
• Password — stored as a one-way bcrypt hash; we never store or can view your actual password
• Tier and billing status — your current plan and quota usage

2.2 Google Account Information (Sign-In)

If you sign in with Google, we receive the following from your Google profile:

• Google account ID (sub) — a unique identifier used to link your Google account to your ScribeHawk account
• Email address and display name — used for account creation or matching an existing account by email

We do not request access to your Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, or any other Google service. We do not receive or store your Google password — authentication is handled entirely by Google.

2.3 Content You Provide

• URLs you submit — YouTube links, podcast feeds, audio/video URLs, or RSS feeds you ask us to transcribe or monitor
• Files you upload — audio and video files (up to 200 MB on paid tiers) that you submit for transcription or captioning
• Keywords — terms you set for transcript monitoring alerts
• Live chat messages — messages you send through the support chat widget

2.4 Generated Content

• Transcripts — raw text, clean text, dialogue, blog formats, and translations generated from your inputs
• Captioned videos and SRT files — produced by the Caption Video feature
• Transcription history — a record of past jobs tied to your account

2.5 Telegram Linking (Optional)

If you link your Telegram account to ScribeHawk via the /link command, we store your Telegram user ID so we can deliver keyword alerts and accept transcription commands from your Telegram account. You can unlink at any time.

2.6 Payment Information

Paid subscriptions are processed by Stripe. We do not see, store, or have access to your full credit card number. Stripe shares limited information with us (such as your customer ID, subscription status, and last four digits of your card) so we can manage your subscription. See Stripe's Privacy Policy.

2.7 Automatically Collected Information

• Session cookies — used to keep you logged in
• Server logs — IP addresses, request timestamps, and browser information for security and debugging
• Public transcript view counts — aggregate, anonymous view counts on transcripts you choose to publish publicly

3. How We Use Your Information

• To provide the Service — downloading source media, transcribing audio, generating captions, translating text, and storing your history
• To process AI workloads — your audio is sent to our private GPU transcription server (Whisper Large v3) and our private LLM server (for clean/dialogue/blog formatting and translation). See Section 6.
• To deliver alerts — sending keyword-match emails (via Resend) and Telegram notifications when terms you've set appear in new transcripts
• To manage your account — authentication, quota tracking, billing, and support
• To improve the Service — diagnosing errors, monitoring queue health, and improving transcription quality
• To ensure security — detecting abuse, preventing unauthorized access, and enforcing rate limits

4. What We Do NOT Do

• We do not sell your personal information to third parties
• We do not use your transcripts or uploaded audio to train AI models
• We do not share your private transcripts with other users — they are visible only to you unless you explicitly create a share link or publish them
• We do not access your Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, or any other Google service beyond basic profile information at sign-in
• We do not track you across other websites
• We do not use your data for advertising or targeted marketing

5. Public & Shared Content

5.1 Share Links

You can generate a temporary share link for any transcript. Share links expire automatically after 24 hours and do not require the viewer to have an account. Anyone with the link can view the transcript while it is active.

5.2 Published Transcripts

You may choose to publish a transcript publicly at /transcript/<slug>. Published transcripts are indexable by search engines, listed in our public transcript directory, and accumulate view counts. You can unpublish a transcript at any time, after which it is removed from public view and from search engine results over time.

5.3 Civic Layer

The Civic Layer (/civic.html) contains transcripts of public government meetings sourced from official Granicus and YouTube feeds operated by the relevant jurisdictions. These transcripts are public records and are not associated with any user account. Searching, browsing, or viewing Civic content does not require an account.

6. Third-Party AI Processing

To produce transcripts, captions, and translations, we use the following processors:

• Self-hosted Whisper (OpenAI Whisper Large v3) — runs on a private GPU server we operate. Audio sent for transcription is not shared with OpenAI or any other third party.
• Self-hosted Qwen / open-source LLMs — run on the same private server, used for clean text, dialogue, blog formatting, and translation. Your text is not shared with any external LLM provider.
• yt-dlp — used to download media from URLs you submit (YouTube, podcasts, etc.). We download only the URL you give us.

7. Service Providers

We use a small number of third-party providers to operate the Service:

• Stripe — payment processing and subscription management
• Resend — sending transactional emails (keyword alerts, account notices)
• Google — Sign-In (only when you choose to use it) and ad conversion measurement
• Telegram — delivering optional alerts and bot commands when you link your account
• Let's Encrypt — TLS certificates

Each provider processes data only for the purpose described and according to their own privacy policies.

8. Data Storage and Security

• Your data is stored on servers located in the United States
• Passwords are hashed using bcrypt (one-way; cannot be reversed)
• Sessions are managed with secure, HTTP-only cookies
• All connections to scribehawk.com are encrypted with TLS (HTTPS)
• Source video files are deleted from our GPU server immediately after transcription or caption burn-in completes
• Caption jobs (the burned-in video output) are automatically purged from the GPU server 24 hours after creation

9. Data Retention

• Transcripts and translations — retained until you delete them or delete your account
• Caption Video output — retained on our servers until you delete it; auto-cleanup on the GPU side runs hourly for files older than 24 hours
• Share links — automatically expire after 24 hours
• Account data — retained until you delete your account
• Server logs — retained for up to 90 days for security and debugging
• Civic Layer transcripts — retained indefinitely as a public record

When you delete your account, your private transcripts, caption jobs, podcast feeds, keyword alerts, Telegram link, and chat history are permanently deleted. Transcripts you previously published publicly are unpublished as part of account deletion.

10. Children's Privacy

ScribeHawk is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information to us, please contact us so we can delete it.

11. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access your data — view your account information and transcript history through the dashboard
• Correct your data — update your email or password through your Account settings
• Delete your data — delete individual transcripts, caption jobs, podcast feeds, alerts, or your entire account
• Export your data — download transcripts in TXT, SRT, or other supported formats
• Revoke third-party access — disconnect your Telegram link from your Account settings, or revoke Google Sign-In via Google Account Permissions

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify users of material changes via email or through the Service. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised.

13. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, please contact us through the support chat widget on scribehawk.com or by emailing testtube302@gmail.com.