Privacy policy

At a glance

spokendocs is built so that there is not much to write here. The app records, transcribes and writes documents on your Mac, so your recordings and your notes never reach us. This website sets no cookie and asks you to accept none. What follows states precisely what is processed anyway, by whom, and on what legal basis.

Controller

The controller for the processing described here is:

Email: [email protected]

What this website processes

Server log files

The site runs on a server rented from Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany, in a German data centre. Every request to it is written to a log file containing:

• the address that was requested
• the referring page, if your browser sends one
• browser type and version
• operating system
• date and time of the request
• the IP address the request came from

These entries exist to keep the server running and to defend it against attacks. They are not merged with any other source and are not used to identify anyone. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in operating this site securely. They are deleted once they are no longer needed for that purpose.

Cloudflare

spokendocs.com is delivered through Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, USA, which sits in front of that server as a content delivery network and filters attack traffic. Every request therefore passes through Cloudflare, including your IP address. Cloudflare acts as our processor under a data processing agreement that incorporates the EU standard contractual clauses. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Cloudflare's privacy policy

Analytics, on our own server

We want to know which parts of a page get read, and we are not willing to ask an advertising company to tell us. So analytics run on Umami, open source software on a server of ours at stats.spokendocs.com. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, and no third party involved.

Umami sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device, so there is nothing here to consent to under § 25 TDDDG and no banner in your way. Per page view it records:

• the page you are on and the page you came from
• the campaign parameters of the link you arrived through, if it carried any
• browser, operating system and device type
• screen size and browser language
• the country, derived from your IP address
• named events, for example that a section scrolled into view or that a download started

Your IP address is used to derive the country without ever being stored. Visits are counted through a hash of IP address, browser and site that is re-salted every day, so the same visitor cannot be followed from one day to the next and is not recognisable anywhere else. Nothing here is combined into a profile, and none of it reaches a third party.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in knowing whether this site does its job. You can object at any time by writing to [email protected], and any content blocker that blocks the script stops the measurement outright.

Counting a download

The download page starts the file on its own and asks for nothing. When it does, our server reports that download to the same Umami instance so a release can be counted. That report carries the page, the referrer, your browser's user agent and its language setting, the version you are downloading, and the campaign parameters of the link you arrived through. It does not carry your IP address.

The update email

The footer offers one email: we write when spokendocs ships an update. Nothing else is sent to that address, and nothing is passed on to anyone.

Signing up starts a double opt-in. You receive one email asking you to confirm, and nothing is added to the list until you follow that link. Stored are your address, the fact and time of your confirmation, and the `utm_source` and `utm_campaign` parameters of the link you arrived through, if it carried any.

The mail is sent with Brevo (Brevo GmbH, Cologne, Germany), on servers in the EU, under a data processing agreement in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR. Brevo's privacy policy

Sending the form is counted as an event in our own analytics as well, so we can see how often it is used. Your address is not part of that event; only those two campaign parameters travel with it.

The legal basis is your consent, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. We do not measure whether you open one of these emails or what you click inside it. You can withdraw your consent at any time through the unsubscribe link in every email, or by writing to [email protected]; your address is then deleted or blocked from further sending. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of what happened before it.

What the app processes

Local by default

Recordings, transcripts, templates and finished documents are stored on your Mac. There is no account, no synchronisation and no server of ours holding a copy. We cannot read your notes, because on our side there is nothing to read.

The models

Speech recognition runs on your machine, and so does the language model that writes the document. Both model files are downloaded once from Hugging Face (Hugging Face, Inc., New York, USA). That request tells them your IP address and which file you asked for, and nothing else. No audio, no transcript and no document is ever part of it.

Optional AI providers, with a key you supply

Writing the document can be handed to an AI provider using a key of your own: OpenAI, OpenRouter, another OpenAI-compatible endpoint you control, or a local Ollama. This is off until you configure it. Once you do, the transcript travels from your device straight to that endpoint. Your audio never does: transcription has no cloud option, it runs on your machine or not at all. The transcript does not pass through us either, and we keep no copy of it. What happens at that endpoint is governed by its provider's own policy, and a routing provider such as OpenRouter may pass the request on to whichever model provider you selected.

• OpenAI: openai.com/privacy
• OpenRouter: openrouter.ai/privacy
• Ollama: ollama.com/privacy
• Anthropic, when selected through a routing provider: anthropic.com/privacy

Update check

The app asks our release feed whether a newer version exists, and downloads it from object storage at Hetzner if you accept. That request shows the release server your IP address and the version you are running.

Usage statistics, off unless you switch them on

During setup the app asks once whether it may send anonymous usage statistics. If you decline, and declining is the default, it sends none. If you agree, it reports events such as a finished setup or a generated document to an Aptabase instance we host ourselves. Recordings, transcripts, document contents and file names are never part of an event. You can switch it off again at any time in the settings.

Licence activation

Activating a Pro licence sends the licence key and your computer's host name to Lemon Squeezy, which records it so the activations of a licence can be counted. While the app runs it rechecks the licence with them about once a day, and it tells them when you deactivate a machine. Those three exchanges carry the licence key and the host name, and nothing from your notes.

Buying a licence

The Pro licence is sold through Lemon Squeezy (Lemon Squeezy, LLC, United States), acting as merchant of record. Payment, invoice and VAT are theirs to handle, and your name, email address and payment details are processed by them under their own policy. We receive the order and the licence key belonging to it, which is what answering a support request and keeping proper books requires. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR for the contract, and Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR for the retention periods that commercial and tax law impose. Lemon Squeezy's privacy policy

Your rights

You can ask at any time what data about you we hold, where it came from and who receives it, and you can have it corrected, deleted, restricted, or handed to you in a portable form. Where processing rests on a legitimate interest you may object to it; where it rests on consent you may withdraw that consent with effect for the future. An email to [email protected] is enough, and it costs you nothing.

You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is Die Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz Niedersachsen, Prinzenstraße 5, 30159 Hannover.

Changes to this policy

If the site or the app starts processing something this text does not cover, this text is changed before that happens. The date below says when it was last touched.