Privacy policy

In short

• Speech recognition and translation run on your device. Your audio is not uploaded for recognition.
• You don’t need an account. We don’t sell personal data or use it for advertising.
• Usage statistics are optional and off unless you turn them on.
• We use your email address only when you buy, claim or recover Mac Pro.

Who we are

LingoClipper is made by Yijing Jia. For questions or requests about your privacy, write to support@lingoclipper.com.

Audio, text and recognition

• On Mac, LingoClipper captures audio only from the one app you choose. It never uses your microphone, and it leaves out its own sound.
• The last 30 seconds are held in memory and cleared when you change the source or capture restarts. Audio is written to your Mac only when you save a Clip, record, or import a file.
• Speech recognition runs on your device with a model built into the app. Translation uses Apple’s Translation framework on your device; macOS may download language files from Apple the first time you use a language.
• Word definitions come from the dictionary built into macOS.
• Your Clips, recordings, segments, translations, words and review history are stored in LingoClipper’s folder on your Mac. We have no access to them.

Wi-Fi import

When you open Import over Wi-Fi, your Mac runs a temporary receiver on your local network until you close the window. Files go directly from your other device to your Mac; they do not pass through our servers or any cloud storage. The connection uses plain HTTP without encryption or a pairing code, so other people on the same network could see the files or send their own while it is open. Use it only on networks you trust.

Mac Pro license

When you claim or recover Mac Pro, and from time to time while Pro is active to verify it, the app talks to our license service, which runs on Cloudflare. It processes:

• Your email address, to send you a verification code through our email provider, Resend. The service keeps the address only in encrypted form, for sending the code, and deletes it within a day after the code expires. After that, it keeps only a keyed hash (HMAC) of the address.
• A key created on your Mac to identify it, stored as a hash, together with license, device and audit records, such as when a license was claimed, activated or moved to another Mac.
• To limit abuse, a keyed hash of the network part of your IP address. The full address is not stored.

How long we keep it:

• Verification codes and sign-in sessions: deleted within a day after they expire. Rate-limit records: deleted when they expire.
• Email delivery and security records: 30 days.
• License, device and claim records: 180 days after the license expires or is revoked.

Unlink email in Settings › Pro unlinks your email from the license at once and ends any signed-in sessions. To prevent the launch offer from being claimed twice, we keep a hashed record that it was claimed until 30 days after the offer ends. This Mac keeps its license until it expires.

A bought Mac Pro stays active on this Mac, but can no longer be restored on another Mac.

Usage statistics

Usage statistics on Mac are optional and off unless you turn them on, during setup or later in Settings › Privacy & Storage › Share usage statistics. When they are on, LingoClipper sends these events to PostHog, on its servers in the EU:

• once, after you first turn statistics on
• at most once a day, when you use the app
• when you save a Clip
• when you start a recording

Each event contains the event name, the app version, the region set on your Mac (for example, Japan), a random session ID that changes every time the app starts, and a random installation ID created on your Mac and hashed with SHA-256 before sending. These IDs are pseudonymous: they don’t contain your name or email, but they let us count events from the same installation. Events never include audio, transcripts, translations, app names, file names or your email.

PostHog receives your IP address as part of the network connection. Our PostHog project discards it and does not use it to estimate your location, so it is not stored with the events. We use these statistics only to count active installations by country and how often features are used. PostHog keeps the events available for analysis for 12 months; after that, they may be permanently deleted.

If you turn statistics off, nothing more is sent; if you turn them on again, the same installation ID is used, so your Mac is not counted twice. The events carry no name or email, so neither we nor PostHog can tell which installation is yours, and we cannot find or delete a particular person’s events.

Mac Pro purchases

Mac Pro is sold through Creem, run by Armitage Labs OÜ in Estonia, as our reseller and merchant of record. When you buy, Creem collects your payment details, billing details and email address to take the payment, work out tax and send your receipt, and handles them under its own privacy notice. We never see your card details.

Creem then tells our license service about the order. From that notice, the service reads only the following and ignores the rest, such as your name and address:

• The email address you entered at checkout. The service uses it once to link the purchase to your license and afterwards keeps only a keyed hash (HMAC), as for a claim.
• The order number and checkout ID, the product, the amount paid and its currency, the amount of each refund, and when the order was paid, refunded or disputed.

We keep a paid order and any partial refunds of it for as long as the license it unlocks, and delete a refunded or disputed order, with its refunds, 180 days after the refund or dispute. The record of each notice Creem sends us is deleted after 30 days.

Other connections the app makes

Like any internet request, these reveal your IP address to the server that receives them. They carry no audio, text or account data.

• Updates: LingoClipper checks lingoclipper.com for updates when you choose Check for Updates… and, if you allow it, automatically. The request includes the app and system versions. Updates download from our download server on Cloudflare.
• Offer and sales status: when the main window comes to the front, the app asks our license service whether the launch offer is open and whether Mac Pro is on sale.
• The Pro information page in the app loads from lingoclipper.com without cookies or saved website data.

This website

• This website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare processes your IP address and request details to deliver and protect the site.
• We set no cookies, load no third-party scripts and show no ads. Cloudflare may set a strictly necessary security cookie when it checks for abuse.
• We don’t use website analytics.

Legal bases

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or another place with similar laws, we are the controller of the personal data described here, and we rely on these legal bases:

• Your consent, for usage statistics. You can withdraw it at any time by turning statistics off.
• Our agreement with you, to link a purchase to your license, to claim, recover and verify Mac Pro, and to send you verification codes. Without an email address, Mac Pro can’t be bought, claimed or recovered.
• Our legitimate interests in delivering and protecting this website and our online services, preventing abuse, and answering your messages. You can object to this processing; see Your rights.

Where your data is processed

We run LingoClipper from China. The service providers we use process data in other countries:

• PostHog stores usage statistics in the EU.
• Cloudflare runs this website and our online services in its data centers around the world, including the United States.
• Resend sends verification emails from the United States.
• Creem handles purchases from Estonia, in the EU. For its service providers outside the EU, it uses safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

Where data protection law requires it, these transfers are covered by safeguards such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, which are part of our providers’ data processing agreements.

Your choices

• Turn usage statistics on or off at any time in Settings.
• Delete Clips, recordings and words in the app whenever you like.
• Use Deactivate this Mac or Unlink email in Settings › Pro.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• find out what personal data we hold about you and get a copy
• have it corrected or deleted
• restrict how we use it, or object to uses based on our legitimate interests
• receive data you gave us in a portable format
• withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting processing that happened before

To use these rights, write to support@lingoclipper.com. We will reply within one month and may ask for information to confirm that the request is yours. Most of what you create never reaches us, and statistics carry no name or email, so we may hold no data that identifies you; if so, we’ll tell you.

If you’re unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first. You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority, in particular in the country where you live or work or where you believe the problem occurred.

Children

LingoClipper isn’t made for children. If you are under 14, or under the age at which you can agree to data processing where you live, ask a parent or guardian before turning on usage statistics or giving us your email address. If you believe a child has given us personal data without that permission, write to support@lingoclipper.com and we will delete what we can identify.

Security

Everything the app sends over the internet goes through encrypted HTTPS connections, and so does this website. Wi-Fi import is the exception explained above: it stays on your local network and uses plain HTTP. No system is completely secure; if a security incident affects your personal data, we will inform you and the authorities as the law requires.

The license service keeps email addresses only briefly and encrypted. Otherwise, it stores hashes in place of email addresses, device keys and IP addresses.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update this page and its effective date.