Privacy Policy

Who we are

Melvin Bucio, Huntsville, Alabama, United States. Contact: hello@vidclean.net. For EU and UK data protection purposes, that is who decides how and why the information described here is processed.

What we collect, by what you do

Visiting the site

• Our hosting provider, Vercel, receives your IP address and browser details in order to serve the pages, as every website host does.
• Vercel Web Analytics records page views on almost every page. According to Vercel's documentation it does not use cookies; it records the page URL, the referring page, country and city, device type, operating system and browser, and a visitor hash that Vercel discards after 24 hours. We see aggregate counts, not individuals.
• Our pages load their fonts and icons from Google Fonts. Your browser sends your IP address to Google to fetch them.
• A few pages (the homepage, the pricing page and the silence remover, in several languages) show badges from directories VidClean is listed in. Those badge images load from the directories' own servers, which therefore see your IP address and the page you were on.
• Our pages send a strict referrer policy, and do not embed social widgets, ad scripts or tracking pixels.

Using a tool without an account

• Your IP address. We use it to limit how many jobs one address can run at the same time, to enforce the daily free limits on a few features, to rate-limit a handful of forms, and to pick the regional price we show you (see "Regional pricing"). It is attached to the job record while the job and its files exist, and it appears in the name of daily counters that expire after 24 hours. We do not build a profile from it.
• Your file, and what we make from it: the processed file, a transcript, clips, a thumbnail. See "Your files" for where they go and when they are deleted.
• The original filename, which we keep on the job record so the download and any email you asked for can use it. Files themselves are stored under random identifiers, not by name.
• Usage counts. We count how many jobs of each kind complete and how many fail, how long they took, how large the files were and what format they were in, and which buttons get clicked, by page and by button. Sizes and lengths are rounded into broad bands before they are counted, never stored exactly. These counters feed the public counter on the homepage and the data studies on our blog. No transcript text, no filenames and no per-file records are kept for this.
• A count of your own editor use. Two things in the video editor, opening it and finishing an export, are also counted against a random identifier your browser makes up and keeps for itself. It exists so we can answer questions that page-level counts cannot, such as how many exports one person does in a day, and whether people come back. The identifier is a random number and nothing else: no name, no email address, no IP address, and no link to any account, even if you have one. It is used only on vidclean.net, it is never sent to any other company, and the counters it feeds are deleted after 90 days. You can turn it off further down this page.

Asking us to email you

On many tool pages you can ask to be emailed when a job finishes, to be emailed the download link or a transcript, or, on the editor's mobile screen, to be emailed the editor link.

• We use the address to send that one email, through Resend, our email provider. A "notify me when done" address sits on the job record until the job and its files are cleaned up, about 90 minutes after completion. Addresses given for a one-off link or transcript email are not stored.
• The email contains what you asked for: a download link that works for a limited time, or the transcript files and a short preview of the text.
• If you tick the box to receive occasional VidClean updates, and only then, we add your address to our mailing list, which is held at Resend, and we record when, where and in which language you opted in. Every email from that list has an unsubscribe link. Leave the box unticked and we keep nothing.

Signing in

Signing in is done with a link we email you. There is no password.

• Your email address is your account identity for Pro, for saved projects, for style profiles, and for the creator-tools directory.
• When you open the link, we set one cookie, vc_session, on vidclean.net. It lasts 90 days, is sent only over HTTPS, cannot be read by page scripts, and holds your email address in a signed form so our server can recognise you. The address inside it is signed, not encrypted. Signing out removes it. This is the only cookie VidClean sets.
• We keep a daily counter of sign-in emails per address and per IP address so the form cannot be used to spam people.

Paying for Pro

• Checkout happens on Stripe's pages. Stripe collects your email, your card or bank details, and your billing address. VidClean never sees or stores your card number.
• Stripe tells us your email, a customer identifier, a subscription identifier, the subscription status, and when the current period ends. We store these so we know you are Pro. We also store the country we derived from your IP address at checkout and the price band that came with it.
• When you cancel, we mark the record inactive and keep it, so that Pro switches off at the right time and so you can come back. We do not delete it afterwards unless you ask us to.
• If you pay with a card, Stripe also tells us the card's issuing country; we use that only to check that regional pricing was applied correctly, and we do not store it.
• Stripe is a separate company with its own privacy policy.

Regional pricing

We show lower prices in some countries. To decide which price to show, we look up the country of your IP address in a database that runs on our own server. No outside service is called, we do not store your IP address for this, and the page never shows the country or labels the price as a discount. When you buy, the country and the price band are attached to your subscription record and to the Stripe subscription as metadata.

Saving a project in the editor

• Saving a project stores the project under your email address: the timeline and edits, the transcript and word timings of your clips, the captions and styling you chose, a log of the cuts made and why, and, on Pro, your footage.
• Free projects keep your edits for as long as the project exists, and your footage for 7 days from your last edit. We email you two days before the footage is removed. After that the project stays, with its edits and transcript, but the footage is gone and cannot be recovered.
• Pro projects keep footage for as long as your subscription is active, up to 10 GB. If Pro lapses, the 7-day clock starts.
• You can delete any project yourself from the Projects page. Deleting removes the record, the footage, the transcripts and the decision log.
• When you export a video from the editor while signed in, we keep the finished file so you can download it again if you miss it the first time: 7 days for most exports, and for as long as the project exists if you are on Pro and the export came from a saved project. Exports made without an account are deleted about 90 minutes after they finish, as before.
• We keep a list of your recent exports under your email address: the job identifier and the time each one finished, and no more than your 50 most recent. It exists so the Account page can show you your own files and let you download them again. It is deleted on the same schedule as the exports themselves.
• If an export finishes and never reaches your browser, because you closed or reloaded the tab while it was still rendering, we email the download link to the address you signed in with, once, about five minutes later. We do not send it if you already downloaded the file, already emailed it to yourself, or already asked to be notified when it finished.
• If you start a free style read in the editor, the video you upload is processed and removed within about 2 hours, and nothing about it is tied to an account.

Style profiles (Pro)

• A style profile is built from finished videos you upload as references. We keep the reference videos, their transcripts and word timings, a numeric fingerprint of your editing habits, and a short machine-written style card, all under your email address, until you delete the reference or the profile.
• When you apply a profile to a project, we record, per project, which techniques it applied and which of its suggestions you kept or undid, so that it can learn your preferences. This is stored with the project and the profile.
• Building the style card sends the transcript of your reference video to Anthropic (see "AI features").

Submitting to the creator-tools directory

• You must be signed in. We store the email address you signed in with, the IP address you submitted from, the listing text you wrote, the links you gave, and any logo or screenshots you uploaded.
• Your email is used to send you the decision and to let you edit the listing later. It is never shown on the site. Your IP address is kept with the submission.
• A person reads every submission. Uploaded images are held privately until a decision is made. If a listing is published, we make our own copy of the images, with embedded metadata removed, and publish that copy on our pages. The original upload stays in private storage.
• Submissions we decline, and submissions you withdraw, are currently kept, including their uploaded images. Email us and we will delete one on request.
• We count clicks on outbound links per listing, not per visitor, and will tell a listing's owner their count on request.

The directory section of our Terms of Service sets out what you agree to when you submit.

Answering the feedback question

After your first download, some pages ask a one-tap question about what you were doing. If you answer, the answer, any text you type, the page address, the page that referred you to it, your browser language, and your browser's user-agent string are sent to a Google Form that we read. Nothing in it identifies you by name or email. The feedback page at /feedback is also a Google Form, hosted by Google.

Contacting us

If you email hello@vidclean.net, we keep the email the way anyone keeps email.

Your files

Where they go

Files you upload go to private storage at Cloudflare R2, under a random identifier, and are processed on our servers at Railway. Where the browser supports it your file uploads straight to that storage; otherwise it passes through our server on the way there. Results are written to the same storage. Download links are time-limited: about 14 minutes for a link on the page, about an hour for a link we email you. Links are created only for the person who holds the job identifier.

Who can see them

Nobody at VidClean looks at your files in the ordinary course of running the service; processing is automatic. The operator holds the storage credentials and could open a file; in practice that happens only to debug a failure you have reported or to investigate abuse. Files are never used to train AI models, never shared with advertisers, and never shown to other users.

How long we keep them

Our storage at Cloudflare is also meant to expire leftover files from interrupted jobs within about a day, as a backstop. We cannot confirm that setting from inside the application, so do not rely on it: if a job is interrupted, email us and we will remove the file by hand.

AI features and third-party models

Some features are built on models run by other companies. When you use one of these, the part of your content needed for that feature is sent to the provider, which processes it to return a result.

Anthropic's commercial terms state that it may not train models on customer content sent through its API. Google's terms differ between the free and paid tiers of its API: on the paid tier Google states it does not use prompts or images to improve its products; on the free tier it may, and human reviewers may read them. We have not confirmed in writing which tier applies to our account, so if that matters to you, do not attach a face photo. Ideogram receives only text.

Transcription, noise removal, background removal, face blurring and all video processing run on our own servers. No audio or video is sent to any AI provider.

Cookies and local storage

• One cookie, vc_session, set only when you sign in, described above.
• Your browser's local storage holds a few flags with no personal data in them: whether you dismissed an announcement, whether you have seen the feedback question, a short-lived copy of the regional price shown to you, and editor interface state. None of those flags are sent to us or to anyone else.
• It also holds one random identifier, vc_vid, and this one we do receive. The editor sends it with two events: opening the editor, and finishing an export. It is described under "What we collect" above. Your browser generates it; we do not assign it, it is not derived from anything about you or your device, and it is used only on vidclean.net. Turn off the anonymous editor ID
• Turning it off deletes the identifier from your browser and stops it being sent. The counters already recorded hold that random number and a date and nothing else, so there is nothing in them we could look up as you, and they are deleted after 90 days.
• On a tool page, once your file has finished processing, Google's advertising code loads and may set cookies or read an advertising identifier in order to show and measure that one ad. It does not load before then, it does not load on any other page, and it does not load at all for Pro subscribers. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland you are asked first, and your answer governs. See "Advertising" below.
• Nothing we set ourselves tracks you across other websites, and we use no tracking pixels.

Other companies that handle data for us

Each of these acts on our instructions and under its own published terms. We do not sell personal information to anyone, and we do not give it to anyone outside this list unless the law requires it.

Advertising

The tool pages carry one advertisement, served by Google AdSense.

Where it appears: only on the individual tool pages, only after your file has finished processing, and only ever one, at the bottom of the result screen below the download button. The editor, the homepage, the pricing pages and everything else carry none.

Who does not see it: Pro subscribers. Google's advertising code is not merely hidden for them, it is never loaded, so a subscriber's browser does not request it and is never asked about it.

What Google receives: the address of the page the ad is on and the standard information any web request carries, such as your IP address and browser. It does not receive your file, your transcript, your email address, or anything you typed into the tool. Google may set cookies or read an advertising identifier to show the ad and measure it, and may use that to personalize what you see. What Google does with it is governed by its own policies, at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Your choice: in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland you are asked before any personalized ad is shown, and your answer governs; you can reopen that choice at any time from the link in the consent notice. Anywhere in the world you can turn off ad personalization in your Google account at https://myadcenter.google.com. Subscribing to Pro removes the advertisement altogether.

Where data is stored

VidClean is operated from the United States, and the companies above are based in the United States. If you use VidClean from the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Brazil or anywhere else, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States. For those transfers we rely on each provider's published data-processing terms; we have not yet had a lawyer review them.

How long we keep other information

Your choices and rights

• You can use every tool without an account or an email address.
• You can sign out on the Account page, which removes the cookie.
• You can delete any project or style profile yourself.
• You can delete an export by deleting the project it came from, or by writing to us. Exports that are not from a saved project delete themselves after 7 days.
• You can cancel Pro at any time from the Account page, through the Stripe billing portal.
• You can unsubscribe from the mailing list with the link in any message.
• There is no self-service button yet to delete an account. To have everything tied to your email address deleted (subscription record, projects, profiles, directory submissions, mailing-list entry), or to receive a copy of it, email hello@vidclean.net from that address. We do this by hand and will confirm within 30 days. Published directory images that you asked us to publish are removed from the live site on request; copies may remain in our code history.

If you are in the EU, the UK or Switzerland, data protection law gives you rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, port, and object to the processing of your personal data, to withdraw consent where we rely on it, and to complain to your data protection authority. In plain terms, we process your information because you asked us to do something (process a file, send an email, run your account or subscription), because we need to keep the service working and free of abuse (IP-based limits, aggregate counters, security logs), because you agreed to it (the mailing list, the media licence when you submit to the directory), or because the law requires it (tax and payment records held by Stripe). If you are in Brazil, the LGPD gives you similar rights. If you live in a US state with a privacy law, you may have rights to know, delete, and opt out of sale; we do not sell personal information. Use the same address for any of these.

Security

Connections to vidclean.net and to our API are encrypted. Files sit in private storage under random names and are reached only through short-lived links. Card details never reach us. The session cookie is signed and cannot be read by page scripts. No system is perfectly secure; if you believe your data has been exposed, email us and we will investigate.

Children

VidClean is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, or under the age at which the law where you live lets a child agree to a service like this, if that is higher. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

Changes

We update this page when the service changes. The date at the top is the date of the current version. If a change materially reduces your rights, we will say so here and, for Pro subscribers, by email.

Contact

For privacy questions contact us at hello@vidclean.net.