Privacy Policy
The short version
- We don’t store your recordings. The audio file of a session is saved only on your Mac. It is never uploaded to your account or to our servers.
- To turn speech into text, the audio is streamed through our server to our transcription provider while you record. Neither our server nor the provider keeps it, and it is never used to train AI.
- Your transcripts, study notes, Tasks and Practice are stored in your account so they’re there when you sign in.
- An AI provider reads the transcript to write your notes. It doesn’t use it to train its models.
- We don’t sell your data. We don’t show ads. We don’t train any AI on your sessions.
- Usage analytics are off unless you turn them on. They never include what was said in a session.
- A session you don’t share is visible only to your account. If you share one with a cohort, the members of that cohort can read it, read-only, until the cohort ends.
- You can delete any session at any time, or ask us to delete your whole account.
Who we are
Scrolls (“Scrolls”, “we”, “us”) is run by [Your full legal name or company name], [postal address], India. For your personal data, we are the “Data Fiduciary” under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: we decide why and how it is processed.
This policy explains what personal data we collect when you use the Scrolls app for Mac (“the app”) and this website, why we collect it, and what you can do about it. By signing in to the app, you agree to us processing your data as described here.
What we collect
| What | Examples | Where it is kept |
|---|---|---|
| Account details | Your name, email address and profile photo from Google when you sign in | Your account (our database) |
| Session content | Transcripts, speaker labels, topics, study notes, Tasks, Practice, bookmarks, session titles and dates, the name of a file you imported | Your account, and a copy on your Mac |
| Things you add | Your questions in Ask and their answers, glossary terms, due dates you set, edits you make, names you give speakers | Your account |
| Cohort details | The cohorts you create or join, your role in them, which sessions are shared into them, and your own ticks on a cohort’s Tasks and Practice. A cohort’s admins can see its members’ names and email addresses. | Your account |
| Settings | Your preferences, such as language, notes style and how long to keep sessions | Your account, and on your Mac |
| Usage counters | How many minutes you have transcribed and how much AI work your account has used each day | Our database, to apply the free usage limits |
| Crash reports | Error messages, app and macOS versions, a random install ID and the names of your last few actions in the app | Our database |
| Problem reports | What you write in Report a problem and, only if you tick it, a diagnostics bundle you can read before sending | Our database |
| Usage analytics (only if you opt in) | Which features are used, for example that a session was started, with a random install ID | PostHog |
| Support emails | Your email address and what you write to us | Our email inbox |
What we never collect: your audio recordings, files you attach to a session (they stay on your Mac), your contacts, your location, or payment details. Crash reports, problem reports and analytics never include transcripts, notes, session titles, names or audio.
Your recordings stay on your Mac
When you record a session, or import a recording, Scrolls saves the audio as a file in the app’s folder on your Mac. That file is never uploaded to your account, and we never have a copy of it.
To produce the transcript, the sound has to be heard by a speech-to-text service:
- While you record, the audio is streamed live through our server to Deepgram, which sends back text.
- When you import a recording or reprocess a session, the audio file is sent once, through our server, to Deepgram to be transcribed.
Our server only passes the audio on. It doesn’t save it, and our server logs contain no audio or session content.
The file on your Mac is deleted when you delete the session, or automatically when its transcript reaches the age you set in Settings › Data & Privacy › Keep transcripts for. Files you attach to a session (PDFs, images) are also kept on your Mac only.
How we use your data
We use your data only to:
- sign you in and keep your sessions in your account;
- transcribe your sessions and write your study notes, Tasks, Practice, glossary and answers to your questions;
- apply the free usage limits so the service stays available to everyone;
- find and fix bugs and crashes, and answer your problem reports and emails;
- understand which features are used, if you have turned analytics on;
- tell you about important changes to the app or this policy;
- meet our legal obligations, and protect the service and its users from abuse.
We don’t sell, rent or share your personal data for advertising, and we don’t use your sessions to train AI models.
Services that process your data
We use a small number of service providers to run Scrolls. Each one receives only what it needs for its job, and processes it on our behalf.
| Provider | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Deepgram | Speech-to-text | Session audio, as described above. We opt out of Deepgram’s model improvement program on every request, so Deepgram doesn’t use your audio to train its models and keeps it only while it is being transcribed. |
| Anthropic | Writes study notes, topics, Tasks, Practice, glossary entries, English readings of Hindi lines, and answers in Ask | Transcript text and your questions. Under its commercial terms Anthropic doesn’t train its models on this data and keeps it only for a limited time for safety monitoring. |
| Supabase | Database and sign-in | Everything stored in your account, as listed above |
| Render | Hosts our server | Audio and text passing through, which it doesn’t store |
| Sign in with Google | Your sign-in. We ask Google only for your name, email address and photo. | |
| PostHog | Usage analytics, only if you opt in | Feature-use events and a random install ID |
| Vercel | Hosts this website | Standard web request data, such as IP address and pages visited |
We may also share data if the law requires it, for example in response to a valid court order, and with a successor if Scrolls is ever sold or merged, in which case this policy continues to apply to your data.
Where your data is processed
Scrolls is run from India, but some of our providers process data on servers outside India, including in the United States. We use only established providers bound by contract to protect your data, and we transfer data only to countries the Government of India allows under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
How long we keep it
- Sessions stay in your account until you delete them. Deleting a session removes its transcript, notes, Tasks, Practice and the audio file on your Mac.
- Transcripts can also be deleted automatically. In Settings › Data & Privacy › Keep transcripts for, choose 30 days, 90 days or 1 year: older transcripts and their audio files are then deleted, and the study notes, Tasks and Practice are kept. The default is to keep everything.
- Cohort access ends on the cohort’s end date: its members can no longer open what was shared. That does not delete the sessions; they stay in the account of whoever recorded them until that person deletes them, and deleting a session also removes it from the cohort.
- Your account is kept until you ask us to delete it. We then delete your account and everything in it within 30 days, except anything the law requires us to keep.
- Crash reports, problem reports and usage counters are kept while we need them to fix problems and run the usage limits, and are deleted with your account.
- Support emails are kept as long as we need them to help you.
How we protect it
Data travels between the app, our server and our providers over encrypted connections. Your account data is protected by access rules so that only your signed-in account can read it, apart from sessions you choose to share with a cohort. We limit who can access the systems that hold your data, and we take reasonable security practices and procedures to protect it.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will tell you and the Data Protection Board of India as the law requires, and say what happened and what we are doing about it.
Your rights and choices
In the app you can, at any time:
- edit or delete any session, Task or Practice item;
- have old transcripts and their audio deleted automatically (Settings › Data & Privacy › Keep transcripts for);
- download a copy of your data with Export all data, in Settings › Data & Privacy;
- turn Share usage analytics and Send crash reports automatically on or off, in Settings › Data & Privacy;
- sign out, which removes your sign-in from this Mac.
You also have the right to:
- know what personal data we hold about you and who we have shared it with;
- correct, complete or update it;
- delete it, including your whole account;
- withdraw your consent. This means we stop processing your data and delete your account, so you will no longer be able to use Scrolls. It doesn’t affect processing that happened before;
- nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to;
- raise a grievance with us, and if you are not satisfied with our answer, complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
To use any of these rights, email support@scrolls.example from the address you sign in with, so we know it’s you. We reply within 30 days.
If you live outside India, you have the same rights. If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you can also object to our processing, ask for a copy of your data in a portable format, and complain to your local data protection authority. We rely on your consent and on our need to provide the service you asked for.
People you record
When you record a session you are recording other people, including the speaker. You are responsible for having their permission. Many courses and bootcamps have their own rules about recording, and laws differ from place to place. Scrolls reminds you of this the first time you use it.
If someone you recorded asks you to delete a session, you can do so in the app. If they contact us, we will pass the request on to you, because the session is in your account.
Age limit
Scrolls is for people aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has signed up, email us and we will delete the account.
This website
This website doesn’t use cookies or analytics, and doesn’t ask for any personal data. Our host, Vercel, keeps standard server logs, such as IP address, browser type and pages requested, to run and secure the site.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Scrolls changes. We will change the date at the top, and for important changes we will tell you in the app or by email before they take effect.
Contact and grievances
Questions, requests and complaints about your data go to our Grievance Officer:
[Name of the person responsible], Grievance Officer, Scrolls
Email: support@scrolls.example
Address: [postal address], India
We respond to every grievance within 30 days.