Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Subsume ("we", "our", or "us") provides real-time speech-to-text captioning and translation services. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your information when you use our website and services (collectively, the "Service").

By using our Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. If you do not agree with this policy, please do not use our Service.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Account Information

When you create an account, we collect:

• Email address
• Name (if provided)
• Authentication data through our authentication provider (OAuth tokens, session data)
• Organization name (for team accounts)

2.2 Audio and Transcript Data

When you use our captioning service:

• Audio streams are sent in real time to our speech-to-text providers and, for some languages, to a second recognition service that checks the first. Audio is only buffered in memory while it is processed. We do not store audio recordings; each provider's terms govern what it receives.
• Text transcripts generated from your audio are stored in our database to provide session history, playback, and export features.
• Translations of transcripts (if enabled) are also stored.
• AI processing: Transcript and translation text may be sent to third-party AI language model providers to perform caption cleaning, translation quality analysis, and other enabled service features. Provider data-use and retention terms depend on the provider, model, account tier and privacy settings. Some providers retain data for abuse monitoring or security, and some account tiers permit model improvement. Contact us for the processing terms applicable to your selected features before sharing sensitive classroom content.
• Audio dubbing and voice: If you enable audio dubbing, translation text is sent to speech-synthesis providers to generate spoken audio. With the Live Translate engine, your audio is processed by a speech-to-speech provider to produce translated speech that resembles the speaker's own voice. This processing happens in real time; we do not store audio recordings or voice models. When the "match speaker" option is on (the default for translated voice), a few seconds of the speaker's audio are sent to a language model from time to time to choose a male or female voice, and that choice is stored on your recurring template so later sessions start with it.
• Voice setup assistant: If you set up a session by talking to the voice assistant, your voice and setup notes go directly from your browser to a speech AI provider for that conversation.
• Service improvement: At the end of a session, the Service may automatically derive terminology and quality refinements from your session data to improve captioning and translation accuracy for future sessions within your account. These refinements remain scoped to your account. Third-party processing follows the provider terms described above.
• You retain ownership of all transcript content generated from your audio.

2.3 Usage Data

We automatically collect:

• Session duration and timestamps
• Features used (languages, translation settings)
• Credit consumption for billing
• IP address and browser/device information, used for security, rate limiting and abuse prevention. Our hosting providers' server logs record IP addresses and the pages requested; these logs are kept for about 30 days.
• Pages visited and interactions with our Service

2.4 Payment and Billing Information

Payments are processed by our payment processor (Stripe). We never receive or store your full card number. We store your subscription plan and status, credit balance and transaction history, and payment references (such as customer and invoice identifiers) needed to manage your account and comply with financial record-keeping requirements.

2.5 Event Attendees and Caption Viewers

People who view captions or listen to translated audio through a shared session link do not need an account, and we do not collect their name or email address. For attendees, we process only:

• A random identifier stored in the browser's local storage, together with the chosen language and audio preference, used for audience statistics and delivery of your selected audio. This viewer identifier is not linked to a signed-in account.
• IP address, used for rate limiting and abuse prevention. We do not store attendee IP addresses or browser details in our viewer records; server logs keep them for about 30 days (Section 2.3).
• If the host turns on the "Wait, what?" pilot feature, each tap records the viewer's random identifier in hashed form, the language and the moment. Hosts see counts, never identifiers.
• If the host picks certain caption fonts, the attendee's browser loads them from Google Fonts.

The captions and audio an attendee sees are the event host's content; the host controls what is captured and shared.

2.6 Homepage Demo and Pilot Requests

The live demo on our homepage processes audio the same way as a session and does not store it. To watch for abuse and costs, we keep what the demo recognized, the visitor's country and a shortened hash of the IP address for two days. When you request a pilot, the form's contents are emailed to us and kept in our mailbox so we can reply.

3. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA), we process your personal data based on the following legal grounds:

• Contract performance: Processing necessary to provide you with our Service (account management, captioning, billing).
• Legitimate interests: Processing for our legitimate business interests (improving our Service, security, fraud prevention, and telling our customers about Subsume products, news, and offers), where not overridden by your rights.
• Consent: Where you have given explicit consent for specific processing activities.
• Legal obligations: Processing necessary to comply with legal requirements.

4. How We Use Your Information

• To provide, operate, and maintain our captioning and translation services
• To process your audio and generate accurate captions
• To analyze and refine transcript and translation quality using AI language models
• To manage your account, billing, and credit balance
• To communicate with you about Subsume, including service updates, security alerts, support, and news, promotions, giveaways, and other offers we think may interest you. You can opt out of promotional emails at any time using the unsubscribe link in those emails or by contacting us. Transactional and service messages needed to operate your account are not affected.
• To improve our Service and develop new features
• To detect, prevent, and address technical issues or abuse
• To comply with legal obligations

5. Third-Party Services and Data Sharing

We work with trusted third-party service providers to operate our Service. These providers fall into the following categories:

• Authentication providers — to manage user accounts and secure login sessions
• Speech-to-text providers — to convert your audio streams into text transcripts in real time
• AI language model providers — to perform transcript cleaning, translation quality analysis, and other text processing tasks
• Speech synthesis and voice providers — to generate spoken audio of translations and, when audio dubbing is enabled, translated speech in the speaker's voice
• Cloud infrastructure and database providers — to host and store your data securely
• Payment processors — to handle subscription payments and credit purchases securely
• Error monitoring providers — to capture application errors so we can fix problems; error reports may include technical details such as IP address and browser information
• Email delivery providers — to send transactional, service, and promotional emails

Our current providers are: Clerk (sign-in); ElevenLabs, Deepgram and Google (speech recognition); Google and Microsoft (translation); Google (language models and translated voice; OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI or Groq only if a host selects them in advanced settings); OpenAI (the voice setup assistant); Railway, Supabase, Vercel and Cloudflare (hosting, database and network); Stripe (payments); Sentry (error monitoring); and Resend and Microsoft 365 (email).

We limit the data sent to each provider to the function it performs. The applicable provider agreements, account settings and privacy policies govern its processing. Contact admin@subsume.io for feature-specific processing terms.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We do not share your data with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

6. International Data Transfers

Your data may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence, including the United States, where our service providers are located. These countries may have different data protection laws.

When we transfer data from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as Standard Contractual Clauses or transfers to countries with adequate data protection recognized by relevant authorities.

7. Data Retention

We retain your data for as long as necessary to provide our Service and fulfill the purposes described in this policy:

• Account data: Retained while your account is active. When your account is deleted, profile records are anonymized and personal records are deleted as described below.
• Transcript data: Retained until you delete the session or its organization. Authorized hosts can delete individual sessions at any time; access ends immediately. Deleted session data becomes eligible for permanent removal after 30 days and is removed in a scheduled retention cycle.
• Attendee presence records: The anonymous viewer records described in Section 2.5 become eligible for deletion after 90 days. Aggregate audience counts may remain with the class history.
• Usage logs: Retained for 12 months for billing, analytics, and security purposes, then eligible for scheduled removal.

When you delete your account, we delete your private intake drafts, personal translation preferences, authentication activity and usage records, and content in an unshared personal workspace. Your profile is anonymized and your organization memberships are removed. Classes, transcripts, translations, saved outputs, learned terminology and speaker settings owned by a university or other shared organization remain under that organization's control when an individual member leaves or deletes their account. Contact the organization to request deletion of its content.

When an organization is deleted, we delete its content, including sessions, transcripts, digests, intake drafts, voice reservations, saved outputs, learned terminology, speaker settings and associated usage and authentication records. Public links to that organization cease to provide access. The organization record is anonymized. Billing and transaction records are retained where required for tax, accounting, and other legal compliance.

Minimal deletion and access-revocation markers remain to prevent stale credentials or delayed service events from restoring deleted content or removed access.

8. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data:

• Encryption in transit (TLS) for data sent to and from the Service over the internet
• Encryption at rest provided by our database and hosting providers
• Organization-level access controls that isolate each customer's data
• Ongoing security review and updates
• Access to production data limited to Subsume's operator

However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your data, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

In the event of a data breach that poses a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify affected users and relevant supervisory authorities in accordance with applicable law, including within 72 hours where required by the GDPR.

9. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights:

All Users

• Access your personal data
• Correct inaccurate data
• Delete your data and account
• Export your transcript data
• Opt out of promotional emails at any time

You can delete individual sessions from your dashboard, and delete your account or organization from your account settings. You can also email us at admin@subsume.io and we will carry out the deletion for you.

EEA/UK Residents (GDPR)

• Right to data portability
• Right to restrict processing
• Right to object to processing
• Right to withdraw consent
• Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

California Residents (CCPA/CPRA)

• Right to know what personal information is collected
• Right to delete personal information
• Right to opt-out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell your data)
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your rights
• Right to correct inaccurate personal information
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at admin@subsume.io. We will respond to your request within 30 days (or sooner if required by law).

10. Cookies and Tracking

We use the following types of cookies and similar technologies:

• Essential cookies: Required for authentication and core functionality. Cannot be disabled.
• Functional cookies: Remember your preferences (e.g., theme settings).
• Browser local storage: Used to remember preferences and, on caption viewer pages, to hold the random listener identifier described in Section 2.5 so we can count how many people are watching a broadcast. It contains no personal details and is not used for tracking across sites.

We do not use advertising, analytics, or third-party tracking cookies. Our authentication provider sets cookies necessary for secure login sessions.

Our Service does not currently respond to Do Not Track (DNT) browser signals. However, as described above, we do not use third-party tracking or advertising cookies.

11. Automated Processing

Our Service uses AI language models to process your transcript and translation text for quality improvement purposes. This processing is used solely to enhance the accuracy and readability of captions and translations. It does not involve automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.

12. Children's Privacy

Our Service is not intended for children under the age of 13 (or 16 in the EEA). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have collected data from a child, please contact us immediately at admin@subsume.io.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. For significant changes, we may also notify you via email.

Your continued use of the Service after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

14. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:

• Email: admin@subsume.io
• General inquiries: admin@subsume.io