Privacy Policy — Live Transcribe

Last updated: 16 September 2026

Live Transcribe is a Chrome extension that transcribes and translates audio in real time. This policy explains exactly what data the extension handles, where it goes, and what it does not do. You can use Live Transcribe fully as a guest, with no account. Signing in with a Google account is optional, and it changes exactly one thing: your free minutes and any purchase follow you across your devices instead of staying on one.

What the extension processes

• Audio you choose to capture — from your microphone, or from the browser tab, window, or screen you pick in Chrome's own sharing dialog. Audio is streamed in real time to our speech-to-text provider, Soniox, which returns the transcription and the translation. We do not store your audio on our own servers.
• Transcripts, translations, and optional audio recordings — these are saved only locally on your device, in your browser's storage (IndexedDB). They are never uploaded to our servers, and you can delete them at any time from the extension's history screen.
• An identifier for your device, or for your account if you sign in — as a guest, a random ID (UUID) generated on first use and stored locally, sent with each request for a temporary transcription key solely to track your free minutes and prevent abuse. If you sign in, requests carry your account's identifier instead — see "Accounts and your balance" below.

Accounts and your balance

As a guest, there is nothing to set up. A random device identifier tracks the free minutes that device has used; nothing personal is attached to it, and we have no way to connect it to you.

Signing in with Google is optional. It exists for one reason: so your free minutes and any purchase follow you to another device instead of staying on the one where you first used the extension. Signing in uses Google's own sign-in screen (chrome.identity.getAuthToken) — we never see or store your Google password. We request only your account's stable id, name and email address (the openid, email and profile scopes) — never access to your Gmail, Drive, Calendar, or anything else in your Google account.

• Signing in involves two tokens, and neither is a password. Google's sign-in token is sent to our server once, so the server can ask Google which account it belongs to; we never store it. In return we issue a token of our own, which your browser sends with every request so we know whose balance to read — and we keep only a one-way hash of it, so the token itself cannot be read back out of our database. Signing out deletes it.
• We identify your account by Google's stable account id, not by your email address — an address can change, the id cannot. Your email is stored only so we can find your account if you contact support, and so it can be offered back to you as a suggestion at checkout; it is refreshed every time you sign in.
• Once you're signed in, we store how many minutes you have left, whether you have an active subscription, and when it next renews — what's needed to answer "what's my balance" from any device you sign into.
• Signing out does not delete your balance. Sign back in with the same Google account, on any device, and it's there.

Payments — Paddle.com Market Ltd

Buying minutes or subscribing opens a checkout on our own website, run by Paddle.com Market Ltd, our payment processor and the merchant of record for every purchase.

• Paddle collects your payment details directly — card number, billing address if you provide one, VAT number if you enter one for a business purchase. We never see or store any of it.
• Paddle calculates and collects VAT or sales tax where it applies, and issues your receipt.
• We receive from Paddle only what's needed to credit the purchase to your account: which plan you bought, its price, and a reference id — plus a record if a purchase is later refunded or charged back. See the Refund Policy for how refunds are decided.
• Paddle assigns your account a customer id, which we store so you can cancel a subscription in one click from inside the extension, without emailing anyone.
• Paddle publishes its own privacy policy describing what it does with the payment details it collects directly from you at checkout.

What our backend logs

To issue temporary transcription keys and protect the service from abuse, our backend (a Cloudflare Worker) records, for each key request: an identifier for your device, or for your account if you're signed in, your IP address, and the country associated with it.

While a recording is running, the extension also reports how many seconds it has recorded — roughly once a minute, plus once when you stop — tied to that same identifier, together with a random id for that recording and the extension's version number. If you're signed in, this is how your balance is debited as you use it; as a guest, it's how we keep a running total per device. Alongside that total we keep a daily one — how many seconds were recorded under your identifier on each date — so that we can see how the service is used over time; it is the same duration data, grouped by day rather than only added up. The recording itself is never sent — no audio, no transcript, no translation, and nothing about what was said or which tab, window, or screen you recorded. Only the duration.

This data is used only for billing your own balance, abuse prevention and usage monitoring — it is not sold, shared for advertising, or used to build a profile of you. Retention depends on what the data is for:

• A guest device's usage is deleted automatically after 24 months without any use.
• Once you have a balance or an active subscription, we keep your account's balance and usage data for as long as that balance exists — we can't owe you minutes and have deleted everything we know about your account at the same time.
• Purchase records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires (several years under Israeli law), regardless of what later happens to your balance.
• Rarely, a purchase notification from Paddle arrives without anything we can match to an account — for example if you paid without being signed in. We keep that notification exactly as we received it, which can include the email address and billing country you gave Paddle and the amount you paid, so that a person can find the purchase and credit it to you. We keep these with the purchase records above rather than deleting them on a schedule: deleting one would destroy the proof that you paid and received nothing.
• The daily totals described above are deleted after 13 months, whether or not you still have a balance — they are only used to understand usage over time, so nothing depends on keeping them longer.
• Key-request logs used only for abuse prevention are kept for a limited period, and per-recording identifiers are deleted after a week.

Feedback forms

Two optional surveys live on this website: one you reach by rating the extension inside the side panel, and one Chrome opens if you uninstall the extension. Both are Google Forms embedded in our pages. They are entirely voluntary — nothing is submitted unless you fill the form in and send it, and the extension attaches nothing to the link it opens: no device or account identifier, no rating value, and none of your transcripts or audio. Whatever you type into a form goes to Google Forms and is visible to us as the form's owner; if you include your contact details there, we use them only to reply to you.

Third parties

• Soniox — processes the audio to produce transcription and translation. See their privacy policy at soniox.com/policies/privacy-policy.
• Cloudflare — hosts our backend and processes the request metadata described above.
• Google — if you choose to sign in, verifies your identity for us. We request only your account id, name and email address, never your password, and never access to your Gmail, Drive, Calendar or any other Google data.
• Paddle.com Market Ltd — processes every payment as merchant of record and collects your payment and billing details directly, as described above.
• Google Forms — hosts the optional feedback surveys described above, and receives only what you type into them.

What we do NOT do

• No passwords are ever seen or stored by us — signing in happens on Google's own screen.
• No card numbers are ever seen or stored by us — Paddle handles payment directly.
• No selling or renting of any data.
• No advertising or ad tracking.
• No server-side storage of your audio, transcripts, or translations.

Your choices

• Use Live Transcribe fully as a guest, without ever signing in.
• Sign out at any time — your balance and any purchase stay with your Google account and reappear the next time you sign in, on any device.
• Cancel a subscription in one click from inside the extension.
• Delete any saved session (transcript, translation, audio) from the extension at any time.
• Ask us to delete your account's support data by writing to us — we keep only what tax law requires us to (purchase records).
• Uninstalling the extension removes all locally stored data. It does not cancel a subscription — do that first, either from inside the extension or from the link in your Paddle receipt.
• The feedback surveys are optional — you can ignore or close them at any time.

Recording others

You are responsible for complying with the laws that apply to you when recording or transcribing conversations, including obtaining the consent of other people where required.

Children

Live Transcribe is not directed to children under 16.

Chrome Web Store compliance

Live Transcribe's collection, use, and transfer of user data comply with the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We only collect and use data as necessary for the extension's single purpose — real-time transcription and translation, including the accounts and billing needed to sell it — and to protect the service from abuse. We do not sell user data, transfer it to data brokers or other information resellers, use it for advertising or personalized ads, or use it to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes.

Changes

We may update this policy; material changes will be reflected by the "Last updated" date above.

Contact

Questions? Contact pavelshalnov@gmail.com.