Clipkiln — Privacy Policy
Version: 1.16 · Last updated: 2026-10-22
Who is responsible
Charles Benjamin Towe, trading as Clipkiln. Address: Crowle Court Farmhouse, Bredicot Lane, Crowle, Worcestershire, WR7 4AY, United Kingdom · Contact: support@clipkiln.com ICO registration: ZC240709
The short version
Your source videos are processed on our own server. Transcription (Whisper) and rendering (ffmpeg) both run on our own machine, and your footage is never uploaded to an AI provider. A finished clip leaves Clipkiln only when you send it somewhere: to a platform or Google Drive account you connected, as a download, or to an AI assistant you connected and asked for it.
The transcript does leave. The text of what is said in your video is sent to our AI provider so it can find the best moments, write hook lines, and translate subtitles. If your video contains things you would not paste into a chatbot, do not upload it.
What we collect
Your account: email address, a hashed password (bcrypt — we never see the original), display name, plan, minutes used this period, and your Stripe customer ID. You must give us an email address and a password to have an account — or sign in with Google instead of a password (see below); without them we cannot provide the service. Everything else below is optional or arises from what you choose to do.
Signing in with Google: if you use "Continue with Google", Google tells us your Google account's email address, its name, and its Google account ID. We use the email address to find or create your Clipkiln account, the name as your display name when we create one, and we keep the ID so that Google can sign you in again. We receive no Google password, keep no Google access token, and ask for nothing beyond that (the openid, email and profile permissions). If you already have a Clipkiln account with the same email address, signing in with Google logs you into it.
Your content, stored on our server: the videos you upload, or the address of a video you ask us to fetch from a link; transcripts of them; clips, stories and compilations we render; the scripts you write; any logo, music, or transition sound you upload; and the sound effects you add to your sound library. For a clip where you use the two-speaker split or speaker overrides (paid plans), also a small picture of each face in it and where that face is on screen over time — see Is my video "biometric data"?.
Support: if you use the Contact form, we receive what you write, and — only if you tick the box to include them — your browser, operating system and device type, to help us reproduce a problem. Files you attach are not passed on to us; see the retention table.
How you found us: if the link you arrived through carried a campaign tag, or your browser told us which site sent you, we store that on your account — the tag and the site's hostname. We also store your answer to "Where did you hear about us?" at sign-up (one choice from a list, plus your own words if you pick "Somewhere else"), and, if you signed up inside an app's built-in browser, the app's name — "Instagram", "TikTok", "Facebook" or "Snapchat", read from your browser's user-agent. We keep only that name, never the user-agent itself. It is what lets us tell which of the things we post actually brings people who stay. It is deleted with your account.
If an affiliate referred you: if you created your account through a Clipkiln affiliate's link or typed their code at sign-up (or a promotional code Clipkiln publishes itself, which is recorded the same way with no affiliate involved), we record which affiliate it was, how (link or code), and whether we counted, held or rejected the referral. For each payment you make we work out the affiliate's commission, and keep that record — the amount, the date, the Stripe reference and, to stop one person paying for "referred" accounts with their own card, a fingerprint Stripe gives us for the card (never the card number). The affiliate never learns who you are: they see only counts, dates and amounts. The link from /r/… adds the code to the page address and nothing is stored on your device.
If you are an affiliate: we keep what the Affiliate Programme Agreement says (its section 9): your name and email, the email of your Wise or PayPal account and the name on it, the version of the agreement you accepted and when, your code, the number of clicks on your link per day (with nothing about who clicked), your referrals and commission, payouts, and any tax details you send us. Some decisions about applications, referrals and commission are made by automatic checks for fraud (matching cards, email domains you own, and sign-up patterns). When a check alone declines your application or holds a referral or commission, we email you; you can explain your side, ask for a person to review the decision and challenge it at support@clipkiln.com, and we reply within 14 days. Your payout details go to Wise or PayPal to pay you.
If you post for our clipper programme: we use your name, the email of your Wise account, your country, your social handle(s), the email you submit posts from, your post links and submission-form answers, our own dated screenshots of your posts and our checks of them, any analytics recording you send us, and the payee name and last 4 digits Wise shows us, to check your posts and pay you (see the clipper terms at clipkiln.com/clipper-terms). We share your name, that email and the amount with Wise to make the payment. You don't need a Clipkiln account for this.
Marketing emails, only if you ask for them: if you tick "Email me occasional tips and offers" at sign-up, we record that you did and when. The box is never pre-ticked, and without it we send you only the emails the service needs (confirming your address, resetting a password, trial reminders, receipts, and a note when a video you submitted has finished processing and you weren't there to see it). You can withdraw at any time — through the unsubscribe link in any such email, or by writing to support@clipkiln.com — and we then stop.
A record of what your account did, and when: when you signed up, confirmed your address, logged in, started a checkout, downloaded a clip, when a video finished processing, when you reached your monthly limit, and when a payment succeeded, failed or was refunded. It is counts and times — never the words in your video, the names of your files, or anything you typed. We use it to see whether the product is working and where people get stuck. It is deleted with your account.
Accounts you connect: if you connect TikTok, YouTube or Google Drive so you can post from inside Clipkiln, we store the access token that platform gives us; the account's display name or handle — for a Google account (YouTube or Drive), that is the Google account's email address; the platform's ID for that account, so we can tell your connected accounts apart; and a record of what was posted, including the platform's ID and link for each post. We store no password for them. The tokens are encrypted at rest in our database. Disconnecting in the app deletes the token.
Google user data. Clipkiln's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In practice that means we ask for the narrowest access that does the job — for Google Drive we request drive.file, which can only see the files Clipkiln itself puts there and gives us no access to the rest of your Drive, and for YouTube we request youtube.upload, which can upload to your channel and nothing else. For both we also request openid and email, which give us only your Google account's email address and ID, so we can show you which account is connected; "Continue with Google" asks for the same two plus profile (your name), and only to sign you in. That data is used only to deliver the feature you asked for; it is never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train any model.
YouTube. Clipkiln uses the YouTube API Services to upload clips to your channel. By using that feature you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google's handling of your data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy. As well as disconnecting in the app, you can revoke Clipkiln's access to your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
From other sources: Stripe tells us whether your payments succeeded, and each platform you connect tells us your account name and ID on that platform.
Your IP address is used, in memory only, to rate-limit sign-ups and uploads so the service cannot be flooded, and we do not use it to profile you. We do not store it in our database. Our web server's access logs record it, with the page requested, the time and your browser type — see the retention table.
We do not use cookies for advertising or tracking. We do not sell your data.
Who else sees it
| Who | What they receive | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe (payments; through Managed Payments and Link, the merchant of record for new subscriptions) | Your email, and the name, billing address and payment details you give it at checkout | It takes your payment and keeps your card details — and for subscriptions bought through Managed Payments it is the seller, calculating tax and handling receipts and billing support under its own privacy policy. We never see your card number. Stripe tells us the card's fingerprint — a token it gives each card, not the card number — which we use only to keep the free trial and the free first month to one per card (see How long we keep things). |
| OpenRouter | The transcript of your video (the words spoken), and your script if you use the story tab | To score the best moments, write hooks, and translate subtitles. We send every request with a "do not collect" data policy, so it is routed only to AI providers that do not store or train on your transcript. |
| Pexels | Search terms derived from your video's content (e.g. "barbell squat") | To fetch matching stock footage, only if you switch b-roll on |
| Resend (email delivery) | Your email address, and anything you write in the Contact form | It delivers our account emails and carries your support messages to us, so we can reply |
| Backblaze (backup storage) | An encrypted copy of our database — your account details, transcripts, scripts, the small face pictures described under Is my video "biometric data"?, and the records of what you uploaded and posted — and encrypted copies of the files you asked us to keep: the clips you saved, and your logo, music and sounds. Never your uploads or unsaved clips | So the service can be restored if our server is lost. It is encrypted on our server before it is sent, and Backblaze does not have the key, so it cannot read it |
| Telegram | Your email address, in a short operational message when you sign up, confirm your address, finish processing a video, subscribe, change plan, cancel, when a payment fails or is refunded or disputed, or when a billing check needs attention — plus a nightly total of those counts | It is how the operator is alerted to things that need a human. No video, no transcript and no content ever goes to it |
| TikTok, YouTube, Google Drive | The finished clip, its caption, and whatever the platform needs to post it — but only for accounts you connected, and only when you publish, schedule a post, or switch on automation for that account | To post the clip to your own account, on your instruction |
| Modal (GPU compute) | The text of your narration script, if you use the story tab | It runs the synthetic voice on a GPU. It receives text and returns audio; it is not shown your videos, and nothing is kept there |
| Anthropic / OpenAI, through your own API key | Only if you enter your own API key for the automation feature: the story theme you typed | To write scripts on your own account, billed to you, not us. If you do not enter a key, nothing is sent this way |
| Your AI assistant (e.g. Claude by Anthropic, ChatGPT by OpenAI), if you connect one to Clipkiln | Whatever you ask it to read or do: transcripts, clip and job details, download links to your clips, your usage | You chose to run Clipkiln from that assistant. Only after you approve the connection; you can revoke it at any time. What the assistant does with it is governed by your agreement with its provider |
| Wise (payments to affiliates and clippers) | If you are an affiliate or clipper paid by Wise: your name, your Wise email, the amount and a payment reference | To pay you. Wise Payments Ltd is a UK electronic money institution and acts as its own controller for its checks |
| PayPal (payments to affiliates) | If you are an affiliate paid by PayPal: your PayPal email, the amount and a payment reference | To pay you. PayPal acts as its own controller for its checks |
| Google (the operator's tracking sheet) | If you are a clipper: your name, Wise email, country, social handles, the email you submit from, post links, form answers, our screenshots and checks, any analytics recording you send, the views we counted, what we paid and the payee details Wise shows us | We keep the clipper programme's records in a private Google Sheet only the operator can open |
We never send your video file to Stripe, OpenRouter, Pexels, Resend or Telegram. Backblaze receives only encrypted copies of the clips you chose to save.
Where they are. Wise is in the UK. Stripe, OpenRouter, Resend, Modal, Google, TikTok, PayPal, Anthropic and OpenAI are outside the UK, Pexels and Backblaze (our backups are stored in its Amsterdam data centre) are in the EU, and Telegram operates internationally. Transfers to the EU rely on the UK's adequacy regulations. Transfers to the others rely on the safeguards each provider offers — such as the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses — or, where you ask us to send something to a platform or assistant you connected, on that being necessary to do what you asked. You can ask us for detail on any of them, including a copy of the safeguards.
Cookies and what we store in your browser
We use no cookies and no third-party trackers. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, and nothing that follows you to other websites.
We do count visits to our own pages, on our own server. For each page view we record the page, the date and time, any campaign tag in the link you clicked (the utm_... part of the address), and the hostname of the site that sent you — "tiktok.com", never the full address of the page you came from. It tells us whether what we post is bringing anyone here. The counter stores nothing in your browser, nothing is shared with anyone, and no profile of you is built.
The visit counter does not keep your IP address. To tell 300 page views apart from 40 people, the counter stores a scrambled one-way code made from your address, your browser's user-agent, our secret key and today's date. The address cannot be recovered from it. Because the date is part of it, the code is different tomorrow — so it cannot be used to recognise you on another day, and it is deleted with the visit.
We store the following in your browser's local storage (and one item in its session storage, which is deleted when you close the tab). Each one is there for something you asked for or a choice you made, and none of it is used to track you or shared with anyone:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your login token | So you stay signed in and we are not asking for your password on every page |
| A note that you have just signed up in this browser — only after you sign up | So the confirmation link in our email can sign you straight in when you open it here; it is deleted once you have confirmed |
| A one-time random code while you sign in with Google — only if you use it | So a sign-in that someone else started cannot log you into their account; it is deleted as soon as Google sends you back |
| The ID of your last upload | So closing the tab, or your laptop sleeping, does not lose the video you are part-way through |
| Your tick on "this is my own video" — only once you tick it | So you confirm it once on this browser rather than on every video; untick it and we ask again |
| The link you were uploading when you were asked to upgrade — only then | So after paying, the same video carries on without you finding it again |
| A link to one of your clips you opened while signed out — session storage, this tab only | So after you sign in you land on that clip, not the home page |
| Your choice not to have your visits counted — only if you make it | So we keep honouring it on your next visit |
| That you pressed "Not now" on the Automation tip — only if you do | So we do not show you a tip you have dismissed |
| That you closed the "your trial ends soon" notice today — only if you close it | So it does not come straight back the same day; it can show again the next day while the trial is ending |
Because these are needed to provide something you asked for, or to remember a choice you made, they are exempt from the consent requirement under PECR — which is why you are not being shown a cookie banner.
Counting visits. The counter stores nothing on your device, but it does read the page address and the referring site from your browser. It relies on the exception in PECR for collecting statistics about how our own service is used so that we can improve it: the figures are used for nothing else and shared with no one. Our lawful basis under UK GDPR is our legitimate interest in knowing whether the service reaches anyone. It is not used to make any decision about you. You can switch it off at any time, free, in one click: "Don't count my visits" at the foot of every page. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, your visits are not counted at all — you do not need to do anything. You can also object by emailing support@clipkiln.com.
You can clear all of it at any time through your browser settings. Doing so signs you out and forgets the items above; it deletes nothing from your account.
Is my video "biometric data"?
We do not identify anyone. But we would rather describe what actually happens than give you a one-word answer.
- Speech becomes text. Whisper transcribes what is said. That is the transcript, and it is the thing that gets sent to our AI provider.
- We do no face recognition. Faces are detected — a box on the screen, so the crop can follow whoever is speaking — and followed from moment to moment within one clip by where they are on screen, never by what they look like. They are never matched against any database, or against each other across clips, videos or users.
- Choosing who the crop follows (paid plans). If you use the two-speaker split or speaker overrides, we store with that clip a small picture (96 pixels square) of each face found, and where each face sits on screen over time, so you can click the person the crop should follow. Nothing is measured from those pictures, they are shown only to you, and they are deleted with the clip's upload (see How long we keep things).
- Auto-reframe tells speakers apart within one video. If you switch it on, we compute a mathematical summary of each voice so we can group the moments where the same person is talking, and point the crop at the right face. It exists to answer "is this the same speaker as ten seconds ago?", never "who is this?". Those summaries are held in memory for the length of that one render and then discarded — they are never written to disk, never attached to your account, and never compared between videos or between users.
The ICO is explicit that a photo or "a recording of someone talking" is a biometric sample, not biometric data: it becomes special-category data only when it is processed for the purpose of uniquely identifying someone. Distinguishing two speakers inside one video, and then forgetting how, is not that.
AI makes no decisions about you. It scores moments in your video to suggest clips; you choose what to keep, and nothing it does has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.
People who appear in videos
If you appear in a video that a Clipkiln user uploaded, we process your image, voice and words only to produce clips for that user, as described above. The user is responsible for having the right to upload the video (see our Terms). We do not identify you, and the video and its clips are deleted on the schedule below unless the user saves them. You can exercise your rights by emailing support@clipkiln.com.
Our legal basis
- Running your account and providing the service, including account emails (confirmation, password reset, trial reminders, receipts, and a note when a video you submitted has finished processing): performance of a contract.
- Posting to a TikTok, YouTube or Google Drive account you connected: performance of a contract. Connecting the account is the request; you can disconnect at any time.
- Keeping the service secure and preventing abuse, including our server logs: legitimate interests.
- Support messages: legitimate interests — answering you and fixing what you report.
- Recording how you found us and what your account did: legitimate interests — learning which of what we post brings people who stay, and where the product fails them.
- Marketing emails: your consent, given by ticking the box at sign-up. Withdrawing it does not affect anything else about your account.
- Encrypted backups: legitimate interests — being able to restore the service, and your account, after a failure.
- Alerting the operator that an account signed up, subscribed, changed plan or had a payment problem: legitimate interests — a one-person business has to know when something needs a human. Only an email address and the event go into that alert.
- Keeping a hashed record of a closed account's free trial: legitimate interests, in not having a one-per-customer offer taken repeatedly. See the retention section.
- Keeping a card's fingerprint with the free offer it had: legitimate interests, in the same thing — a free trial, and a referral's free first month, being one per card as well as one per email address (Terms 4a and 4b).
- Keeping records of payments: legal obligation (tax law).
- The affiliate programme: for affiliates, performance of the Affiliate Programme Agreement and our legal obligation to keep tax records; the automatic fraud checks on applications and referrals are needed to enter into and perform that agreement, with the safeguards described above. For a referred customer, recording the referral and the commission on your payments is our legitimate interest in paying affiliates correctly and stopping fraud.
- The clipper programme: performance of our agreement with you (the clipper terms), and our legal obligation to keep tax records of what we paid.
How long we keep things
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| An upload, and everything belonging to it | 3 days after the upload was last processed or edited — the source video, its clips, its transcript, and the record of the upload itself are all deleted together. Accounts that agreed to a version of our Terms before 1.4 keep the previous 5-day period until the date in our email about the change |
| Rendered clips you did not save | Deleted with their upload at 3 days (sooner if you delete the upload) |
| Stock footage we fetched for a job | 1 day |
| A video you send to the transcriber or the subtitler (the Other tab) | 4 hours after you send it. The subtitled video we make is not stored either and cannot be saved to your account — download it, or send it to your Google Drive, before the 4 hours are up |
| Story videos you did not save | 5 days after they were made — the script and every setting are kept, so you can re-render the video at any time |
| Clips you saved to your account, story scripts, compilations (the list of clips and settings — a rendered compilation video is deleted after 5 days like any unsaved render, and can be re-rendered), and your logo, music and transition sound | Until you delete them or close your account |
| Sound effects in your sound library | Until you delete them or close your account, or 14 days after a sound was last used — uploaded, placed on a clip, or used in a video — whichever comes first. An unused sound is then deleted automatically |
| A sign-up whose email address is never confirmed | 14 days after it was made, then deleted with everything belonging to it. No record of it is kept, not even the hash below |
| Account data (email, plan, usage) | While your account is open. When you close it, it is deleted from the live service — there is no grace period and no soft-delete. Some copies last a limited time longer; see below |
| Backups — of our database, and of the clips you saved and your logo, music and sounds | 30 days from when each copy was made, then deleted automatically within a day. They are locked for those 30 days so that nobody — us included — can alter or delete them early, so a saved clip you delete, or everything when you close your account, is gone from the backups within 31 days. We also keep 14 days of snapshots on our own server. If we ever restore from a backup, we delete again any account that had been closed |
| Our web server's access logs (IP address, time, page requested, browser type) | 14 days, then deleted automatically |
| Tokens for accounts you connected | Until you disconnect them or close your account |
| Files you attach to a support message | Deleted as soon as the message is sent — they are not forwarded to us; only the number of files goes in the email. If an error stops a file being deleted, a daily sweep removes it within 30 days |
| Support messages | Clipkiln itself stores none — your message is delivered to our email inbox and lives there, where we keep it for up to 12 months so we can follow up |
| Operator alerts (see Telegram above) | Up to 12 months in the operator's alert channel |
| Page-view counts (page, campaign tag, referring site's hostname, the day-code above) | 90 days, then deleted automatically |
| The record of what your account did and when | 400 days, and in any case only while your account is open — closing your account deletes it |
| A record of money taken, refunded or failed — the amount, the date and the Stripe reference | Kept after you close your account for 6 years, as tax law requires. The link to your account is removed when the account closes — see below |
| Referral and commission records (which affiliate, how, the amounts, dates, Stripe references and card fingerprint) | 6 years after the affiliate's last payout, as tax law requires. The link to a referred customer's account is removed when that account closes |
| An affiliate's details, agreement record, click counts and payouts | While they are an affiliate, then 6 years after their last payout |
| A declined affiliate application | 12 months, then deleted automatically |
| Clipper programme payment records (name, Wise email, country, social handles, post links, amounts paid, Wise reference, payee name and last 4 digits) | 6 years after the last payment, as tax law requires |
| Our screenshots of clippers' posts, and analytics recordings clippers send us | 12 months |
| A one-way hash of your email address, plus whether that account used its free trial and whether it ever paid — only for an account that did one or the other | Kept for 3 years after the account is closed (after the last closure, if the same address is closed more than once), then deleted automatically — see below |
| The fingerprint of a card that started a free trial, had a free first month, or paid us (Stripe's token for the card, not the card number), which offer it had, the account it was on, and when | 2 years after the trial or first payment, including after the account is closed, then deleted automatically — see below |
What outlives your account, and why. Three records are kept on purpose after an account closes:
The trial mark. The free trial is one per email address, so if closing an account wiped every trace of it, closing and re-registering would be a way to take another one. When an account that had used its trial or had ever paid closes, we keep a one-way cryptographic hash of your email address — not the address, and it cannot be turned back into one — whether that account had used its trial, and whether it had ever paid. It is read for one purpose only: recognising, at sign-up, that this mailbox has had its trial, and it is deleted automatically 3 years after the account closed. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in preventing repeated use of a one-per-customer offer, and you can object to it using the rights below.
The card mark. The free trial and a referral's free first month are also one per payment card, so a new email address with the same card does not get another. When a trial or a free month starts, or a card first pays us, we keep the card's fingerprint from Stripe — a token, not the card number, and useless for paying — with which of those it was, the account, and the date. It is read for one purpose only: when a new trial or free month starts, whether that card already had one, or paid, on another account. It is deleted automatically 2 years later. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in preventing repeated use of a one-per-customer offer, and you can object to it using the rights below.
The payment record. We keep the amount, the date and the Stripe reference for money taken, refunded or failed, because tax law requires a business to be able to show what it was paid. The link to your account is removed when the account closes. The Stripe reference could still be matched to Stripe's own records, so we treat it as personal data and use it only for our tax records. Stripe keeps its own records of the payment under its own legal obligations either way. Our lawful basis is our legal obligation to keep accounting records.
Copies that expire on their own. Besides those three, your data can remain for a limited time in places that are deleted on a fixed schedule rather than when you leave: our backups (up to 31 days), our server logs (14 days), our support inbox (up to 12 months) and our operator alerts (up to 12 months). None of them is used to contact you or to rebuild your account.
Your rights
You can ask us to: see the data we hold on you, correct it, delete it, export it, restrict our use of it while a question about it is resolved, or object to processing we base on legitimate interests. Some rights have limits — for example, we must keep payment records for tax — and we will tell you if one applies. Email support@clipkiln.com.
We will respond within one month. Where we need to confirm who you are first, that month runs from when we have verified your identity.
If you are unhappy, complain to us first at support@clipkiln.com, or through the Contact form in the app. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you the outcome without undue delay. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113) at any time — you do not have to come to us first, although the ICO will usually expect you to have given us the chance to put it right.
Security
Passwords are hashed with bcrypt, so we cannot read them. The tokens for any social account you connect, and any AI provider key you enter, are encrypted at rest. Our off-site backups are encrypted with AES-256 before they leave our server. The service is served over HTTPS, and access to your files requires your login. No system is perfectly secure — do not upload anything whose exposure you could not tolerate.
Children
Clipkiln is not for under-18s and we do not knowingly hold their data. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it and delete its data.
Changes
We will post updates here, with a new version number and date, and email you about material ones before they take effect.