Privacy Policy

1. Privacy at a glance

The following notes give a simple overview of what happens to your personal data when you visit this website.

2. Responsible party

The party responsible for data processing on this website is:

Benjamin Roul
Wächterstraße 51
72074 Tübingen
Germany
Email: clipaxt@gmail.com

The responsible party is the natural or legal person who, alone or together with others, decides on the purposes and means of the processing of personal data.

3. Data collection on this website

Server log files

When the pages are accessed, our hosting provider automatically collects information that your browser transmits: browser type and version, the operating system used, the referrer URL, the time of the request and the IP address. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR — operating a technically error-free website is not possible without this data. It is not merged with other data sources. These logs are kept for at most 14 days on the render server (nginx / systemd-journal) and then automatically deleted / rotated. Edge connection data is processed by our hosting provider's CDN (Cloudflare) only for delivery and protection; we do not keep separate edge logs of our own.

User account

For sign-up we store your email address and, if you sign in with Google, your name and profile picture. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) lit. b GDPR (performance of the usage contract). If you delete your account, this data is deleted. Login codes (magic links) are valid for 15 minutes and are deleted immediately after use or expiry (attempt counter ≤ 5, rate-limit 5 / 15 min). Session cookies are valid for 30 days (Art. 6 (1) lit. f, § 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG). Backups of the database (Neon PITR, 7-day window) and of the media volume still contain your data for up to 7 days after deletion and are then overwritten.

Cookies

We use exclusively technically necessary cookies: a signed session cookie that keeps you logged in for 30 days, and short-lived cookies that secure the sign-in process (login-state ~10 min, TikTok OAuth state 10 min) against unauthorized access. Both are required for operation (Art. 6 (1) lit. f GDPR, § 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG) and therefore do not require consent. We do not use tracking or advertising cookies.

Your videos and clips

To provide the service we download the videos you specify, analyze them and generate clips, which we store until you delete them. Source files downloaded for a job (full VOD, audio extract, temporary frames) are deleted right after the job finishes; any leftovers from crashed jobs are swept after at most 24 hours (hourly sweep). Private videos uploaded for Create are removed after seven days once no run is using them (checked hourly). Finished clips and share uploads remain in/var/lib/voql/media and in the database until you delete the clip or your account — deleted clips disappear from backups at the latest when the 7-day PITR window of the database and the rolling file-system backups expire.

Two things leave our server in the process: first, the audio track of the video goes to a transcription service that turns it into text. Then this text goes to a language model that evaluates it so that your clips can be created from it. Both providers are processors under Art. 28 GDPR (see section 4).

If someone is speaking in your video, the voice and the content of what is said are part of this transmission — including of people other than yourself. Please make sure you only process material for which you hold the necessary rights and consents. Data from your account and your Google/TikTok tokens are not sent along.

Contact inquiries

If you write via the contact form or by email, we store your message, your email address and, if provided, your name to handle the inquiry (Art. 6 (1) lit. b/f GDPR). Contact emails are kept only as long as the conversation requires plus the statutory retention for business correspondence — typically deleted 6 months after the last exchange, at the latest 3 years if the conversation was contract-relevant. The 5/h/IP rate-limit log for the form is kept in memory and expires after 1 hour; the voql-cron log (voql-cron.log) and app logs (journalctl) are rotated and kept for at most 30 days.

4. Service providers and processing

We use the following service providers for operation. Where a provider processes personal data on our behalf, we conclude a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR — this is still partly outstanding and is being completed. Transfers to the USA are intended to be safeguarded by standard contractual clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, but this is not yet consistently secured by contract for every recipient.

• Cloudflare — hosting and delivery of the website (Workers/CDN).
• Neon — Postgres database for account, channel and clip data.
• Resend — sending sign-in and notification emails.
• Hostman — server on which the videos are analyzed and the clips are rendered. The server is located in Germany; for this step your videos do not leave the EU.
• Speech-recognition provider — converts the audio track of your video into text. Processing in the USA.
• Language-model provider — automated evaluation of this text to create your clips. Processing in the USA.

We list the last two providers as a category rather than by name — Art. 13 (1) lit. e GDPR expressly permits categories as well for naming recipients. On request we will tell you the specific providers at any time; write to the address in section 9. We have no contractual assurance that these US providers do not use your content to train their own models or retain it beyond processing; only the video material you specify (audio track, transcript and extracted frames) is sent there — no account data and no Google/TikTok tokens.

Database and media backups (Neon point-in-time recovery, Hostman snapshots / /var/lib/voql/media) are kept for at most 7 days and are then overwritten. If you delete a clip or your account, the data is removed from the live systems immediately and from the next backup generation at the latest — there is no additional archive copy.

5. Analytics tools and advertising

We do not use analytics or tracking tools on this website: no tracking or advertising cookies, no usage profiles and no sharing of usage data with advertising networks. Operationally necessary, aggregated counters (for example, the total number of clips created) contain no personal data.

We do not use any advertising networks and do not share usage data with them.

6. YouTube API Services

Clipaxt uses the YouTube API Services to upload clips to the YouTube channel you have linked with your account. By using this feature you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. The Google Privacy Policy additionally applies.

What data we receive from Google

When you link a channel, we receive an access and a refresh token from Google, as well as your channel's name and ID. We show you the channel name in the dashboard so it is clear where a clip is being published. We need the tokens because scheduled uploads run hours to days after you approve them. We do not read any comments, subscriber lists or statistics.

We do not pass on this data received from Google to anyone — not to processors, not to ad networks, not to data brokers, and we do not sell it. It leaves our servers exclusively toward Google itself, to carry out the upload you initiated.

We also do not use this data to develop, improve or train AI or machine-learning models — neither our own nor those of others. The language models that Clipaxt uses to create your clips never see any data from Google APIs; they work exclusively with the video material you specified yourself.

How we protect this data

Your Google tokens are the most sensitive data we hold — whoever has them can publish in your name. This is why the following applies to them:

• Stored encrypted — access and refresh tokens are stored in the database encrypted with AES-256-GCM, each value with its own initialization vector. The key is not in the database but kept separately in the server environment. Anyone who got hold of the database would still not have usable tokens.
• Transmitted encrypted — access to clipaxt.com and all calls to the Google APIs run exclusively over TLS.
• Never in the browser — tokens do not leave the server. The interface only receives the information whether an authorization is valid, not the authorization itself.
• Scoped to your account — every database access is bound to your user ID, additionally secured by Row Level Security. Before every upload we check that the token still belongs to the channel you intended the clip for, and abort otherwise.
• Sessions secured — sign-in runs via a signed, httpOnly cookie that is not readable by scripts in the browser.
• No human access — nobody sees your tokens in plain text. Access to the production environment is held solely by the responsible party named in section 2, and only as far as it is necessary for operation and troubleshooting.
• Deleted immediately — if you disconnect a channel, the record with both tokens is deleted, not just hidden.

How long we store them

As long as the link exists. If you disconnect the channel in the dashboard or delete your account, the tokens and the channel data are deleted.

Revoke access

You can revoke Clipaxt's access to your Google account at any time — independently of us, via the security settings of your Google account. After that Clipaxt can no longer upload anything in your name.

Limited Use

Clipaxt's use of information received from Google APIs, and its transfer to any other app, adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

In plain terms: we use this data exclusively to provide the features you see in Clipaxt's interface — to show the channel being published to, and to upload the clip there. We do not pass it on to third parties, do not use it for advertising and do not use it to train AI models. Humans do not read this data, unless you expressly ask us to, we have to investigate an abuse or security incident, or the law requires it.

7. TikTok API

Clipaxt uses the TikTok API (TikTok Technology Ltd., Dublin) to upload clips to the TikTok account you have linked. By using this feature you agree to the TikTok Terms of Service and the TikTok Privacy Policy.

What data we receive from TikTok

When you link an account, we receive your TikTok open ID, username, nickname and avatar URL, as well as an access and a refresh token. We show the nickname in the dashboard so it is clear where a clip is being published. The scopes we request are user.info.basic (basic profile) and video.publish (upload on your behalf). We do not read followers, likes or analytics. The tokens are needed because scheduled uploads run hours to days after you approve them.

We do not pass on this data received from TikTok to anyone — not to processors, not to ad networks, not to data brokers, and we do not sell it. It leaves our servers exclusively toward TikTok itself, to fetch the creator capabilities and to carry out the upload you initiated (including caption, privacy level and comment/duet/stitch settings that you choose per post).

We also do not use this data to train AI or machine-learning models — the language models that create your clips never see any data from TikTok APIs; they work exclusively with the video material you specified yourself.

How we protect this data

The same protections as for Google tokens apply:

• Stored encrypted — access and refresh tokens are stored AES-256-GCM encrypted with a per-value IV; the key is kept separately in the server environment.
• Transmitted encrypted — clipaxt.com and all calls to TikTok APIs run exclusively over TLS.
• Never in the browser — tokens never leave the server; the UI only learns whether the authorization is valid.
• Scoped to your account — every database access is bound to your user ID (Row Level Security). Before upload we refresh the token if needed and abort if the authorization was revoked.
• No human access — nobody sees your tokens in plain text; access to production is held solely by the responsible party named in section 2 and only for operation/troubleshooting.
• Deleted immediately — if you disconnect the account in the dashboard or delete your Clipaxt account, the record with both tokens is deleted, not hidden. On disconnect we additionally call TikTok's oauth/revoke endpoint so a later reconnect shows the consent screen again.

How long we store them

As long as the link exists. If you disconnect the account or delete your Clipaxt account, the tokens and channel data are deleted.

Revoke access

Disconnect the account in the Clipaxt dashboard, or revoke the app in your TikTok authorization settings. After that Clipaxt can no longer upload in your name.

8. Your rights

You have the right at any time to obtain free information about your stored personal data, its origin and recipients and the purpose of the data processing, as well as a right to have this data corrected or deleted. You may also request the restriction of processing, object to processing and have your data transferred in a common format (Art. 15 to 20 GDPR).

You can revoke any consent you have given at any time with effect for the future. Independently of this, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the member state of your place of residence or of the alleged infringement (Art. 77 GDPR).

9. Contact

If you have any questions about data protection, contact:
clipaxt@gmail.com or use our contact form — we usually reply within 2 hours between 08:00 and 22:00 (Berlin time).