Privacy Policy

1. About this policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Subfluent collects, uses, stores, and discloses personal information when you use its website and bilingual live-transcription service, including accounts, saved sessions, the knowledge library, AI chat and web search, exports, billing, and support. Subfluent is an independently operated online service and is responsible for the processing described in this policy.

This policy does not cover third-party websites you choose to visit. If you record or submit another person's speech or information, you are responsible for having a lawful reason to do so, giving any required notice, and obtaining any required consent. An organization using Subfluent may also be responsible for how its users collect and submit information.

2. Information we collect

We collect account and sign-in information such as your Clerk user ID, verified email address, and, if you choose Google sign-in, a verified Google account identifier. We collect the live audio you choose to transmit, finalized original and translated transcript text, languages, segment timing, session titles and duration, summaries, knowledge-library search records and embeddings, chat messages and citations, app preferences, and messages you send to support. Raw microphone audio is streamed to Soniox for real-time processing and is not intentionally stored by Subfluent.

We also collect limited technical and commercial information needed to operate the service: necessary cookies and device storage, IP address in transit and a one-way IP hash for rate limiting, request and error identifiers, feature timings, model and token usage, audio duration and cost records, and Stripe customer, subscription, invoice, Checkout, and payment-status identifiers. Stripe collects payment-card and billing details directly; Subfluent does not store full card numbers. Speech, transcripts, or chats may incidentally contain sensitive information, but Subfluent does not use that content to identify or infer sensitive traits and is not designed for regulated health, child, or similarly sensitive workflows.

3. How we use information

We use information to create and secure your account; transcribe and translate live speech; save, search, summarize, export, and delete sessions; provide AI chat, citations, and optional public web search; remember your preferences; process subscriptions; enforce usage limits; prevent fraud and repeat-trial abuse; troubleshoot failures; protect the service; respond to requests; and meet legal obligations. Where the GDPR applies, these uses are based on performing our contract with you, our legitimate interests in security, reliability, fraud prevention, and service operation, and legal obligations such as accounting and valid legal requests. We would request consent before introducing non-essential advertising or analytics tracking where consent is required.

Subfluent uses automated systems to transcribe, translate, summarize, embed, search, and answer questions. These outputs may be incomplete or inaccurate and are not used by Subfluent to make legal, employment, credit, health, or similarly significant decisions about you. An automated free-trial check compares one-way digests derived from verified account and payment signals; a match may deny a trial and cancel it before any charge, but does not prevent a paid subscription. You may contest a trial decision and request human review at himaxluo@gmail.com.

4. Cookies and device storage

Subfluent sets a functional `subfluent-locale` cookie for one year to remember your language. Clerk sets cookies required for authentication and session security, and may use Cloudflare challenge cookies and limited SDK telemetry to protect and operate sign-in. Google and Stripe may set their own cookies when you choose Google sign-in or visit hosted Stripe Checkout or the Customer Portal. These providers control their cookie durations under their policies and service configurations.

Subfluent uses local storage for language, theme, layout, sidebar, source-selection, and web-search preferences. It uses IndexedDB to retry finalized transcript segments that have not reached the server. You can clear cookies and site storage in your browser, but this may sign you out, reset preferences, or permanently remove unsaved transcript segments. Subfluent does not currently use advertising cookies, cross-site tracking, or a standalone product-analytics service, and does not respond differently to legacy Do Not Track signals because it does not track your activity across other services.

5. How we disclose information

We use service providers only for the functions needed to deliver and protect Subfluent: Vercel hosts the website and server functions; Supabase hosts PostgreSQL data, queues, and backups; Fly.io runs background ingestion and deletion work; Clerk provides authentication and email-code delivery; Google provides optional sign-in and hosts the support mailbox; Cloudflare supports sign-in abuse protection; Soniox processes live audio for transcription and translation; OpenAI processes transcript-derived text, prompts, embeddings, summaries, chat, citations, and optional web search; and Stripe provides hosted billing and payment processing. OpenAI API requests are not used to train its models by default, and Soniox states that real-time audio and transcripts are not retained or used for model training.

We may also disclose the minimum necessary information to professional advisers, incident responders, or authorities when required by law or reasonably necessary to protect users, the public, our rights, or service security; in connection with a financing, reorganization, acquisition, or transfer of the service under appropriate confidentiality protections; or at your direction. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

6. How long we keep information

Saved sessions, transcript segments, summaries, and their published search projections remain until you delete the session, all session history, or your account. Superseded search revisions are non-searchable and are normally removed after seven days. Completed chats, bounded tool metadata, and citations remain until you delete the chat or account; deleting a cited session can leave a citation title and locator, without the source excerpt, until the chat is deleted. Failed transcript writes remain in that browser until saved, discarded, account-deleted, or cleared through browser controls.

We retain billing, usage, provider-attempt, rate-limit, security, support, deletion, and pseudonymous trial-eligibility records only as long as reasonably necessary for access control, reconciliation, fraud prevention, legal compliance, disputes, and reliable operation. Rate-limit buckets expire after their short request windows. OpenAI may retain default API abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days unless a different approved control or legal requirement applies. Account deletion immediately removes content from search and schedules deletion of application content, billing records, preferences, and the Clerk identity; limited records may remain where necessary for fraud prevention or law, and deleted rows may remain in protected backups until the provider's backup cycle expires.

7. EEA, UK, and similar privacy rights

Where applicable, you may request access to your personal data; correction of inaccurate data; deletion; restriction of processing; a portable, machine-readable copy of data you provided; or object to processing based on legitimate interests. You may also withdraw consent where consent is the legal basis and ask not to be subject to a solely automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects. Subfluent provides account data as JSON and transcript exports as text, and offers deletion controls for sessions, chats, and the account.

Email himaxluo@gmail.com with the subject “Privacy Request” or use the controls in Settings. We may ask you to sign in or reverify through Clerk, but will not request more information than reasonably needed to verify the request. We generally respond within one month where the GDPR applies, subject to lawful extensions and exceptions. You may lodge a complaint with the data protection authority where you live, work, or believe a violation occurred.

8. California privacy rights

California residents may have the right to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information collected and how they are used and disclosed; delete personal information; correct inaccurate information; opt out of sale or sharing; limit certain uses of sensitive personal information; and receive equal service for exercising these rights. During the preceding 12 months, Subfluent has collected the identifiers, customer and commercial records, internet activity, audio/electronic content, inferences, and sensitive information described in Section 2 and disclosed them to the service-provider categories in Section 5 for the stated business purposes.

Subfluent does not sell personal information, share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics, or knowingly sell or share information about anyone under 16. Accordingly, no “Do Not Sell or Share” link is required for current practices. Submit a California request to himaxluo@gmail.com; an authorized agent may do so where permitted, and we may verify the request, the consumer, and the agent's authority. We generally respond to verified requests within 45 days, subject to lawful extensions and exceptions.

9. Security

Subfluent uses measures designed to protect personal information, including HTTPS; restrictive security headers; Clerk authentication and recent-session reverification for account deletion; same-origin request checks; server-only database access; least-privilege database roles, private schemas, row-level security, ownership checks, and cross-tenant tests; hashed IP and keyed anti-abuse records; bounded inputs and outputs; rate limits and quotas; no-store export responses; provider credential separation; protected backups; and logging rules that exclude transcript and chat text, raw audio, verification codes, credentials, raw tool output, and database URLs.

No transmission or storage system is completely secure. Protect your email or Google account, use a trusted device, sign out on shared devices, and avoid submitting information that is not needed for the service. Contact himaxluo@gmail.com promptly if you believe your account or information has been compromised.

10. International data transfers

Subfluent is operated using infrastructure centered in the United States. Vercel server functions are configured in San Francisco, Supabase data is hosted in the western United States, and the Fly.io worker is configured in San Jose. Global content delivery and the providers named in Section 5, together with their subprocessors, may process information in the United States and other countries whose laws may differ from yours.

Where applicable law requires a transfer safeguard, we rely on the recipient's recognized adequacy status or Data Privacy Framework participation, the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK transfer addendum or equivalent terms, and supplementary technical and contractual measures. You may contact himaxluo@gmail.com for more information about safeguards relevant to your data.

11. Children's privacy

Subfluent is intended for adults aged 18 or older and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from a child under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information, contact himaxluo@gmail.com and we will investigate and delete it where required.

Do not use Subfluent to record a child or submit a child's information unless you have legal authority and have provided any required notice and obtained any required parental, guardian, school, or institutional consent. Subfluent is not offered as a school-directed or student-record service.

12. Contact and policy updates

For privacy questions or requests, email Subfluent Privacy at himaxluo@gmail.com. Use the email associated with your account where possible and do not send passwords, verification codes, full payment-card details, or unnecessary identity documents. No data protection officer has been appointed; privacy matters are handled directly by Subfluent's operator.

We may update this policy as the service, providers, or law changes. We will post the revised policy with a new effective date and provide additional in-product or email notice when a change is material or legally requires it. If another user submitted information about you, provide enough detail for us to locate the relevant account or session without sending unnecessary sensitive content.