Privacy Policy

CaptionCast ("we", "our", "us") provides real-time captioning and translation for live events. This policy explains, in plain language, what we collect when you use captioncast.io, what we do with it, who can see it, and how long we keep it.

1. Information We Collect

Account information. Your email address and either a hashed password or, if you sign in with Google or another provider through Auth0, the basic profile details that provider shares (such as your name, email address and profile picture). If you create or join an organization, we store the organization's name, its members and their roles, and its settings.

Meeting audio. While a meeting is running, the operator's browser captures microphone or soundboard audio and streams it to our servers. We send it to our speech-to-text provider to create captions, and, unless recording is turned off for that meeting, we also save it as a recording so it can be played back later. See section 3.

Captions and transcripts. The text produced from your meetings, in the original language and every translation, speaker labels and any speaker names you add during playback, along with meeting details such as the title, schedule, languages, glossary terms and any context you enter to improve accuracy.

Payment information. Stripe processes all payments. We never see or store your full card number. We keep a record of your purchases, credit balance and Stripe customer ID. Stripe handles card data under its own privacy policy.

Support conversations. Messages you send through the in-app support chat, any files you attach, and the email address you give us so we can reply.

Usage and technical data. Captioning minutes used, meeting start and stop times, how many viewers are connected, and technical information such as browser type, IP address and error details, which may appear in our server logs and error reports. Logs and error reports can also contain short fragments of caption text.

Caption viewers. People who open a caption display link or QR code do not need an account. We store their display preferences (such as font size and theme) on their own device, and we count how many viewers are connected. We do not ask viewers for personal information.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To caption and translate your meetings in real time
• To store transcripts and recordings so your organization can review, replay and export them
• To run your account, process payments and track your captioning credits
• To send service emails such as account verification, invitations, meeting reminders, balance alerts and receipts, and occasional offers about CaptionCast
• To answer support requests
• To find and fix problems, and to review caption accuracy so we can improve the service
• To prevent abuse and meet legal obligations

We never sell, rent or share your personal information for advertising or marketing.

3. How Audio Recording Works

Audio is captured only while a meeting is running, and only after the operator's browser has been given microphone permission. From the moment the operator presses Start until they press Stop:

• the audio is sent over an encrypted connection to Deepgram, which turns speech into text. This happens whether or not the meeting is recorded, because captions need it;
• if recording is on for that meeting, the same audio is also saved in short segments to our cloud storage (Amazon Web Services in the United States), where it is encrypted at rest;
• when audio was saved, signed-in members of your organization can play the recording back, synced with the captions, from the meeting's playback page.

You decide whether audio is recorded. Recording is on by default. An owner or admin can turn it off for the whole organization in the organization settings, and the meeting form can switch it on or off for a single meeting. The setting is read when a session starts and does not change while that session is running, so a change applies from the next Start.

When recording is off, we do not store the audio of that meeting. That means there is no audio playback for it, and our staff have no audio to review when helping you with caption quality. Captions and the transcript are still created and saved, and are kept and deleted as described in section 5. Turning recording off does not delete audio that was already recorded; that is removed by your retention setting, the time limit in section 5, or by deleting the meeting.

Your responsibility as an organization. Your organization decides what is captioned and whether it is recorded. Please let speakers and attendees know that the session is being captioned and, if recording is on, recorded, and get any consent the law requires, such as from parents or guardians when children may speak.

4. Who Can See Your Data

• Your organization. Signed-in members of your organization can see its meetings, transcripts and recordings. Owners and admins can also manage members, settings and billing. If your organization sits under a parent organization, that parent's owners and admins can see it too.
• People with a display link. Anyone who has a meeting's display link or QR code can watch its live captions. Treat the link as you would a livestream link.
• CaptionCast staff. A small number of our staff can access meeting recordings, transcripts and account details to provide support, fix problems and review caption quality. We do not use this access for anything else.
• Our service providers. The companies listed in section 6 receive only the data they need to do their job for us.
• When the law requires it. We may disclose information if we are legally required to, or if it is needed to protect someone's safety or our rights.

5. How Long We Keep It

• Audio recordings are kept according to your organization's retention setting, and are deleted automatically once they are 90 days old, whatever that setting says. Our storage provider may take a day or two to finish removing expired files. Deleting a meeting removes its transcripts right away and starts removing its audio at the same time; if that removal fails, the audio is removed when it reaches that 90-day limit.
• Transcripts are kept until you delete the meeting, or until your organization's retention setting removes them. Owners and admins can set this to 30, 90 or 365 days in Organization settings. The default is no limit.
• Support conversations are kept so we can refer back to them, even after an account is closed, until you ask us to delete them. Files you attach are deleted from our storage 90 days after upload. If a conversation is passed to a person, its messages and attachments are also copied to our support Slack workspace, where they stay until we delete them.
• Server logs are kept for 30 days, and error reports (see Sentry in section 6) for up to 90 days. Both can contain short fragments of caption text, which stay until the log or report expires, even if you delete the meeting sooner. Our servers may also hold a temporary working copy of caption text, which is erased whenever the server is replaced, for example when we release an update.
• Database backups are taken automatically and kept for 14 days. We also take occasional manual snapshots, for example before maintenance, and a final snapshot if a database is retired; we delete those within 30 days. Data you delete stays in a backup or snapshot until that backup or snapshot is deleted.
• Account, organization and billing records are kept while your account is active. We keep payment records longer if tax or accounting law requires it.

6. Service Providers (Subprocessors)

We use these companies to run CaptionCast. Each one receives only the data listed.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) runs our servers, database, file storage and logs in the United States (Oregon), and stores meeting audio recordings and support attachments. Its Amazon Bedrock service runs our AI support assistant, which uses an Anthropic Claude model hosted by AWS. It receives the messages you send in the support chat, plus your account email, your role, and your organization's name and plan details so it can answer questions about your account.
• Deepgram converts speech to text. It receives the live meeting audio and your glossary terms, and, when our staff reprocess a meeting to improve its transcript, that meeting's stored recording. Deepgram's standard terms let it keep audio it processes and use it to improve its speech models; CaptionCast does not currently opt out of that program.
• OpenAI translates captions. It receives caption text and your meeting's glossary and context notes, but not audio.
• Stripe processes payments. It receives your billing details and card information.
• Auth0 (Okta) handles sign-in with Google and other providers. It receives your login and profile details.
• Resend delivers our emails. It receives your email address and the message content.
• Sentry monitors errors. It receives technical error reports, which may include account or meeting identifiers and short fragments of caption text.
• Slack is where our support team works. Support conversations that need a person are posted to our private Slack workspace, including your messages, any files you attached and your account email.
• Umami provides privacy-friendly website analytics without cookies. It receives page views, referring site, browser type and approximate country.
• Google Fonts serves our web fonts on only three attendee pages: the language picker, the QR-code page and the "meeting not found" page. Google receives your IP address and browser details when one of those pages loads the fonts. Every other page hosts its fonts itself and sends nothing to Google.

If we add or replace a provider, we will update this list.

7. Cookies

We use cookies to keep you signed in and to remember caption display preferences on a viewer's device. Our analytics do not use cookies. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

8. Security

Connections between your browser and CaptionCast use encryption (TLS). Audio recordings are encrypted at rest, passwords are stored only as hashes, and access to production systems is limited to staff who need it. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you as the law requires.

9. Your Choices and Rights

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correct information that is wrong
• Export your meeting transcripts from the meeting page
• Delete meetings, or set a retention limit for your organization
• Delete your user account: from your account settings if you sign in with a password, or by emailing us if you sign in with Google or another provider. Deleting a user account removes your login and memberships, not your organization's meetings, transcripts or recordings
• Ask us to delete your organization and all of its data
• Withdraw microphone permission at any time in your browser settings

Email us at the address below to make any of these requests. When we delete an organization at your request, we delete its account data, meetings and transcripts within 30 days, except records the law requires us to keep. Its audio recordings are removed when they reach the 90-day limit described in section 5.

10. Children

CaptionCast accounts are for adults acting for an organization. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13. Children may be heard in meetings an organization captions, such as a church service or a classroom, and the organization is responsible for getting any consent needed. If you believe we hold a child's information that should be removed, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Where Your Data Is Stored

CaptionCast stores data in the United States. Some of our providers may process data in other countries under their own safeguards.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will post the new version on this page and change the "Last updated" date.

13. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or how we handle your data? Contact us at:

support@captioncast.io