Privacy policy

1. What we collect

• Your account: your email address, username and a hashed password; whether you have confirmed your email address; a record of any password-reset link we email you; your plan and its status.
• Usage: product usage events (names and numbers — see section 2), the live minutes you use, and the rate-limit counters that keep the Service available.
• Error reports: technical details when something breaks, and a sample of performance traces, to keep the Service working (section 2).
• Session data: while a live session runs, technical data such as a session id, timings and connection state, used to run and resume the session.
• Network data: your IP address and browser details, used for rate limiting, abuse prevention and security.
• What you send: the text you type and the audio you stream or upload, processed as described in sections 3 and 4.
• Feedback: if you send feedback or rate a signed sentence — what you write, your email if you give it, your browser's user-agent and the page address, and, for a rating, the sentence you rated, its sign sequence and the version of the signer that played it.
• Consent records: a record of each time you agree to our terms, this policy, the Early Access notice or a subscription's renewal terms (section 10).
• Reviewers only: if we engage you to review signs, your reviewer profile, your reviews and notes, and any correction video you choose to attach (section 5).

2. Usage events and error reports

To know whether the product works, we record product usage events — names and numbers only, like "a translation was submitted", how many signs it contained, how long it took, and how far behind a live session fell. Events never include your text or your audio: the format they travel in has no field a sentence fits in, and the anonymous browser id attached to them is hashed on our servers before it is stored. If you are signed in, an event is also linked to your account. Each page load also sends our server its loading-speed measurements — a metric's name, its value and a good / needs-improvement / poor rating, with no browser id, page address or account in the measurement — which are added into running totals.

When something breaks we collect an error report through Sentry, with the page address stripped of anything you typed and with console and network details removed before the report leaves your browser.

If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, your browser sends us neither — nothing is queued and nothing is sent. Our server still reports its own errors, without request bodies and without your network address. Usage events are deleted after 90 days. Error reports, and the sample of performance traces our server sends, are kept by our error-tracking provider, Sentry, for 30 days.

3. How audio is processed

When you use live translation, your audio is streamed to Google Cloud's Speech-to-Text service, which transcribes it so the signer can sign it. Google processes the audio as our service provider. The audio is streamed for transcription and is not stored by SimuSign.

If you upload an audio file, it is held in temporary storage only while it is transcribed, then deleted.

We do not collect voiceprints, and we do not identify who is speaking. Speech is turned into text and nothing else: we do not build voice profiles, and we do not use audio to recognize or tell apart the people speaking. We do not collect fingerprints, scans of face or hand geometry, or any other biometric identifier. The signer is a synthetic 3D model, not an image of you, and SimuSign never turns on your camera. When you share a browser tab, your browser asks for its picture as well as its sound; we stop the picture at once and use only the sound.

We do not sell audio or transcripts.

4. Text, captions and transcripts

The text you type and the captions made from your speech are processed on our servers to produce the signing. They are shown to you in the studio for the session and are not saved to your account or written to our database. Recent translations may stay in server memory, to speed up repeated phrases, until the server restarts.

The one exception is what you choose to send us: a rating or feedback message keeps the sentence it is about (section 1).

We do not sell your personal data. We do not run third-party advertising. We do not use your conversations to target you with anything.

5. Reviewers

People we engage to review signs have a reviewer account. We keep their profile, their reviews and notes, and the moments they mark in a signed sentence, to improve the signing. A reviewer may choose to attach a video of how a sign should look. It is uploaded only after the reviewer ticks a box agreeing to how it is used; it is stored privately, used only as an internal reference for improving signs, never shown publicly, never used to measure a face or hands, and deleted on request.

6. Model training

We do not collect, use or sell your personal data to train large language models, and we do not train any machine-learning model on the text, audio or transcripts you give us.

7. Payments

Payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. We keep your Stripe customer and subscription ids, your plan and its status.

8. Cookies and storage on your device

We use one essential sign-in cookie to keep you signed in. We store a few things on your device, such as the fact that you have read the first-run notice, an anonymous browser id for the usage events in section 2, some display preferences, and your fingerspelling-trainer progress. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

When you use live translation, the record of the session (the captions of what was heard, with any connection gaps marked) is kept only in your browser's session storage for that tab. It is never sent to us, and it is deleted when you clear the transcript and history or close the tab.

9. Who processes data for us

• Google Cloud — speech-to-text for live and uploaded audio;
• Stripe — payments and subscriptions;
• Sentry — error reports;
• Railway — hosting for our servers and database;
• Cloudflare — hosting and delivery of the website and its files, private storage for reviewer correction videos, and the check at sign-up that helps stop automated sign-ups;
• Resend — sending account emails, such as the link to confirm your address.

Each processes data only to provide its service to us.

10. How long we keep it

• Your account (username, email, and a one-way hash of your password): while your account is open, and deleted when you delete the account or ask us to.
• Deleted accounts: when you delete your account, we keep a short deletion record for 24 months so we can answer questions about your account or payments: when the account was created and deleted, who asked for the deletion, your plan and its status at that time, your remaining live minutes, and our payment processor's customer reference. It does not contain your email address; it holds a one-way code made from it, so we can find the record only when you, or someone writing about your account, gives us that address. After 24 months the record is deleted automatically.
• Minutes and counts: the minutes of live translation you use against your plan, and daily counts of the translations you run, so we can apply your plan's limits. Kept while your account is open and deleted with it.
• Usage events: deleted after 90 days.
• Audio: not stored by SimuSign.
• Text and captions: not written to our database (section 4).
• Consent records: when you agree to our terms, this policy, the first-run notice or a subscription's renewal terms, we record which document and version, when, and a one-way fingerprint of your network address — never the address itself. Each record is kept for 1,100 days (about three years) and then deleted, including after you delete your account.
• Email confirmation: the link we email you to confirm your address expires after 48 hours; our record of that link is deleted 7 days after it expires. To limit how many links can be sent, our count of how many links were requested in each hour is deleted 7 days after that hour.
• Password reset: the link we email you to reset your password works once and expires after 60 minutes; our record of that link is deleted 7 days after it expires or is used, whichever comes first. To limit how many links can be sent, our count of how many reset links were requested in each hour is deleted 7 days after that hour.
• Signup limit: to limit how many accounts can be created from one network in a day, we count signups per day against a one-way fingerprint of the network address, never the address itself. These counts are deleted after 7 days.
• Feedback and ratings: kept so we can act on them; we have not set a fixed period for them yet. When we delete an account, we remove from them your email address, your account link and the text you wrote.
• Reviewer profiles and correction videos: kept while the reviewer account is open and deleted with it; a correction video is deleted sooner if its reviewer asks. The reviews already recorded are kept without the reviewer's account.
• Billing records: as long as tax and accounting rules require.
• Server logs: kept by our hosting provider, Railway, for 30 days.
• Error reports and performance traces: kept by Sentry for 30 days.

11. Children

SimuSign is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Accounts and paid plans are for people 18 or older, or the age of majority where they live. If you believe a child has given us personal information, tell us at [email protected] and we will delete it.

12. Your rights and choices

You can ask for a copy of your data, a correction, an export, or deletion of your account and the data tied to it at any time. You can download a copy of your data and delete your account yourself from your account page; for a correction or anything else, write to [email protected] or use the feedback form. We answer within one month. If you are not satisfied with our answer, reply and ask us to look again. Consent records and the record of a deleted account are the exceptions to deletion: they are kept for the periods in section 10.

If you live in California, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, and to access, correct and delete it, and we will not discriminate against you for using these rights. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

If you live in Canada, you can also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and in Quebec to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec.

13. Where data is processed

SimuSign is operated from the United States, and your information is processed in the United States. If you use SimuSign from elsewhere, including Canada, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where courts and authorities may be able to access it under United States law.

14. Security, and if something goes wrong

We use encryption in transit, hashed passwords and access controls to protect your information. No system is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security. If a security breach puts your personal information at real risk, we will tell you and the authorities the law requires, as soon as we reasonably can.

15. Who is responsible for privacy

The person responsible for privacy and the protection of personal information at SimuSign is the owner of SimuSign LLC. Write to [email protected] with "Privacy" in the subject line.

16. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with its effective date, and tell account holders about material changes by email or on the Service before they take effect.

17. Contact

SimuSign LLC, an Illinois limited liability company. Email: [email protected]. You can also reach us through the feedback form — we read every message.