Privacy Policy

Last updated 9 November 2026

Parlova is operated by SoleCreations, South Africa. We're the "responsible party" for your personal information under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), and the "controller" under the GDPR for users in the EU and UK. This policy explains what we collect, why, who it's shared with, and what you can do about it.

1. What we collect

• Account details: your email address and your password. We store the password only as a secure one-way hash.
• What you submit: the recordings you upload and the YouTube links you paste.
• What we produce for you: transcripts, timestamps, speaker labels, AI summaries and to-do lists, plus anything you save in settings, such as special words and speaker names.
• Usage: how many minutes you've transcribed, your jobs and their status, and your plan. For each finished transcription we keep a usage record: the date, the recording's title, its length, the minutes it used, and whether speaker separation was on.
• Billing: your subscription status, plan, renewal date and Polar customer ID. We never see or store your card details; Polar and its payment processor handle them.
• Technical: your IP address and basic request logs. We use these to keep the service secure, for example to limit sign-in attempts and sign-ups.
• Developer tools: the names you give access tokens, when each was last used, and — when you sign in the command-line tool — your computer's name, which we show on the approval page and use to name the token it gets.

2. Why we use it

• To provide the service you signed up for: transcribing, storing your history, applying your plan's limits and running your subscription.
• To keep Parlova safe: preventing abuse, fraud and attacks.
• To meet legal obligations, such as keeping billing records.
• To answer you when you contact us.

We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't sell it or rent it to anyone.

3. Who we share it with

Only service providers we need to run Parlova, and only what each one needs:

• Railway hosts the app and its database.
• OpenRouter sends your audio to the speech-recognition and AI models that create your transcript and summaries. These include models from OpenAI (Whisper), NVIDIA (Parakeet), ElevenLabs (speaker separation) and Anthropic (Claude, for summaries). We've set OpenRouter to use only providers that don't store your data or train on it.
• Polar, and its payment processor Stripe, handle checkout, subscriptions, invoices and tax. Polar is the merchant of record for payments.
• YouTube: when you paste a YouTube link, our server downloads that video's audio from YouTube.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect people's safety or our legal rights.

4. Where your data goes

Our service providers run servers outside South Africa, mainly in the United States and Europe. Under section 72 of POPIA, we only send personal information abroad to providers that are bound to protect it to a standard similar to POPIA's.

5. How long we keep it

• Uploaded recordings: we convert your upload to compressed audio straight away and discard the original file. Once the transcript is ready, the audio is deleted. If a job fails or you stop it, we keep the compressed audio so you can press "Try again", until you delete that job or it expires with your history (below).
• Audio downloaded from YouTube: deleted from our server as soon as the job finishes, whether it succeeds or fails.
• Transcripts and summaries: kept for 7 days on Free and 90 days on Plus, then deleted automatically. On Pro they're kept until you delete them. You can delete any transcript yourself at any time.
• Usage records: kept while your account exists, so your usage history and monthly limit stay accurate even after you delete a recording. They don't include the transcript or the audio. Deleting your account removes them.
• Your account: kept until you delete it. Deleting your account permanently removes your transcripts, usage records and settings.
• Billing records: kept by Polar for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Server logs: kept for a short time for security and troubleshooting.

6. Your rights

You can ask us to give you a copy of your personal information, correct it, delete it, or stop using it for a particular purpose. You can also object to how we process it. Much of this you can do yourself: download your transcripts, delete them, change your password, or delete your account in Account settings. For anything else, email jurie24102@gmail.com. We'll reply within 30 days.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to South Africa's Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za). In the EU or UK you can complain to your local data protection authority.

7. Cookies and local storage

We use one cookie, to keep you signed in. It's strictly necessary, so there's no cookie banner. Your browser also stores your Parlova preferences, such as the language and options you chose, on your own device. We don't use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

8. Security

Connections to Parlova are encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are hashed, access to our systems is restricted, and audio is deleted once it's no longer needed. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we'll tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

9. Recordings of other people

Your recordings may contain other people's voices and personal information. You're responsible for having their consent where the law requires it. We process that information only to provide the service to you.

10. Children

Parlova isn't meant for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly collect children's personal information. If you think a child has signed up, contact us and we'll delete the account.

11. Changes

If we change this policy in a significant way, we'll let you know by email or in the app before the change takes effect.

12. Contact

SoleCreations, South Africa. Email jurie24102@gmail.com. This address is also how you reach our Information Officer.