Privacy Policy

GDPR Compliance by Design

PeekoType is GDPR-compliant by design under both the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR. Most cloud-based dictation services rely on transfer mechanisms such as the UK–US Data Bridge or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, plus a chain of sub-processors and data processing agreements, to lawfully send your audio to servers outside the UK/EEA. PeekoType doesn't rely on any of that, because no audio ever leaves your computer in the first place.

Specifically:

• No cross-border data transfers. Speech recognition runs locally on your CPU using an advanced offline AI speech recognition model. The audio you dictate, and the transcript that comes out, never reach a PeekoType server or any other third-party server.
• No data processor. Because PeekoType never processes your voice or transcript data on your behalf, PeekoType is not acting as a "processor" of that data under Article 4(8) of the UK/EU GDPR. There is no processor agreement (DPA) to sign and no sub-processor list to vet. You are the controller of your own data, on your own device.
• No telemetry, analytics or "improvement" pipelines. The PeekoType desktop application makes no outbound network calls during normal use. Licence checks run entirely on-device using cryptographic signatures.
• No account. The application does not require an account, an email address, or any sign-in. You install it, dictate, and your transcripts are typed straight into the application you were already using.
• Data minimisation by architecture. Under Article 5(1)(c) GDPR, personal data must be limited to what is necessary. PeekoType's architecture takes that to its logical conclusion: the application never sees the personal data in the first place, so there is nothing to minimise after the fact.

The remainder of this Privacy Policy describes the limited personal data we do handle (your purchase details, support emails, and basic website analytics) and your rights in relation to that data.

1. Introduction

Welcome to PeekoType ("we," "our," or "us"). We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring you understand how your information is handled. This Privacy Policy explains our practices regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of information when you use our speech-to-text application and website.

By using PeekoType, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our services.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide Directly

We may collect the following information that you voluntarily provide to us:

• Account Information: When you purchase PeekoType, we collect your name, email address, and billing information to process your order and provide customer support.
• Communication Data: If you contact us for support or feedback, we collect your name, email address, and the content of your communications.
• Payment Information: Payment processing is handled by Stripe, our third-party payment processor. We do not store your full credit card details on our servers.

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

When you visit our website, we may automatically collect certain information:

• Device Information: Browser type, operating system, device type, and screen resolution.
• Usage Data: Pages visited, time spent on pages, click patterns, and referring URLs.
• IP Address: Your IP address may be collected for security purposes and to provide region-specific services.

2.3 Voice and Audio Data

This is a fundamental design principle of PeekoType. Unlike cloud-based speech recognition services, PeekoType processes all audio locally, ensuring complete privacy of your spoken content.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• To Provide Our Services: Processing your purchase, delivering the software, and providing access to updates.
• To Communicate With You: Responding to your inquiries, providing customer support, and sending important notices about your purchase or the software.
• To Improve Our Services: Analysing usage patterns on our website to improve user experience and develop new features.
• To Process Payments: Working with our payment processor to complete transactions securely.
• To Ensure Security: Detecting and preventing fraud, abuse, and security incidents.
• To Comply With Legal Obligations: Meeting our legal and regulatory requirements.

4. Information Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties. We may share your information only in the following circumstances:

4.1 Service Providers

We work with trusted third-party service providers who assist us in operating our business:

• Stripe: For payment processing. Stripe's privacy policy governs their handling of your payment information.
• Email Service Providers: For sending transactional emails and customer communications.
• Analytics Providers: For website analytics (if applicable).

4.2 Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid legal requests, such as court orders or government inquiries.

4.3 Business Transfers

If PeekoType is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change.

5. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures include:

• Encryption of data in transit using SSL/TLS
• Secure storage of personal information
• Regular security assessments
• Limited access to personal information by employees

However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

6. Data Retention

We retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, including:

• Account Information: Retained for as long as you have an active licence and for a reasonable period thereafter for support and legal compliance.
• Transaction Records: Retained as required by tax and accounting regulations (typically 7 years).
• Communication Records: Retained for a reasonable period to provide ongoing support.

7. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your location, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information:

7.1 Access and Portability

You have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you and receive it in a portable format.

7.2 Correction

You have the right to request correction of any inaccurate personal information we hold about you.

7.3 Deletion

You have the right to request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain legal exceptions.

7.4 Opt-Out

You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions in those messages.

7.5 Exercising Your Rights

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at support@peekotype.com. We will respond to your request within 30 days.

8. International Data Transfers

Voice and transcript data is never transferred internationally, or anywhere at all. Speech recognition runs locally on your device, so audio and transcripts stay on your computer.

The limited personal data we do collect (purchase details, support emails, basic website analytics) may be processed by service providers such as Stripe and Gumroad. Where those providers are located outside the UK or EEA, transfers are made under appropriate safeguards including, where applicable, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or transfers to jurisdictions covered by the UK–US Data Bridge or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Each of those providers publishes its own transfer documentation, which we rely on as part of our supply chain.

9. Children's Privacy

PeekoType is not intended for use by children under the age of 13 (or 16 in the European Economic Area). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child without parental consent, we will take steps to delete that information.

10. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

Our website may use cookies and similar tracking technologies to enhance your experience. These include:

• Essential Cookies: Required for the website to function properly.
• Analytics Cookies: Help us understand how visitors interact with our website.
• Preference Cookies: Remember your settings and preferences.

You can control cookies through your browser settings. However, disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of our website.

11. Third-Party Links

Our website may contain links to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated policy on our website with a new "Last updated" date. Your continued use of PeekoType after such changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us:

14. Specific Regional Rights

14.1 European Economic Area (EEA) and UK Residents

If you are located in the EEA or UK, you have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR, including:

• The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority
• The right to restrict processing of your personal data
• The right to object to processing of your personal data
• The right not to be subject to automated decision-making

Our legal basis for processing your personal data includes: performance of a contract (to provide our services), legitimate interests (to improve our services and communicate with you), and consent (where applicable).

14.2 California Residents

If you are a California resident, you have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including:

• The right to know what personal information is collected
• The right to know whether your personal information is sold or disclosed
• The right to opt out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell personal information)
• The right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights

15. PeekoType for Android

This section applies to the PeekoType mobile app for Android, whether you installed it from Google Play or downloaded it from this website. It supplements this Privacy Policy and takes precedence over it wherever the two differ.

The app has no accounts and no sign-in, and it collects nothing about you. Most of it is free; a one-off £4.99 payment unlocks the rest. That payment is handled entirely by Google Play or by Stripe, never by the app: we never see a card number, and the app never asks for your name or your email. If you buy from this website, Stripe passes us the email address you gave them so that the unlock key can be sent to you, and that address is kept only for issuing and supporting that purchase.

15.1 What is stored on your phone

The app keeps the following in its own private storage, which other apps cannot read:

• Your dictation history, so you can find something you dictated earlier. You can switch this off, and it keeps only the most recent entries.
• Your custom vocabulary and any saved snippets.
• Your settings, including an API key if you choose to add one.
• Proof that you have paid, if you have: either the unlock key you were emailed, or the receipt Google Play issued. Both stay on the phone.
• The most recent transcript from "Transcribe a recording", so it survives if the app is closed while it works. Only the latest one is kept, and starting another replaces it.

This data is never backed up to the cloud and is not included in phone-to-phone transfers. Uninstalling the app deletes all of it.

15.2 Audio

Sound is recorded only while you are dictating — from the moment you press the microphone button until you stop. That recording is held in memory, used to produce text, and then discarded. It is never written to storage.

Transcribing a recording works differently, because a long file will not fit in memory. The app converts it into a working file in its own private storage, reads it a piece at a time, and deletes it as soon as the transcript is finished — or if you stop part way. That working file never leaves your phone and no other app can read it.

15.3 Recordings you transcribe

• The app can open only the one file you pick, or one you send to it from another app. It cannot browse your storage or see anything else.
• A recording may contain other people's voices. You are responsible for having the right to transcribe it — see the Terms of Service.

15.4 When information leaves your phone

There are exactly five cases, and you control all but the first.

1. Downloading a speech model. The first time you set the app up it downloads a speech file from huggingface.co. No personal information is sent; that service will see your IP address as with any download.
2. Online AI, if you switch it on. Your speech is sent to OpenAI, using an API key you create yourself, to be turned into text. With live typing switched on this happens continuously while you speak, over an open connection, so that words appear as you say them rather than after you stop. With live typing off, the recording is sent once when you finish.
3. AI cleanup, if you switch it on. Your finished text is sent to OpenAI to have its punctuation and spelling corrected.
4. Downloading a read-aloud voice, if you ask for one. A voice file is fetched from github.com. No personal information is sent, and nothing you have read aloud ever leaves the phone — only the download itself involves the network.
5. Transcribing a recording while Online AI is switched on. The sound of the file you chose is sent to OpenAI, in pieces, to be turned into text. This one is worth pausing over: a recording may hold a conversation that is not only yours. With Online AI off, the whole file is transcribed on your phone and nothing is sent.

Online AI and AI cleanup are off when you install the app and stay off until you turn them on. While either is active the keyboard shows "Cloud", and a finished transcript says whether it was produced online or on your phone, so you can always see which one happened.

You bring your own OpenAI key, and the account is yours. The online features do not work until you create an account with OpenAI, generate an API key and paste it into the app. OpenAI bills you directly for what you use, at their prices. PeekoType takes no commission, no revenue share and no payment of any kind from your use of that key — we are not a party to your relationship with OpenAI, we never see your key, and nothing you send passes through any server of ours. Your information is then handled under OpenAI's own privacy policy, not this one.

The app can also be pointed at a different provider entirely, if you prefer one. Choose "Other" and supply its address, model name and key; everything above applies to whichever service you name.

Your key is stored in the app's private storage in unencrypted form — the same protection any app gives a key, and no more. You can see it, change it or delete it at any time from the Online AI screen.

15.5 Text in the app you are typing into

PeekoType is a keyboard, so Android shows a warning when you enable it. Here is precisely what it does and does not do.

• To support commands such as "scratch that", the app reads a small amount of text immediately before your cursor — at most a thousand characters — at the moment you give the command.
• If you press the speaker button, the app reads what is in the box you are writing in — or only the part you have highlighted — so that it can be spoken aloud. This is a great deal more text than the delete commands use, and it is read only at the moment you press that button.
• In both cases the text is used for that one purpose and then dropped. It is never stored and never transmitted.
• The app does not record what you type on other keyboards. It is not running then.
• Dictation is refused entirely in password fields.

15.6 The floating microphone

If you switch the floating microphone on, Android asks you to allow PeekoType to display over other apps. That permission does one thing: it lets the round microphone button be drawn on top of whatever you are writing in. It does not let the app read, record or capture the screen underneath, and it is used for nothing else. The keyboard works fully without it.

15.7 Reading aloud

The voice that reads your writing back to you runs entirely on your phone. The text is turned into speech on the device and played through the speaker. Nothing you have read aloud is sent anywhere, by us or by anyone else, and the feature works with no internet connection at all.

The voice itself is a file you choose to download, from the sherpa-onnx release page on github.com. No personal information is sent when you download it; that service will see your IP address, as with any download. Nothing is downloaded unless you ask for it, and you can remove the voice at any time.

While it is reading, Android shows a notification with a Stop button, because a sound that cannot be stopped from outside the app it started in would be an unpleasant thing to inflict on anyone.

15.8 Notifications

Transcribing a recording can take a while, so the app asks to send notifications in order to show progress and tell you when it has finished. Nothing else is ever sent as a notification, and refusing only means you open the app to check.

15.9 No tracking

The mobile app contains no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. There are no accounts and no sign-up. We never see your dictation, because we have no servers that receive it.

15.10 Your choices

• Turn dictation history off, or clear it, in the app.
• Turn off Online AI and AI cleanup at any time to stop anything leaving the phone.
• Remove your API key from the Online AI screen.
• Remove the read-aloud voice from the Read aloud screen.
• Clear a stored transcript by starting another recording, or by uninstalling.
• Turn the floating microphone off, and withdraw the display-over-other-apps permission in your phone settings.
• Uninstall the app to delete everything it holds.

Because we hold no data about you on any server, there is nothing for us to look up, export or erase on request — everything is on your device and under your control.