Privacy Policy

1. Information you give us

When you create an account or subscribe, we collect:

• Account details — your email address and, if you sign up with a password, a securely hashed password. We never store your password in plain text.
• Sign-in with Google — if you choose “Continue with Google”, Google sends us your email address, basic profile information such as your name and picture, and a stable identifier for your Google account. Sign-in requests only the standard sign-in scopes (openid, email, profile); we never receive your password, and signing in grants no access to Gmail, Google Drive, your calendar, your contacts, or your YouTube account. (Connecting your YouTube channel is a separate, optional step described below.) We use sign-in data solely to create and authenticate your Vidfora account, and we never use it for advertising or sell it.
• Sign in with Apple — if you choose “Continue with Apple”, Apple sends us a stable identifier for your Apple Account, an email address, and, the first time only, the name you chose to share. If you select Hide My Email, the address we receive is a private relay address created by Apple that forwards to you; we never see your real one. We keep a token Apple issues at sign-in for one purpose only — revoking Vidfora’s access when you delete your account. We use sign-in data solely to create and authenticate your Vidfora account, and we never use it for advertising or sell it.
• Billing details — handled by our payment processor, Stripe. We receive your subscription status and a customer identifier, but we never see or store your full card number.
• Content you create — research boards, tracked channels, saved filters, and the topics or links you type into the creator tools.
• Support messages — anything you send us by email.

2. Information we collect automatically

When you use the Service, we and our providers collect:

• Usage and product analytics — pages viewed and key funnel events (for example, sign-up, viewing pricing, starting checkout). These are recorded by Google Analytics, by signallark (our own self-hosted analytics, running on our infrastructure rather than a third-party vendor), and by a first-party event log in our own database.
• Cookies and similar technologies — an essential, httpOnly session cookie that keeps you logged in, plus analytics cookies set by Google Analytics. signallark identifies visits without cookies.
• Technical data — IP address (used for security and rate-limiting), browser and device information, and approximate location derived from your IP. Rate-limit records use a salted hash of the caller's IP address; infrastructure access logs may contain the IP address itself, request time, path, response status, and duration.

3. Public YouTube data

Vidfora surfaces publicly available YouTube data — video titles, thumbnails, view counts, and channel statistics — to power its research features. When you analyze a channel, we fetch that public data at your request. This information belongs to the respective creators and YouTube; Vidfora is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube or Google.

4. ChatGPT integration

When you enable Vidfora in ChatGPT, OpenAI sends the arguments for the research tools you choose to use: for example, a topic, niche, channel handle, format, or search filters. The integration does not request your full conversation history, passwords, a Vidfora login, or access to your private YouTube analytics.

Vidfora uses those arguments to search its recorded public YouTube dataset and sends the resulting video titles, public statistics, source links, and dataset refresh date back to ChatGPT through OpenAI. This integration cannot open or change your personal Vidfora boards, charge your account, or upload or edit a YouTube video.

The research tools do not save tool arguments as a search history or attach them to a Vidfora account. We keep request counters under hashed caller identifiers to prevent abuse, and our infrastructure records technical access logs as described above. You can stop future tool requests by disconnecting Vidfora in ChatGPT. Privacy questions and requests can be sent to privacy@vidfora.com.

5. Connecting your own YouTube channel (optional)

The Subscriber Insights feature lets you optionally connect the YouTube channel you own. Vidfora uses YouTube API Services for this; by connecting, you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service (https://www.youtube.com/t/terms), and Google’s handling of your data is described in the Google Privacy Policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy).

When you connect, we request two read-only Google permissions: youtube.readonly and yt-analytics.readonly. We use them solely to identify the channel you own and to display your own channel’s analytics back to you — daily views, watch time, subscribers gained and lost, and your own videos ranked by subscribers gained. This data is shown only to you, is never shared with other users or third parties, is never used for advertising, and is never sold. Vidfora cannot upload, edit, delete, comment, or change anything on your channel — the access is read-only by design.

To provide this feature we store the OAuth tokens Google issues (including a refresh token) and cache your analytics data briefly on our servers. Disconnecting — from the Subscriber Insights page in the app — deletes the stored tokens and revokes Vidfora’s access with Google; cached analytics are discarded shortly after. You can also revoke Vidfora’s access at any time from your Google security settings at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions.

6. Chrome extension

The Vidfora Chrome extension is optional. It shows Vidfora outlier scores on the YouTube pages you open, and it can save a video to one of your boards or add its channel to your tracked list without you leaving YouTube. It does nothing until you connect it to a Vidfora account, which issues that browser a pairing token.

• What the extension sends us: the YouTube video ids and channel handles on the page you are viewing, so we can look up their outlier scores or run a channel analysis you asked for, plus the pairing token so the request resolves to your account. It does not send the text of the page, what you type into YouTube search, or anything about pages outside YouTube.
• What it stores in your browser: your extension settings, a cache of the scores it has looked up that expires after six hours, and the pairing token. Uninstalling the extension or clearing its storage removes all three.
• What we store: a hash of the pairing token (never the token itself), the label and last-used time of the connected browser so you can recognize it, aggregate counts of how often extension features are used, and short-lived rate-limit counters. We do not keep the video ids or channel handles the extension looks up against your account.
• What we do not do: we do not build or keep a history of your browsing, we do not read page content beyond the video and channel links needed to place a badge, and we never sell or share this data.
• How to disconnect: use Disconnect in the extension popup, revoke that browser under “Connected devices” on your account page, or uninstall the extension. Revoking the token ends the extension’s access to your account.

7. Vidfora for Android

The Vidfora app for Android is the same account and the same data as the website, in a native client. You pair it once with your Vidfora account from a signed-in browser tab; until you do that, it holds nothing and can reach nothing.

• What it stores on your device: one pairing token, which is what proves the app is yours. Nothing else is kept on the phone beyond the ordinary caching a screen needs to draw itself. Signing out or uninstalling the app removes the token.
• What it sends us: the same things the website sends, because it is the same service. The YouTube video ids and channel handles of what you open, the text you type into search, and the boards, tracked channels, scripts and Coach messages you create. It travels to app.vidfora.com over HTTPS and is stored against your account.
• What it does not collect: no advertising identifier, no location, no contacts, no photos, no files, and no list of the other apps on your phone. The app requests no permission for any of those.
• Third parties: the app contains no third-party analytics SDK and no advertising SDK. Nothing inside it reports to an ad network.
• Deleting your data: deleting your Vidfora account deletes everything above, on our servers and on every device that was paired with it. The steps, and the full list of what goes and what we have to keep, are at https://vidfora.com/delete-account.
• Revoking one device: you can cut off a single phone or browser without deleting the account, from the connected devices list on your account page at app.vidfora.com/account. Access from that device stops immediately.

8. Vidfora for iPhone

The Vidfora app for iPhone is the same account and the same data as the website, in a native client. You pair it once with your Vidfora account in a secure browser sheet on vidfora.com; until you do that, it holds nothing and can reach nothing.

• What it stores on your device: one pairing token, kept in the iPhone Keychain and marked this-device-only, so it is never included in backups, iCloud Keychain or a transfer to a new phone. Your appearance setting and recent searches are kept on the phone and cleared when you sign out.
• What it sends us: the same things the website sends, because it is the same service. The YouTube video ids and channel handles of what you open, the text you type into search, and the boards, tracked channels, scripts and Coach messages you create. It travels to app.vidfora.com over HTTPS and is stored against your account.
• What it does not collect: no advertising identifier, no location, no contacts, no photos, and no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites. The app requests no permission for any of those.
• Third parties: the app contains no third-party analytics SDK and no advertising SDK.
• Deleting your data: you can start deleting your Vidfora account from the app (Account → Delete account). It deletes everything above, on our servers and on every device that was paired with it. The full list of what goes and what we have to keep is at https://vidfora.com/delete-account.
• Revoking one device: you can cut off a single iPhone without deleting the account, from the connected devices list on your account page at app.vidfora.com/account. Access from that device stops immediately.

9. Vidfora for Windows

Vidfora for Windows opens a signed-in browser page before it connects to your account. Only approve that page when you started the sign-in from the Windows app on your PC. The approval expires after five minutes and can be used only once.

• What it stores on your PC: the same essential, httpOnly session cookie the website uses to keep you signed in, local browser storage and cache needed to run the interface, window preferences, and files you choose to download. The pairing verifier is temporary and is discarded after sign-in. Signing out removes the local session; you can clear the app’s data to remove the remaining local profile and cache.
• What it sends us: the requests you make while using Vidfora, including searches and the boards, tracked channels, scripts, thumbnails, and Coach messages you create. Those requests travel to app.vidfora.com over HTTPS and are stored against your account in the same way as website use.
• What it does not collect: the app does not read your local documents, photos, contacts, location, advertising identifier, or a list of other installed apps as part of account pairing.
• Pairing security: the browser receives only a one-way challenge, the app keeps the secret verifier, and our server stores the approval for no more than five minutes. The final session is returned directly to the app and never placed in a browser URL.
• Deleting your data: deleting your Vidfora account invalidates the Windows session and deletes your account data as described at https://vidfora.com/delete-account. Uninstalling the Windows app does not delete your Vidfora account and may retain the local profile or cache, depending on the installer. Sign out first to remove the local session.

10. How we use your information

• To provide, maintain, and improve the Service and your account.
• To process subscriptions, payments, and the plan entitlements tied to them.
• To send transactional email — verification, password resets, and billing notices.
• To understand product usage in aggregate so we can improve features.
• To protect the Service — detecting abuse, enforcing rate limits, and preventing fraud.
• To comply with legal obligations.

11. How we share information

We share information only with the service providers that help us run Vidfora, and only as needed. These include:

• Stripe — payment processing and subscription management.
• Google Analytics — aggregate product analytics.
• signallark — our own self-hosted analytics, operated by us on our infrastructure. Usage data recorded there is not passed to a third-party analytics vendor.
• Google — as an identity provider, when you choose to sign in with it. Google tells us who you are; we do not send Google your Vidfora activity.
• Apple — as an identity provider, when you choose Sign in with Apple. Apple tells us who you are; we do not send Apple your Vidfora activity. When you delete your Vidfora account we ask Apple to revoke Vidfora’s access.
• Microsoft Azure Communication Services and sendoramo — sending transactional email such as verification, password-reset, and billing notices.
• Our hosting and infrastructure providers — running and storing the application.
• OpenAI — receives the public research results returned by Vidfora when you choose to use the ChatGPT integration. Your use of ChatGPT is also subject to OpenAI's own privacy policies and settings.
• Google / YouTube — when the Service fetches public YouTube data at your request, and, if you connect your channel, when it fetches your own channel’s analytics via YouTube API Services under the read-only permissions you granted.

12. Legal disclosures

We may also disclose information if required to do so by law, or if we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to comply with legal process, enforce our Terms, or protect the rights, property, or safety of Vidfora, our users, or others. If Gopherlume LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction.

13. Data retention

We keep your account information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information within a reasonable period, except where we must retain certain records (for example, billing records) to meet legal and accounting obligations. Aggregated or de-identified analytics that cannot reasonably identify you may be retained.

14. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete your personal information, and to object to or restrict certain processing (for example, under the GDPR or CCPA). To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@vidfora.com and we will respond in line with applicable law. You can also manage your subscription from your account, disconnect a linked Google sign-in by deleting your account, and disable analytics cookies through your browser or an opt-out tool.

15. Data security

We protect your data with industry-standard measures: passwords are hashed, traffic is encrypted in transit over TLS, and access to production systems is restricted. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we work to protect your information and to notify you and the authorities of any breach as required by law. To report a vulnerability or a suspected incident, email security@vidfora.com.

16. International transfers

Vidfora and its providers may process and store your information in countries other than the one you live in, including the United States. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for such transfers.

17. Children

The Service is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age of digital consent in your country), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

18. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, notify you. Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised policy.

19. Contact us

Privacy requests and questions about this policy: privacy@vidfora.com. Security reports: security@vidfora.com. Everything else: support@vidfora.com. You can also write to us at Gopherlume LLC, 330 2nd Ave S, Ste 200, Minneapolis, MN 55401, USA. The data controller for the purposes of applicable data-protection law is Gopherlume LLC, which operates Vidfora.