What leaves your computer, what stays, and what we can not promise.
It is the question we get the most. Short answer: the audio goes to an AI service to be transcribed and comes back as text — and nobody at ZapVox sits down to listen to it.
The audio is not written to disk on any server of ours: it passes through, gets transcribed, and what stays is the text — in your browser.
Our Policy says, in these words: “No employee or contractor accesses your personal data, except under legal obligation or with your consent.”
And there is a mode where the audio does not go through us at all: with your own AI key. That is level 2, right below.
You choose how far to close it. The three work together — you can use all three at once.
| Level | How it works | Does the audio go through us? |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Default ZapVox cloud | The audio goes from your browser to our servers and from there to whichever AI provider is available. It comes back as text. | Yes, in passing. It is not written to disk. |
| 2. Your own key (BYOK) free, 5 min | You create a free key at Groq and paste it into ZapVox. The audio goes from your browser straight to the provider of your key. | No. It does not pass through our servers. |
| 3. Privacy mode on screen | Blurs transcripts on screen and can require a PIN to reveal them. For sharing your screen in a meeting or working in public. | It does not change the audio path — it protects the screen. |
Want to move to level 2? The step-by-step with pictures is at how to create your free key.
Most of what ZapVox keeps never leaves your browser.
| What | Where it lives | For how long |
|---|---|---|
| Original audio | Not written to disk | — |
| Transcribed text | In your browser | Up to 90 days or 7 MB — whichever comes first |
| Your AI key (BYOK) | In your browser, encrypted | Until you remove it |
| Settings and counters | In your browser | Until you uninstall or clear its data |
| Account and subscription | On our servers | While the account exists |
Three different things usually go by the same name. Here is what each one does.
In transit (HTTPS). Every ZapVox communication goes over HTTPS. It is the browser padlock: it protects the path between your computer and the server — whoever sits in the middle (the café wi-fi, say) cannot read the content.
Your AI key. Stored encrypted with AES-GCM 256-bit, derived through PBKDF2 with 600,000 iterations and a random salt that is yours alone. It lives in your browser and is never sent to our servers.
What that protects — and what it does not. Encrypting the key protects against casual reading of browser storage. It is not a substitute for antivirus: if the computer gets infected, malicious software can reach it. On a shared computer, remove the key when you are done.
It is written in the Privacy Policy, and we repeat it here without legalese.
No ads. Your data is never used for personalised advertising, retargeting or ad targeting.
No data sale. Your data is never sold, licensed or shared with third parties for commercial purposes.
No human access. No employee or contractor accesses your personal data, except under legal obligation or with your consent.
This section exists because a promise we do not control is a promise that breaks in your hands one day.
AI providers have their own policies. Transcription runs on third-party services (Groq, Google, Cloudflare, OpenAI). Each has its own policy, which they change when they want. The full list, with a link to each policy, is in our Privacy Policy.
Processing happens in the United States. It is declared in the Policy.
None of this protects a compromised computer. If someone has access to your browser profile — another person on the same login, or malicious software — no setting of ours fixes that.
And we promise no deadline and no permanence. What is here holds today, with the date in the footer. If it ever changes, it changes in writing — here and in the Policy.
No form, no talking to anyone, no waiting.
What is in your browser — transcripts, settings, counters and your key: uninstalling the extension takes it all with it.
Your account — you can delete it yourself from your dashboard. If you prefer, write to [email protected].
The deadlines and what happens to each piece of data are in the Privacy Policy.