In short
- We use your recordings only to make your transcripts, summaries, references and any research dossiers you ask for, to answer your AI Chat questions, and to run your account.
- OpenAI transcribes the audio. Google's Gemini service receives the transcript text, not the audio, to tidy it, write the summary and title, find the Qur'an verses and hadith it mentions, write a research dossier when you ask for one, and answer your AI Chat questions.
- Your account and library are stored on DeenScribe's server in London.
- There is no advertising, analytics or tracking in the app or on this website, and the website sets no cookies.
- You can delete a lecture, or your whole account, in the app at any time (see your rights).
Who we are
DeenScribe is owned by Excel Energy Consulting Limited, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 14417065, with its registered office at Devonshire House, 582 Honeypot Lane, Stanmore, HA7 1JS. Excel Energy Consulting Limited is the controller of the personal data described here, and is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), registration reference ZC298383.
To contact us about privacy, please use the contact form on the Support page. You can also write to us at our registered office, or email us at support@deenscribe.com.
What we collect and why
| What | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Your account: your email address and your password, stored only as a salted hash. If you sign in with Apple or Google, the account identifier they give us; with Apple this may be a private relay address. Your plan and an account token used to link App Store purchases to your account. | To create and run your account. | Contract |
| Sign-in sessions: stored only in hashed form, and they expire (currently after 30 days). | To keep you signed in. | Contract |
| Your lectures: the audio of each recording you make or file you upload, its title, the file name, any speaker name you type, and what DeenScribe makes from it: transcripts, summaries, detected verses and hadith, any research dossiers you ask for, and the search index AI Chat uses to find passages. Also your highlights, notes and series. | To provide the service you asked for. | Contract |
| Usage records: how much audio each lecture used, how many AI Chat questions you asked (never what you asked), and which provider and model processed each request, with their request identifiers and the amount of text processed. | To apply your monthly minutes and questions, to investigate problems and to check our providers' charges. | Contract and legitimate interests |
| App Store purchases: transaction identifiers, the product, its status and dates, the App Store country, price and currency, as signed by Apple. We never see your payment card. | To give you the minutes your plan includes, and to keep accounting records. | Contract and legal obligation |
| Free trial record: a one-way hash of your email address, kept even if your account is later deleted. | So that each person gets the free trial only once. | Legitimate interests |
| Security logs: the server's web access log (IP address, time, the address requested and the app or browser details), and failed sign-in attempts with the email address entered and the IP address. | To spot and stop attacks, such as password guessing. | Legitimate interests |
AI Chat. When you ask a question, our server sends it, your last few messages in that chat and the passages of your lectures that best match it to Google's Gemini service, which writes the answer. To find those passages, the server keeps a search index of your transcripts, which Gemini makes from the transcript text. Your conversation stays in the app: our server doesn't keep what you ask or the answers, only a count for your monthly questions.
We don't use your recordings or transcripts for advertising, and we don't sell personal data.
Optional features. If DeenScribe later offers importing from Google Drive or from links (including YouTube), or saving exports to Google Drive or Dropbox (which sends the export through our server to that service), this section will describe the extra data involved before those features are switched on.
Who processes your data
These companies process personal data for us, under contract, only to provide DeenScribe:
| Provider | What they do | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | Hosts DeenScribe's server in London. | Everything stored on the server, as above, including daily copies of the whole server kept for 7 days. |
| OpenAI | Transcribes recordings. | The audio, in clips of about 30 seconds. OpenAI's service is global, so the audio may be processed outside the UK. OpenAI's API terms say API content is not used to train its models unless the customer opts in, and DeenScribe has not opted in. |
| Google (Gemini API) | Tidies transcripts, writes summaries and titles, finds Qur'an verses and hadith, writes research dossiers when you ask for one, answers AI Chat questions and makes the search index AI Chat uses. | Transcript text, and for AI Chat your questions and recent messages; never the audio. DeenScribe uses Google's paid Gemini API service, whose terms say Google doesn't use the text to improve its products. |
| Amazon Web Services | Stores encrypted backups in London, and sends DeenScribe's emails to you, such as a code to confirm your account or reset your password (Amazon SES, in London). | Backups that are encrypted on our server before upload, so Amazon cannot read them. For emails: your email address and the email itself. |
| Apple | Runs App Store payments and Sign in with Apple. | Apple handles payments under its own privacy policy and sends us signed purchase details. If you use Sign in with Apple, it shares your account identifier and email, or a private relay address. |
| Google (sign-in) | Runs Sign in with Google, if you use it. | Your Google account identifier and email address, which Google shares with us when you sign in. |
| Cloudflare | Runs the domain name system for deenscribe.com, hosts this website (Cloudflare Pages), and delivers contact-form messages and emails sent to support@deenscribe.com to our inbox. | Visitors' IP addresses and requests to this website, which Cloudflare handles to deliver and protect it, whatever you type into the contact form, and emails you send to support@deenscribe.com. |
| Microsoft (Microsoft 365) | Hosts our email inbox. | Emails you send us and messages from the contact form: your name, email address and what you write. |
When data is processed outside the UK, we rely on the UK's adequacy regulations, including the UK–US data bridge for US providers certified to it, or on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the standard contractual clauses in each provider's data processing terms.
Where it is stored
Your account, recordings, transcripts and the rest of your library are stored on DeenScribe's server at DigitalOcean in London. Each account has its own library: other users can't see your lectures.
How long we keep it
- Your lectures stay until you delete them. When you upload a file, DeenScribe converts it to audio and deletes the original. The working audio used for transcription is deleted once processing finishes; a compressed copy for playback and a thumbnail stay with the lecture. Transcription results are also kept in a temporary cache for 7 days.
- Backups. After you delete something, it remains in DigitalOcean's daily server copies for up to 7 days, and in the encrypted backups for up to about five months, until those backups expire.
- Your account stays until you delete it. Deleting it in the app takes effect at once; if you ask us to delete it instead, we do so within one month. With it go your library, your sign-in and your cloud connections. We keep App Store purchase records for six years for accounting, and a one-way code made from your email address so the free trial can't be claimed twice. These, and any usage records we keep, are no longer linked to an account. Copies in our backups are deleted within about five months. Deleting your account doesn't cancel an App Store subscription: cancel it in your Apple account's subscriptions (on iPhone: Settings › your name › Subscriptions).
- Purchase records are kept for six years after the end of the financial year they relate to, as UK accounting rules require. Usage records are kept while your account exists; after it is deleted, any we keep have no link to you.
- The free trial record (a hash of your email address) is kept for as long as DeenScribe offers a free trial, so the trial can't be claimed twice.
- Security logs are kept for at most 90 days; older entries are deleted automatically.
On your device
- The app keeps your sign-in session in the device's Keychain.
- It keeps a copy of your library so you can read it offline. The copy is cleared when you sign out or switch accounts.
- Your AI Chat conversation stays in the app. Our server doesn't keep it.
- A lecture you record in the app stays on the device until it has uploaded and for 7 days after that, or until you delete it, so a lost connection doesn't lose a lecture.
- The app asks only for microphone access, and only to record lectures. This version doesn't sync anything through iCloud.
- Exports (PDF, Word, Obsidian, Notion and OneNote) are made on your device from the lecture's own content, and go only where you send them. The one exception is a research dossier, which our server has Gemini write from the transcript when you ask for one, and keeps with the lecture. If you choose an Obsidian vault folder, the app remembers that folder on the device.
This website
deenscribe.com sets no cookies and contains no analytics, advertising or tracking code. Everything on it, including its fonts, is served from deenscribe.com itself. Links to other websites, such as Apple's, take you to sites with their own privacy policies.
If you use the contact form on the Support page, your name, email address, topic and message are sent by email, through Cloudflare's email service, to our email inbox, which Microsoft 365 hosts for us. We use them only to answer you, and keep them in that inbox for 2 years.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of your personal data, ask us to correct or delete it, object to or restrict how we use it, and ask for the data you gave us in a portable form. To make a request, use the contact form on the Support page, giving the email address on your account, or write to us at our registered office. We'll reply to check the request is yours, and answer within one month.
You can delete individual lectures, highlights and series in the app at any time. You can also remove a linked Apple or Google sign-in, or delete your whole account under Settings › Account › Delete account…. If you prefer, ask us through the contact form and we will delete it within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Security
The app talks to the server only over an encrypted connection. Passwords and sign-in sessions are stored only as hashes. Backups are encrypted before they leave the server, and the tools that read uploaded media run without access to the server's keys. No system is perfectly secure: if a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office as the law requires.
Children
DeenScribe is not intended for children under 13. If you are under 18, please use it with a parent's or guardian's permission. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we will delete it.
Changes and contact
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page, and tell you in the app or by email if the change is significant.
Questions about this policy: use the contact form on the Support page, which also has help with the app.