Privacy Policy

GuardMyVideos is operated by Ellan Duncan t/a GuardMyVideos, a sole trader registered in England. When we say “we”, “us”, or “our” in this policy, we mean GuardMyVideos. When we say “you” or “your”, we mean you as a user of our service.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, you can contact us at: contact@guardmyvideos.com

We collect the following information when you use GuardMyVideos:

Account information: Your email address and, if you sign in with Google, your name and profile picture as provided by Google. If you create an account with a password, we store a securely hashed version of that password — we never store passwords in plain text.

Scan data: The YouTube video URLs you submit for scanning, the search keywords you enter, and the results generated by each scan (including match scores and analysis). We also store whether you indicated each scan was for your own original video or for a link you were checking without claiming ownership — so we can show accurate history and exports. For some scans we also retrieve relevant public comments on candidate videos to surface viewer-reported plagiarism signals. We store this to show you your scan history and to enforce usage limits on your account tier.

Usage data: The number of scans you have run in the current billing period, your subscription tier, and basic interaction data such as when you last logged in.

Payment information: If you subscribe to a paid plan, payment is processed by Stripe. We do not store your card details — Stripe handles this securely. We receive only a confirmation of payment status and your Stripe customer ID.

Technical data: Standard server logs including your IP address, browser type, and the pages you visit. This is collected automatically by our hosting provider (Vercel) and our database provider (Supabase).

We use your data to:

Provide and operate the service — running scans, displaying results, managing your account and subscription tier. Enforce usage limits based on your plan. Process payments through Stripe for paid subscriptions. Send you essential service emails such as account confirmation, password resets, and important changes to the service or these terms. Power the on-site support chat by sending your recent chat messages to the Anthropic Claude API to generate replies (messages are not used to train Anthropic’s models). Improve the service by understanding how it is used in aggregate (we do not sell or share individual usage data).

We will never sell your personal data to third parties. We will never use your submitted video URLs or scan results for marketing purposes.

GuardMyVideos uses the following third-party services to operate:

Supabase (database and authentication) — stores your account data and scan history. Based in the EU/US. Vercel (hosting) — serves the website and API routes. YouTube Data API (Google) — used to search for videos, retrieve public metadata (titles, descriptions, statistics, duration), list caption track availability, and in some cases fetch top-level public comments for plagiarism signals. We send your search keywords and video identifiers to Google’s API. To reduce quota usage and latency, identical search queries may be served from a short-lived server-side cache that does not identify you personally. Not every type of data visible on YouTube can be retrieved or downloaded under a standard API-key integration; our processing stays within the access Google permits for our integration. Anthropic Claude API — used to analyse video similarity and to generate support chat replies. For scans we send video titles, descriptions, tags, text derived from public metadata (and transcript-related signals where available), and sometimes static thumbnail images (from public thumbnail URLs) to Claude for comparison. Anthropic does not use this data to train their models. Stripe (payments) — processes paid subscriptions. Stripe’s privacy policy applies to payment data.

Each of these services has its own privacy policy, and we encourage you to review them.

GuardMyVideos uses AI to produce similarity scores for each scan you run. These scores are generated automatically by comparing permitted public metadata, transcript-related text where available, and sometimes thumbnail imagery, using the Anthropic Claude API. Under UK GDPR Article 22, you have the right not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing where those decisions produce legal or similarly significant effects.

Our scan scores are indicators provided to assist your own judgement — they do not constitute legal determinations and we do not take any automated action against third parties based on them. You remain in full control of any decisions or actions you take based on scan results. If you have questions about how a score was produced, contact us at contact@guardmyvideos.com.

Under UK data protection law, we process your data on the following bases:

Contract: Processing your account and scan data is necessary to provide you with the service you signed up for. Legitimate interest: Server logs and basic analytics help us keep the service secure and operational. Consent: If we ever send marketing emails (we currently do not), we will ask for your explicit consent first.

We retain your account data and scan history for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we delete your profile, scan history, and operational log rows tied to your account identifier promptly as part of that process, and remove your authentication record. We may retain a single anonymised event (with no user identifier) so we can measure how many accounts are closed. Broader anonymised, aggregated statistics may be retained indefinitely for service improvement.

Server logs are typically retained for up to 30 days by our hosting providers.

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

Access the personal data we hold about you. Rectify any inaccurate data. Erase your data (“right to be forgotten”). Restrict processing in certain circumstances. Port your data to another service. Object to processing based on legitimate interest.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at contact@guardmyvideos.com. We will respond within 30 days.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk if you believe your data has been mishandled.

GuardMyVideos uses essential cookies required for authentication and session management. We do not use advertising cookies or any cookies that track you across other websites.

We may use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site — for example, which pages are visited most, how long people stay, and where they come from. This data is used solely to improve the website and is collected in aggregate. We configure any analytics tools we use to anonymise IP addresses and we do not use analytics data to identify individual users or for advertising purposes.

If you prefer not to be tracked by Google Analytics, you can install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

We do not alter our data collection practices in response to browser Do Not Track signals beyond the measures described above.

In the event of a personal data breach that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach, as required by UK GDPR. Where the breach is likely to result in a high risk to you, we will also notify you directly without undue delay, including a description of the nature of the breach and steps we recommend you take to protect yourself.

GuardMyVideos is not intended for use by anyone under 16 years of age. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

Some of our third-party providers (Vercel, Supabase, Anthropic, Stripe) may process data outside the UK. Where this occurs, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as standard contractual clauses or adequacy decisions recognised by UK law.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. If we make significant changes, we will notify you by email or by displaying a notice in the app. The “last updated” date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent version.