Your data.
Your control.

What the workspace stores

Account name and email, a salted password hash, sessions, workspace settings and template designs, source references, processing records, captions, media and exports. Sign-in uses an HTTPS session cookie. The separate design preview stores its design state in your browser.

Account emails (email verification, password reset links and notices that your autopilot has stopped) are sent through Resend, an email delivery service, which receives your email address and the message in order to deliver it.

Fetching videos with your own YouTube account

In Workspace settings, under Fetch videos with your YouTube account, the workspace owner can upload a cookies.txt file exported from their own browser. That file lets YTClip sign in to YouTube as that account. YTClip uses it to fetch the videos added to that workspace, by the owner or by anyone on the owner's team. This is separate from connecting a YouTube channel on the Social accounts page, which is for publishing and is described in the next section.

What is stored: only the cookies in that file whose domain is youtube.com (name, value, path, expiry date and security flags). Every other cookie in the file, google.com included, is dropped before anything is saved. The kept cookies are encrypted (AES-256-GCM) in the customer database on the YTClip server. The key is held in a separate private folder on that server, apart from customer data. YTClip also keeps when the file was connected and last used, how many cookies were kept, and a record of each upload, fetch, expiry and deletion. Those records hold no cookie values.

Why and how it is used: only to fetch the videos added to that workspace, whoever on its team added them. For each fetch a private copy is written for that one download into a folder in the server's memory, not into customer storage. It is deleted when the download ends, and if the fetching service is stopped or killed part way, the server removes that folder with it. No screen, download or workspace data export shows the values back. Only the workspace owner can upload or delete it.

Expiry: YTClip marks the sign-in expired when YouTube stops accepting it (YouTube signs the account out) or when the sign-in in the file reaches its own expiry date, and Workspace settings says which of the two happened. YTClip then erases the stored cookies and never tries them again. The workspace's waiting videos are kept, not failed, until a new file is uploaded. When YouTube refuses one video but still accepts the sign-in (a private, age-restricted or members-only video, or a check that YTClip's server is not a robot), only that video fails and the sign-in is kept.

Deletion: Delete in Workspace settings erases the stored cookies. YTClip cannot use them from that moment, and their encrypted bytes are wiped from the database file as soon as no server maintenance task is reading it, normally within seconds. Videos still waiting for YouTube then go back to being fetched the usual way, without the account. Deleting your account also erases them, as described under Deleting your account. Maintenance copies of the customer database kept on the server may still hold the encrypted cookies until those copies are removed.

Risk: YouTube may block an account that is used this way, for a while or for good. YTClip suggests a separate YouTube account made for this, not the account your channel is on. The guide this method comes from says the same, on its page about exporting YouTube cookies.

Posting to your social accounts

When you connect YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, YTClip stores the account's name and ID, to show you which account is connected, and the permission that platform gives it. The permission is encrypted, and all of it is kept apart from the operator's own accounts. YTClip uses them only to post the clips you choose and to check each post's result. To post to Instagram or TikTok, YTClip gives that platform a private link to the clip that works for two hours. YTClip keeps a record of each post: the clip, the account, the title and caption, the time, the result and the post's link. Disconnecting removes the saved permission at once; the post records stay with your workspace. You can also remove YTClip's access to your YouTube account on Google's security settings page. What each platform does with your posts is covered by its own privacy policy (Google, Meta, TikTok).

Removal and retention

Disconnect removes the active saved token payload. Provider revocation is reported separately and may require reconciliation. Current disconnect does not erase all historical metadata, backups or source media. A full consent-revocation and data-removal workflow is being completed before platform compliance is claimed.

Expired abandoned OAuth requests have their secret payload removed at startup and during bounded minute maintenance. Media, source caches and backups do not have a verified automatic deletion deadline. The 24-hour publication-age rule is not a promise of erasure. Service journal logs are size-limited; system log files are configured for weekly rotation with four rotated files. These controls do not guarantee a fixed deletion date for every log.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in the workspace under Settings, Delete account. You confirm with your password and by typing DELETE. Deletion starts at once. There is no waiting period and it cannot be undone. To keep a copy, use Export workspace data first.

What is deleted: your name, email address and password hash; your workspace, its settings and clipping profiles; the videos in your workspace and the source files fetched for them; their transcripts, including the copy kept by the transcription service unless another account added the same video; the clips, edits, downloads and scheduled posts in your workspace; connected accounts and any YouTube sign-in you added; all your sign-ins; and the team invitations you sent or received. This includes the videos, clips and edits your teammates added to your workspace. Teammates lose access to your workspace; their own accounts and workspaces stay. Your memberships of other workspaces end; videos, clips and edits you added to another person's workspace stay in it.

Files are removed straight away and checked again one hour later for anything still arriving. Deletion is refused while a video, an edit or a post for your account is being made; try again when it finishes.

What is kept: a record that an account was deleted, with the date and how many items were removed. It holds nothing that identifies you once the check one hour later has run; until then it also keeps your account's reference numbers, so that check can find anything still arriving. The invitation code you signed up with stays marked as used, with no link to you. Copies of the customer database made for maintenance before your deletion stay on this server and are not changed by it. Clips you downloaded or posted elsewhere are not affected. To remove YTClip's access to a Google, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook account, use that account's own settings.

Processing and source permissions

The customer server runs on Hetzner infrastructure in Nuremberg, Germany, verified from the server metadata. Maintenance database backups are also retained on this server; provider-level backup locations remain to be confirmed. Copyright permission and a source platform's acquisition approval are separate requirements. YouTube audiovisual acquisition approval remains unresolved; no claim that YouTube's API supplies a media-download endpoint is made.

Questions and requests

Responsible operator: Benjamin Iannotta personally. Contact: Benjaminiannotta@gmail.com. The operator has confirmed his personal identity. Remaining processing-location, removal and backup facts are described above; no complete-erasure claim is made. No account credentials will be supplied to reviewers without specific authorisation.