Privacy Policy

Vani is a personal text-to-speech reader operated by Charlie Agarwal (“the operator”). This policy explains what data Vani collects, how it is used, where it is stored, and the choices you have over it. Vani is a small personal project, not a commercial service.

Summary

• Vani collects only what is needed to deliver the reading experience: your account email, the documents you paste or upload, your playback position, and your settings.
• Vani does not run third-party advertising or analytics, does not sell your data, and does not track you across other sites.
• You can permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time from Settings → Delete account.

What Vani collects

Account data

• The email address you sign up with (via Clerk, the authentication provider Vani uses).
• Your display name, if you set one through Clerk’s account profile.
• If you choose to sign in with Google, the email address of the linked Google account and your Google profile name.
• The date your Vani account was created.

Documents you create

• Text you paste into Vani is stored in Vani’s database so it can be played back to you.
• PDF files you upload are stored on Vani’s server filesystem. Their extracted text is also stored in Vani’s database.
• Document titles, the date each document was added, and the character count of each document.

Playback and preferences

• Your most recent playback position per document, so you can resume where you left off across devices.
• Your default voice and speed selections, your chosen text-to-speech engine (browser voices vs. Google Cloud voices), and any per-document engine override.
• If you use Google Cloud voices, a count of the characters synthesized per calendar month, used to display your free-tier usage and to fall back to browser voices when the monthly limit is reached.
• A cache of generated Google Cloud audio chunks, kept on Vani’s server so re-listening doesn’t re-bill the free tier.

Technical data

• Your browser sends standard information (IP address, user agent, referrer) when you load Vani pages. These appear in the web server’s access logs for operational and security purposes and are not joined with your account.
• Vani uses cookies set by Clerk to keep you signed in. Vani does not set its own analytics or advertising cookies.
• Vani stores small amounts of data in your browser’s localStorage to remember your most recently used voice and speed on each device.

Third parties Vani relies on

Clerk (authentication)

Vani uses Clerk to manage sign-up, sign-in, sessions, password reset, email change, and Google sign-in. Your authentication data is stored by Clerk according to Clerk’s privacy policy. Vani stores a local copy of your email and Clerk user ID so Vani-owned data (documents, playback position, etc.) can reference your account.

Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (optional)

If you select “Google Cloud voices” as your text-to-speech engine, the text of each chunk Vani plays is sent to Google Cloud’s Text-to-Speech API to be synthesized into audio. Google’s handling of that text is governed by Google Cloud’s privacy notice. You can choose to use only browser voices (the default), in which case no document text is sent to Google.

Google OAuth (optional)

If you sign in with Google, Google receives the standard OAuth identifiers for that flow and returns your email and profile name to Clerk. You can revoke Vani’s access to your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com/connections.

Where your data is stored

Vani’s application servers, database, and uploaded files are hosted on a Hetzner virtual server located in Nuremberg, Germany. Clerk and Google operate their own infrastructure under their respective privacy policies, linked above.

How long Vani keeps your data

• While your account is active: indefinitely, so you can come back to your library.
• When you delete a document: the document and any cached Google Cloud audio for it are removed. The row is soft-deleted in the database for a short period so accidental deletes could in principle be recovered before being hard-deleted by routine cleanup.
• When you delete your account: all documents, uploaded PDF files, playback positions, audio cache entries, and your Clerk user are permanently removed. The email becomes available for a fresh sign-up.
• Server logs: standard web-server access logs are rotated and retained for a short operational window (typically weeks).

Your rights

You can:

• See your account data and documents from inside the app.
• Change your email or password through Settings → Email & password.
• Permanently delete your account and all data via Settings → Delete account.
• Request a copy of your data, or ask any other question about Vani’s handling of your data, by contacting the operator at charlie.agarwal@gmail.com.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you also have the rights described under the GDPR, including access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, and the right to object. The lawful basis Vani relies on is your consent (which you give by creating an account and using the service); you can withdraw that consent at any time by deleting your account.

Children

Vani is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 in the EEA) and Vani does not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact the operator and the account will be removed.

Security

Vani uses HTTPS everywhere, hashes credentials via Clerk, and scopes all database access to the signed-in user. Vani is a personal project and cannot promise the security of a commercial service. If you discover a vulnerability, please email the operator privately at charlie.agarwal@gmail.com before publishing it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that materially affects how Vani handles your data, the “Last updated” date at the top will be revised, and a notice will be shown in the app on your next sign-in.

Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns: charlie.agarwal@gmail.com.