Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

NewsTune is operated by GUANYU CHEN ("NewsTune," "we," "us," or "our"). This Privacy Policy applies to information we collect when you interact with NewsTune, including through our landing site, account system, waitlist, beta app, public pages, voice tools, and customer support channels.

By using NewsTune, you acknowledge the practices described in this Privacy Policy and in our Terms of Service.

2. Information we collect

Account and identity information

• Information associated with sign-in and authentication, such as your email address, display name, profile image, and account identifiers.

Billing and transaction information

• Subscription status, plan details, payment state, billing history, invoice metadata, and limited payment identifiers provided by our payment processors.
• For purchases made in the NewsTune iOS app, Apple processes your payment credentials. NewsTune does not receive your full payment card or bank account details. We receive and process the App Store product identifier, transaction and original transaction identifiers, purchase environment, a pseudonymous app-account token, subscription status and expiration, renewal, billing-retry or grace-period status, and refund or revocation status.

Content and usage information

• Topics, prompts, source selections, links, series settings, voice or host settings, cover requests, generated text, generated audio metadata, and project activity.

Voice-related information

• If you use voice features, we may collect and process reference audio clips, cloned voice settings, selected voice model identifiers, preview requests, adopted external voice metadata, and related technical records needed to provide voice generation or playback.
• Reference recordings and voice models or embeddings derived from them may be considered sensitive or biometric information under applicable law. We process them only to provide the voice features you request, maintain security, respond to rights or abuse complaints, and comply with law.

Waitlist and communications

• Information you submit through our waitlist or contact forms, such as email, locale, role, requested features, and communication preferences.

Technical and browser information

• Device, log, and browser information, plus cookies, local storage, session storage, and similar technologies used to keep you signed in, remember app state, handle billing return flows, and protect service security.

Connected apps, OAuth, and API information

• If you connect ChatGPT, Codex, another AI client, or a local Agent Skill, we may process authorization metadata such as the connected client, account subject, granted scopes, token status, API-key prefix and status, tool requests, idempotency identifiers, and operation results needed to authenticate, secure, and support the connection.
• Tool inputs may include series settings, episode briefs, scripts, selected episode numbers, voice choices, or publishing instructions that you or your AI client sends to NewsTune. Access tokens and complete API keys are not intended to appear in NewsTune tool outputs.

3. How we use information

We use personal information to:

• provide, operate, maintain, and secure NewsTune;
• authenticate users and manage accounts;
• process purchases, subscriptions, billing events, renewals, cancellations, and payment-related support;
• link verified App Store transactions to your NewsTune account, display your membership level and credit balance, restore eligible purchases, prevent duplicate credit grants, and respond to refunds or revocations;
• generate, transform, store, and deliver podcast episodes, summaries, public pages, RSS feeds, voice previews, cloned voice workflows, and related outputs;
• respond to customer support requests and service inquiries;
• send service notices, transactional messages, and waitlist updates;
• monitor reliability, troubleshoot issues, and prevent abuse or fraud;
• authenticate connected AI apps, enforce delegated permissions, provide bounded tool results, prevent duplicate paid operations, and record user confirmations;
• comply with legal obligations and enforce our policies.

4. Service providers and disclosures

We may share information with service providers that help us operate NewsTune, including providers for authentication, billing, hosting, storage, email delivery, and AI, voice, audio, or media generation. These providers process information on our behalf or as needed to provide the services you request.

Operational providers include Auth0 for authentication; Apple for the App Store and In-App Purchase; Paddle and, for legacy website transactions, Stripe for website billing; and Cloudflare and Amazon-compatible storage services for hosting and files.

Connecting an available third-party AI app is optional. For supported, identified OpenAI connections such as ChatGPT and Codex, NewsTune separately identifies OpenAI, the authorized data and purpose and asks for permission before sharing account content. You can withdraw this named connection consent in Settings. A general API key is not evidence that OpenAI or another particular AI company is its recipient.

For NewsTune’s built-in AI generation features, before sending your content to third-party services, NewsTune separately shows the data categories, named recipients and purpose for the requested feature and asks for explicit permission. Accepting these general terms or granting microphone access is not that permission. Current generation services use Google for text and images, Tavily for research, Fish Audio for speech synthesis and voice cloning, and Taddy for podcast search where enabled. The in-product disclosure reflects the services actually configured for the operation. Changes to recipients, data categories or purposes require renewed consent.

Prompts, selected source material and scripts may be processed to research and generate content. Fish Audio receives the reference recording and voice name you submit for cloning, and scripts and selected voice references for synthesis. Google receives image instructions and video scene or narration context for cover, avatar and video-image generation. When creating video assets, generated visual search queries are sent to Pexels and Pixabay to find visual assets; these searches do not send the full script. Do not provide sensitive or unrelated personal information. Browser speech input is currently unavailable.

You can withdraw future AI sharing in Settings > Third-party AI data sharing. Withdrawal prevents new requests in that scope; it does not recall data already transmitted or automatically delete a voice model. Contact [email protected] to request access, correction or deletion of your data and provider-held artifacts. Retention and processing locations depend on the named service, requested feature, applicable obligations and provider backup cycles; we do not promise immediate deletion of every backup. NewsTune remains responsible for applicable privacy obligations and for requiring appropriate contractual and security protections from its processors. No term waives rights or excludes liabilities that applicable law does not permit to be waived or excluded.

We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect our rights or users, to investigate fraud or abuse, or in connection with a merger, financing, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets.

When you use NewsTune through ChatGPT, Codex, or another third-party AI client, that provider may receive the prompts and tool results shown in its product. The third party processes that information under its own privacy terms and account settings. NewsTune does not control how a third-party client handles information before it reaches, or after it leaves, NewsTune.

5. Public content and RSS visibility

If you choose to make a series, episode, or RSS feed public, related content may become visible to anyone on the internet. Public information can include titles, descriptions, episode text, audio, images, RSS metadata, and any contact information or labels you choose to publish.

Search engines, podcast clients, and third parties may cache, index, or copy public content. Even if you later remove a public item from NewsTune, copies may continue to exist outside our systems.

6. Connected AI apps and Agent Skills

The NewsTune Studio app for ChatGPT and Codex uses OAuth permissions. The client may request separate scopes to read account content, create private content, or publish approved content. NewsTune validates the connected account and scopes for each protected operation. You may decline a requested permission or disconnect the app through the connected service where available.

Portable Agent Skills may instead use a NewsTune API key. API keys should be kept in a trusted local secret store and never pasted into a public or shared conversation. NewsTune stores key metadata and a protected verifier rather than displaying the complete key again. You may revoke an active key from NewsTune at any time. Developer API integrations you configure can receive the data permitted by your API key. You choose and assess those recipients; NewsTune cannot identify a particular downstream AI provider from a general API key alone. The named OpenAI connection consent does not describe or authorize every integration you configure. Review the integration’s data handling and revoke its key when you no longer want it to have access.

AI clients can act only within the permissions granted to them, but you remain in control of the instructions you give. Credit-charging generation and public publishing may require an additional preview and confirmation. Public content can still be cached or copied by third parties as described above.

7. International transfers

NewsTune and our service providers may process information in countries other than your own. By using NewsTune, you understand that your information may be transferred to and processed in jurisdictions with different data protection laws than those in your place of residence.

Where appropriate, we take reasonable steps to work with providers that offer suitable security and contractual protections for transferred data.

8. Retention and deletion

Our standard retention schedule is below. A shorter period applies when required by law or when the information is no longer needed. We may retain a limited record for longer when required for tax, payment, legal-claim, consent, abuse-prevention, or security purposes; in that case, we restrict it to that purpose.

• Account and project content. We retain account information, private series, episodes, generated assets, and project settings while the account is active. After we verify an account-deletion request, we delete or de-identify this information from primary NewsTune systems within 30 days. Residual copies in backups controlled by NewsTune age out within an additional 90 days and are not returned to normal use. Provider-managed backups may follow the provider's documented schedule and legal obligations.
• Published content. NewsTune keeps a public page or RSS item available until you unpublish or delete it. Removal from NewsTune does not erase copies already downloaded, indexed, cached, or redistributed by podcast directories, search engines, listeners, or other third parties.
• Voice data. We retain a reference recording, cloned-voice identifier, and voice settings while the related voice remains available in your account. A completed in-product deletion removes the active NewsTune voice record; a verified manual voice-deletion request is completed from primary NewsTune systems within 30 days. A voice provider may keep limited records under its own documented retention schedule or legal obligations, which NewsTune does not control.
• Connected-agent records. A secure agent handoff expires after 15 minutes by default and can never remain valid for more than one hour; its database record is scheduled for automatic deletion 24 hours after expiration. API idempotency records are automatically deleted after 7 days. We retain API usage events and revoked connection or API-key metadata for up to 12 months after the event or revocation for security, billing support, dispute handling, and abuse prevention. Revocation stops future authorized use but does not delete content already created in your NewsTune account.
• Support and waitlist records. We retain support correspondence for up to 24 months after the last exchange. We retain waitlist information until you withdraw it or for 24 months after your last waitlist interaction, whichever occurs first.
• Payment, tax, and consent records. We retain records needed to document transactions, refunds, tax treatment, and legally significant consent for up to 7 years after the relevant transaction or account closure, unless a different period is required by applicable law.
• Apple purchase records. We retain transaction and original transaction identifiers, product and entitlement history, and refund or revocation records for up to 7 years where needed for transaction integrity, tax, fraud prevention, dispute handling, or legal compliance. After account deletion, we remove the direct account link and retain only the limited transaction record required for those purposes.

9. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, or restriction of certain personal information. You may also opt out of non-essential product emails by using the unsubscribe mechanism in those messages.

To make a privacy request, contact [email protected]. We may need to verify your identity before completing certain requests.

You can also initiate account deletion from the account page in the NewsTune iOS app. We delete or de-identify account content and personal information subject to the retention periods and legal exceptions described above. Deleting your NewsTune account does not automatically cancel an Apple-billed subscription; you must manage or cancel that subscription in your Apple Account settings.

You can also revoke API keys in NewsTune, decline OAuth scopes, disconnect a connected client where that control is available, keep generated content private, disable RSS, or request help removing content from NewsTune's active public surfaces.

We do not sell your personal information.

10. Children

NewsTune is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13 has provided information to us, contact us so we can review and delete it where appropriate.

Users under the age of legal majority should use NewsTune only with parental or guardian consent and supervision.

11. Changes and contact

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will post the revised version on this page and update the effective date above. If the changes are material, we may also provide additional notice through the service or by email.

If you have privacy questions, contact [email protected].