Last updated: 14 August 2026
This Privacy Policy describes how VidStory, operated by 54 Media (“we”, “us”, “our”), collects, uses, stores, and protects your information when you use our Chrome extension.
Information We Collect
VidStory collects the following categories of data:
- Account Information: When you create a VidStory account, we collect your email address and password. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt before storage. We do not use a third-party authentication provider and never store your plaintext password.
- YouTube Page Data: We read publicly available information from YouTube pages you are viewing, including channel information, video information, statistics, video lists, metadata, thumbnails, and transcripts. This information may be obtained from data already loaded on YouTube pages and through the official YouTube Data API v3 using credentials managed by VidStory.
- AI Analysis Data: For features such as channel analysis and video summarisation, relevant channel and video data, including titles, descriptions, statistics, and transcripts, may be sent to our backend and forwarded to Google’s Gemini API to generate results. Results may be cached for up to 48 hours.
- Billing Information: If you subscribe to a paid plan or purchase credits, your subscription status and Stripe customer or subscription identifiers are stored on our servers. Payment details are processed and stored directly by Stripe and are never stored by us.
- Locally Stored Data: Authentication tokens and certain cached YouTube page information may be stored locally in your browser using
chrome.storage.local. Authentication tokens are encrypted before local storage.
We do not collect or maintain a general history of websites you visit. We process YouTube channel and video data only as necessary to provide VidStory’s features.
Other than what is described in this Privacy Policy, we do not collect, store, or share additional data about you or your use of the extension.
How We Use Your Information
We use the data described above only to provide, maintain, and improve the core functionality of VidStory. Specifically:
- To authenticate you and manage your account and subscription
- To manage subscription credits
- To generate AI-powered channel and video analysis you request
- To process subscription and credit billing
- To provide YouTube channel and video research features
- To display analytics and insights on YouTube pages
- To diagnose and resolve technical problems
- To respond to customer support requests
We do not sell your data.
We do not use your data for advertising or personalised advertising.
We do not share your data with advertisers or data brokers.
Third-Party Services
VidStory uses the following third-party services:
- Google Gemini API for AI-powered channel and video analysis:
https://policies.google.com/privacy - YouTube Data API v3 for publicly available channel and video information:
https://policies.google.com/privacy - Stripe for subscription and credit payment processing:
https://stripe.com/privacy - DigitalOcean for hosting our backend server, database, and cache:
https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/privacy-policy
Google Gemini API, YouTube Data API v3, Stripe, and DigitalOcean are the third-party services that receive, process, or store data from VidStory.
We do not use a third-party authentication provider or third-party usage analytics.
Crash and Error Monitoring
We do not use third-party crash-reporting or error-monitoring services such as Sentry, Bugsnag, Rollbar, or Datadog.
Errors may be recorded in our own server logs solely to diagnose, secure, maintain, and fix technical problems.
API Credentials
Calls to external services are made using server-side credentials managed by VidStory, including Google API credentials for Gemini and the YouTube Data API and Stripe account credentials.
Users are not required to provide their own API credentials.
Our API credentials are stored securely on our backend and are not exposed through the Chrome extension.
Google Account Access
VidStory does not use Google OAuth and does not connect directly to your Google or YouTube account.
The extension works with publicly available YouTube information and does not access private YouTube Analytics data.
Certain insights, such as inferred audience information, may be generated by AI from publicly available signals rather than private information from a user’s YouTube account.
Limited Use of User Data
We use data collected through VidStory only to provide or improve the extension’s disclosed functionality and for related operational purposes such as security, technical support, and service reliability.
We do not:
- Sell user data
- Transfer user data to advertisers or data brokers
- Use or transfer user data for personalised advertising
- Use user data for creditworthiness or lending purposes
- Transfer user data for purposes unrelated to VidStory’s disclosed functionality
Human access to user data is limited to situations where it is reasonably necessary to provide support, investigate technical or security issues, maintain the extension, comply with applicable law, or protect users and our services.
Our use and transfer of user data complies with the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.
Data Storage and Security
Data transmitted by VidStory is sent over HTTPS.
Our backend server, database, and cache are hosted on DigitalOcean. Stored data is protected using the security measures provided by our hosting infrastructure, including encryption at rest where applicable.
Authentication tokens stored locally in your browser are encrypted.
Data stored locally using chrome.storage.local remains within the extension’s browser storage unless it is transmitted as described in this Privacy Policy.
We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect information from unauthorised access, disclosure, loss, misuse, or alteration.
Internal Access to Your Data
We do not provide an administrative dashboard for browsing individual users’ analysis results.
Our engineers may access information directly within our systems only where reasonably necessary to investigate and resolve support requests, technical problems, security issues, or service failures.
Data Retention and Deletion
- While your account is active, we retain account information and other information necessary to provide VidStory. Cached AI analysis results expire automatically after up to 48 hours.
- Uninstalling the extension removes data stored locally by the extension in
chrome.storage.local. Information associated with your account on our servers is not automatically deleted. - Cancelling your subscription stops access to paid features but does not automatically delete your account or associated data. Your account information may be retained so that you can resume using the service later.
- Requesting deletion will result in your account and associated personal data being deleted within 30 days, except where information must be retained for legal, tax, accounting, fraud-prevention, security, or billing purposes.
- Billing records may be retained for longer where required for legal, tax, accounting, or regulatory purposes.
Your Rights
You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information associated with your account at any time.
To make a request, email:
Children
VidStory is intended for users aged 18 and over.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we become aware that such information has been collected, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to VidStory, our services, or our data-handling practices.
The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent version.
Contact
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how VidStory handles your information, contact:
54 Media
support@vidstory.ai