Yank is built to be useful without being invasive. We don't sell data. We don't run third-party ads. We don't track you across the web.
When you submit a URL, we store the URL itself, the resulting yank, and basic timestamps. That's the product.
We also keep every transcript Yank paid to make (a video's captions fetched through our transcript provider, an episode's audio transcribed, a song's words translated), filed against that source rather than against you, so that if the same video or episode gets yanked again nobody pays to have it made a second time. A transcript is shown to no one, except this: when a video or podcast episode becomes a public yank, anyone can search inside what Yank has read, and a search shows a few words around the moment and a link to it, never the whole transcript, and only for sources with a public yank.
The text Yank read from a public article, PDF or filing you gave it a link to is kept for thirty days, filed against the source, so that Ask this source and Create from this work from what Yank actually read. It is not shown to anyone, and after thirty days it is deleted. Text you paste and documents and recordings you drop are never kept, and nothing Yank refused to yank is ever searchable.
Our servers also log standard request metadata — IP address, user agent, timestamp — for short periods, used only for rate limiting, abuse prevention, and operational health.
We count what happens on our own pages ourselves: a page view, a card of the five coming into view, asking a source a question or asking for a draft (that you did, never what you asked or wrote), a share, a copy of a link or a line's address, opening a line's context, playing a moment, jumping to a line from the map above the cards, arriving through the short address printed on a card, and following a link to a source or to a related yank. Each is one row with the page, the yank, the line, the action, how the visit began (a shared card, a yank page or another page), the kind of site that sent you (search, social, our own, none or other), and a random id that lives only in the browser tab you have open and disappears when you close it. No cookie, no IP address, no device details, no fingerprinting, and nothing that follows you onto anyone else's site.
We also count visits with Plausible Analytics, the one analytics script on the site. It sets no cookie and keeps nothing that names you: to tell one visit from another it combines your IP address and browser into a code that changes every day, and it never stores the address itself. What it records is the page, the site that sent you, your browser, operating system and kind of device, and the country, region and city it works out from your IP address. Plausible hosts its data in the EU. It is not loaded in the Yank app, and not in a browser marked as one of our own test devices.
Every page also loads Vercel BotID, an invisible bot check from our host, Vercel. Its script is served from yank.info, sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. When you press a button that spends money to answer you (Yank!, Combine, Create, Ask, a translation, a chapter summary), your browser sends the check's answer with that one request, and Vercel tells us only whether it came from a person's browser or a script. We count those answers by button, never with your IP address. It is how a script is stopped from running up the bill, and it follows you nowhere.
To learn whether people come back for another source, your browser keeps a small note of its own: the date of your first yank, how you started it (a link, a search, a screenshot), and scrambled codes standing for the sources you have yanked, so a second yank of the same video is not counted as a new one. The note stays in your browser. What reaches us is only a count, such as “a second source, three days after the first”, with no id that could tie it to you or to any other visit. Clearing your browser's site data erases the note.
Your Yanks, the list that opens from the left of the header (on a phone, from the top of the menu), is kept in your browser too, and never sent to us. It holds the yanks you made in this browser that have a public address, each with its title, its author, its site and the kind of source, and small marks for what you did with it since: how many questions you asked it, what you made from it, whether you shared it, and when. It never holds your questions, the answers, anything you pasted or any file you dropped. You can remove any yank from it, clear it, or turn it off, which forgets it and keeps nothing after; clearing your browser's site data erases it as well. We count only that the list was opened and which of its buttons was used.
A yank you made here also keeps a short key with it, which lets this browser see how many times the yank's page has been opened (“Opened 12 times”). That number counts openings, not people, and it never includes this browser's own visits: when you open a yank you made, your browser tells us so and that visit is not added to it. No one reading the page sees the number.
Saved cards, the cards you keep with a card's Save button: your collection stays in this browser, and we never receive it. Each saved card holds what the card itself shows anyone: the line, who it is credited to, the source's title and address, and when you saved it. They are listed on the Reading page, where you can remove any of them; clearing your browser's site data erases them.
We do record save activity, to understand whether the feature is used. Saving a card, removing it, opening it from the list, and copying or starting to share a card you have saved each adds one row of the kind described above: the action, the yank and the card's number, and the same short-lived tab id. So we do learn that a particular card was saved, one action at a time; what we never receive is your list of saved cards. Starting to share is recorded as just that: it does not tell us whether anything was posted. A save is never shown to anyone as a number.
Watch and your check record are kept in your browser too. The sources you watch are a list on this device; when you open Watch, your browser sends their addresses so Yank can read each source's own feed, and Yank keeps none of them. The check record holds each quote you checked here, the name you said it was attributed to, the verdict, where in the source and when; the check itself reaches us as any check does, and the record never does. You can remove any entry or clear it, and clearing your browser's site data erases both. A week of posts is written on the page and kept nowhere. Your brand, the colours and name for cards you download, is kept in your browser; it reaches us only inside the address of a branded image your browser asks for, like the card's own words do. A picture of your own that you put on a yank's cards never reaches us at all: your browser shrinks it, drops its hidden details (where it was taken included), keeps it on this device and draws the cards itself. Remove it from the card's menu, or clear your browser's site data.
Collections are different: a collection is kept on our server so a team can share it. It holds its name, which cards are in it, the notes your team writes on them and whether each is approved, and anyone with its link can read all of that, so write nothing in a note you would not show the people you send it to. It is never listed or indexed. Changing it takes its edit key, which we keep only as a scrambled hash; the collections your browser can edit are remembered on this device.
“Find earlier Yanks from this browser” fills the list from the note described above, for yanks made before Your Yanks existed. Your browser downloads the public list of yanks, each under the same kind of scrambled code, and matches it against its own codes on your device. The download is the same for everyone and sends nothing about you; which yanks were yours never leaves your browser.
It can also keep the presentations and carousels you make, so you can open them again, but only if you say yes the first time you make one; your answer is remembered and can be changed under “Manage history”. A kept carousel is only its address. A kept presentation is its link, and that link holds the words of the presentation, the same link you would share, so those words sit in your browser too. They are never sent to us; turning this off forgets them.
Yank Reader keeps each article you open in it in your browser, on this device only: its words, what you kept from it, your notes on what you kept, and where you stopped reading. We never receive your copy. When you paste a link, our server reads the page and sends its words to your browser alone; reading it for you stores nothing on our side and shows it to no one else. When you use Save to Yank (the bookmark or the extension), the page goes from one window of your browser to another and never passes through us. What reaches us is only the words you Yank, with the page's address, to be checked against the source and made a public card, and your note if you add one. Words Yank cannot find on the page itself stay in your browser and become nothing public. You can remove an article from Yank Reader at any time; clearing your browser's site data removes them all.
The Yank extension for Chrome runs only when you click it, use its menu or its shortcut. It reads the tab you asked about, once, to hand it to Yank Reader or to send the words you selected; it collects nothing in the background, and sends nothing anywhere except to yank.info, for the same Yank Reader and card steps described above. One setting changes what it can see: if you turn on its Yank button, Chrome asks you for access to every site, and a small button appears beside words you select; nothing on the page is read until you press it. It also counts its own use (the card maker opened, a card made, where you shared it) under a random id that names nobody, the same counts the site keeps.
Only the companies that make a feature work, and only when you use it:
| Who | What for | What they get |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | The model that chooses the five, writes the AI summary, the Yank summary and why Yank kept each line, answers the questions you ask a source, writes the drafts you ask for, translates, and reads a song's screenshot | The text of the source Yank read, or the text you pasted or dropped; a screenshot you chose to use; your questions when you ask one; your voice notes and samples when you ask for a draft |
| Supadata | Reading a video's captions, transcribing a video or an episode that has none, and searching YouTube for a song or a talk you named | The public address of the video or the episode; the words you searched for |
| Vercel | Hosting the site, and the invisible bot check on the buttons that spend money | Each request's standard details: the address, the time, your browser's user agent and IP address; for those buttons, your browser's answer to the bot check |
| Plausible | Counting visits to the site (not in the Yank app) | The page's address, the site that sent you, your browser's user agent and your IP address, which it turns into a code that changes daily and never stores; no cookie |
| DigitalOcean | The database | Public yanks, the counts described above, the transcripts Yank paid to make (searchable only for sources with a public yank), an article's text for thirty days, and the audio of lines read aloud |
| ElevenLabs | The AI voice that reads a queue's articles and documents aloud, when you play a queue | The words of a public yank's heading and lines, already on its page, once per line; nothing about you |
| Hugging Face | Serving the speech model your browser downloads to transcribe or listen on your device | An ordinary download request; never your recording |
| YouTube, TikTok, X | The player inside a card or a post, loaded only when you press play or ask to see the post | What any embedded player receives when it plays (YouTube's is its privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com player) |
| Telegram | The Yank bot, if you use it | The messages you send the bot, as Telegram carries every message |
When you check a quote at /check, the words and the link are sent to Yank, which reads the source and compares them. We don't keep the words you checked. We count the check itself: its verdict, the kind of source, and the same tab id described above, and whether you then copied the result or went on to yank the source. A check that read the source is noted in a second note your browser keeps the same way, which counts yanks and checks together; the note about your yanks never includes a check.
Yank's Telegram bot reads only the links and quotes you send it, and in a group only the commands addressed to it. We don't keep your chat id, your name, your username or your messages. A chat is counted as a scrambled code made with a secret key, which cannot be turned back into the chat, together with what was asked (a yank, a check), whether it worked, and a second scrambled code per source so we can tell a new source from a repeat without recording which source it was. A yank made through the bot is an ordinary public yank, exactly as if you had pasted the link on this site.
The Yank app sends yank.info only what the website would: the link you choose to yank, a name you suggest for a line, and the words you search the library or YouTube for. It has no account and no analytics, and it reads no contacts, location, photos, microphone or advertising identifier. Your Yanks, the list of yanks you made or opened, and a copy of each so it opens offline, stay on your phone; deleting the app deletes them. When you share a link to Yank from another app, Yank sees only that link (and the page title the other app sends with it), and nothing is yanked until you tap Yank. The yank.info pages the app opens inside it (a lyric sheet, Play Yank's 5) count nothing either, and the app sends no session id with a yank. A yank made in the app is an ordinary public yank, exactly as if you had pasted the link on this site.
Everything between your browser or the app and yank.info travels encrypted over HTTPS. Yanks, their lines and the counts described above are stored in a managed PostgreSQL database that is encrypted at rest and in transit. There is no account, so we hold nothing that names you. To ask us to take down a yank, one of its lines, or anything else we hold, use Report on the card or write to the address below; a person reads every request. Yank is not directed at children under 13.
“Customize for sharing” opens the card in ThumbCrafted, another site we run. A picture of the card travels with you. Nothing about you does, and the two sites do not share an identity for you — ThumbCrafted cannot tell us who you are, because it does not know.
While you are there, ThumbCrafted reports three things back to us about the card: that it was opened, that you changed something, and that you exported a result. That is how we judge whether the feature is worth keeping. Each report carries the yank, the line, a random id belonging to that tab of ThumbCrafted, and nothing else. Your composition — the words you add, the graphics, the file you save — is made in your own browser and never reaches us.
On a yank made from a YouTube video, “Loop this line” and “Watch the lines as a Cut” open Playback, another site we run, which plays those parts of the video through YouTube's own player. What travels in the link is the video, the start and end of each line in seconds, the yank's title and the words of the lines. Nothing about you does, and the two sites do not share an identity for you. We count that the link was opened, the same way we count a share. Playback reports nothing back to us, and nothing is saved there unless you choose to keep the Cut, which makes it yours on Playback under its own privacy policy.
Every yank gets a permanent URL designed to be shared, and each of its five lines has a permanent address of its own. Treat any URL you submit as something that may become a public artifact.
Questions about privacy: comboventures+yank@gmail.com.