Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Mastilo (mastilo.app) is an independent service run from Sydney, Australia (“Mastilo”, “we”, “us”). This policy explains what personal information we collect when you use Mastilo, why, who helps us handle it, and the choices you have. Questions or requests: hello@mastilo.app.

2. What we collect

• Your account: your email address, and your name and profile picture if you sign in with Google or another provider. We give your account an internal ID.
• What you make: the briefs you write, links you share with us, scripts and your edits, characters you design, and the episodes you finish, which we save to My episodes with a short link.
• Photos: if you upload a photo to design a character, it is sent to a model for that one request and then dropped. We don’t store it.
• Usage counts: how many stories and requests you have used this month and today, so the plan limits work. If you make an episode without signing in, it is counted against a random ID kept in a cookie and against a scrambled (hashed) form of your network address, so the free episode is one per visitor. We never store the address itself.
• Billing: your plan and a Stripe customer reference. Your card details go to Stripe, never to us.
• Analytics: page views and a few events, such as “brief submitted”, “episode made” or “video downloaded”, with simple details like the video format. These never include your brief, your script, a character or a share link. When you are signed in they are tied to your account ID. We don’t use session recording or heatmaps.
• Technical data: like any website, our hosting provider records IP addresses, browser type and request logs to run and protect the service. When you make an episode without signing in, Vercel’s bot protection checks that the request comes from a person.

3. Why we use it

• To give you the service: sign you in, write and draw your episodes, save and play them, and apply your plan.
• To take payment for Pro and keep your plan up to date.
• To understand which parts of Mastilo work, fix problems and improve it.
• To keep the service secure and prevent abuse, such as getting around the plan limits.
• To reply when you contact us, and to tell you about important changes to the service or these policies.

We don’t sell your personal information, we don’t use it for advertising, and we don’t use your briefs or episodes to train models.

4. Who helps us run Mastilo

We share information with these providers only as far as they need it to do their job for us:

• Clerk handles sign-in and stores your account details.
• Stripe processes payment for Pro on our behalf, and handles your card and payment details under its own privacy policy.
• Vercel hosts the site, runs the app and checks signed-out requests for bots.
• Upstash stores usage counts and your saved episodes.
• Model providers write scripts, design characters and plan drawings. Your brief, script, the facts found for it and any character photo are sent to them, through Vercel’s AI Gateway, to providers such as Anthropic and Google, and to TypeSafe for camera direction. When you ask Mastilo to look a topic up, your topic is also sent to a web search service through the same gateway, and pages you link are fetched.
• The narrator. To read an episode aloud, its approved script is sent to Google through the same gateway, one line at a time. Every other request through the gateway goes only to providers that don’t keep it; no voice service offers that yet, so Google may keep the lines for a limited time under its own terms, though not to train its models. The recordings are kept on Vercel so your episode and its links play with sound, and anyone who has a link to the episode can hear them.
• PostHog receives the analytics described above.
• Cloudflare handles our domain and forwards email sent to hello@mastilo.app.

We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect people or the service, or as part of a sale or transfer of Mastilo, in which case this policy would continue to apply.

5. Where it is handled

Our providers store and process information outside Australia, mainly in the United States and possibly in other countries where they operate. We choose providers that protect information to a standard comparable to Australian privacy law.

6. What anyone with a link can see

An episode’s share link plays it for anyone who has it, including the script and the character. Only share links with people you want to see them. You can delete a saved episode from My episodes, after which its short link stops working. Long links carry the whole episode inside the link itself, so they keep working for anyone who has them.

7. Cookies and your browser

We use cookies that keep you signed in, and PostHog stores an ID in your browser so visits can be counted. If you make an episode before signing in, a cookie holds a random ID for 30 days so your free episode can be counted. Mastilo also keeps some things only in your own browser: characters you design, your highlight colour, a brief you started before signing in, and an episode you made before signing in, until you sign in and it is saved to your account. They stay on your device and you can clear them in your browser settings.

8. How long we keep it

• Account details and saved episodes: until you delete them or close your account.
• The narrator’s recordings of your scripts: until you close your account. For an episode made without an account, 30 days after the last one you made, unless you sign up and save it.
• Usage counts: they expire on their own, within about 40 days.
• Billing records: as long as Stripe and tax law require.
• Analytics and hosting logs: for the periods our providers keep them, after which they are deleted.

9. Your choices and rights

You can ask us for a copy of your personal information, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and what you have made. Email hello@mastilo.app from the address on your account and we will reply within 30 days. You can cancel Pro at any time from Plan & billing.

Depending on where you live, you may have further rights, for example under the GDPR in the European Union and the United Kingdom: to object to or restrict some uses, to move your data, and to complain to your local data protection authority. Where the GDPR applies, we rely on our contract with you to provide the service, and on our legitimate interest in running, securing and improving it, including analytics.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, please tell us first. In Australia you can also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).

10. Children

Mastilo is for people aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect information from children. If you think a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Security

Information travels over encrypted connections, and access to our systems is limited and protected. No service is perfectly secure, so please use a strong sign-in and tell us straight away if you notice anything wrong.

12. Changes

We may update this policy as Mastilo changes. If a change matters, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. The date at the top shows the latest version.