Hark voice data policy

Who this policy is from

External Software LLC, Greenville, South Carolina, makes Hark, a desktop app that records and transcribes meetings on your computer. This is our written policy for voice data, including the retention schedule and destruction guidelines that biometric privacy laws such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act ask for. It covers the Hark app on every system (Windows, macOS and Linux). Our general privacy policy covers everything else.

What voice data exists

Meeting recordings themselves stay on your computer. Hark never uploads audio to us, for transcription, sync or anything else.

The only purpose

Hark uses your voiceprint for one thing: to label you as the speaker in the transcripts of meetings you record with Hark on that computer. It is not used to verify your identity, not used to train artificial intelligence, and never sold, leased, traded or otherwise used to make money.

External Software never possesses voiceprints

Your voiceprint is made on your computer and stays there, encrypted, in Hark's own data. It is never sent to us, never included in sync (which is end-to-end encrypted and carries no audio or voice data), and never shared with anyone, including Anthropic, whose Claude models write Hark's AI notes from transcript text. We have no copy to disclose, sell or lose.

Retention schedule and destruction

Hark permanently deletes your voiceprint at the earliest of:

1. 6 months after you sign. Hark then asks whether you want to agree and record again.
2. The moment you withdraw your consent by choosing Delete my voice.
3. When a different External Software account signs in to Hark on that computer.

If you uninstall Hark, its data folder stays on the computer until you delete it. If you install Hark again, it deletes a voiceprint that is past its 6 months. Deleting Hark's data folder also deletes the voiceprint.

How to withdraw

You can withdraw at any time. In Hark, open Account and choose Delete my voice. Hark deletes your voiceprint straight away and tells us that you withdrew, so your consent record shows when it ended. Names already written in your transcripts stay, because they are text. Recognize my voice is optional: Hark works fully without it.

The consent records we keep

We keep a record of each consent as proof that you gave it. It contains no voice data. It holds:

• your account email,
• the full name you typed as your electronic signature,
• the date and time you signed,
• the full text of the consent you agreed to,
• the text of the sentence you read aloud (the words, not the recording),
• the IP address you agreed from, and the approximate location it indicates (country, region and city),
• the name of the computer, the Hark version and the technical details your computer sends with the request (its "user agent"),
• if you withdraw, when, and the IP address you withdrew from.

We keep each record for 6 years after the consent ends (when you withdraw, or when it expires), then delete it. You can see your consent records on your account page. We don't sell or share them, and disclose them only where the law requires it or to show that consent was given.

Other people's voices

Hark tells the voices in each recording apart only to split the transcript into speakers ("Speaker 1", "Speaker 2"...). That analysis happens on your computer and is discarded once the meeting is processed. Hark does not save voiceprints of the people you record and does not recognize them in later meetings. You name the other speakers yourself, and those names are text in that meeting's transcript.

Recording consent is your responsibility. Many places require everyone's consent before a conversation is recorded; see recording consent laws by state. Our terms also require that Recognize my voice is used only for your own voice.

Changes to this policy

If we change how Hark handles voice data, we update this page and give the consent text a new version number. Questions: contact us.