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 a voiceprint for one thing: to label that person as the speaker in the transcripts of meetings recorded 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

Every voiceprint is made on the 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 each voiceprint at the earliest of:

1. 6 months after that person signs. They can then agree and record again.
2. The moment the consent is withdrawn by choosing Delete my voice, or Delete next to the person's name.
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 any voiceprint that is past its 6 months. Deleting Hark's data folder also deletes the voiceprints.

How to withdraw

You can withdraw at any time. In Hark on that computer, open Account and choose Delete my voice, or Delete next to your name under Voices Hark recognizes. Hark deletes the voiceprint straight away and tells us that you withdrew, so the consent record shows when it ended. If you set up your voice on someone else's computer and can't use it, ask them to delete it, or contact us: we'll mark your consent as withdrawn and ask the account holder to delete the voiceprint. Names already written in transcripts stay, because they are text. Voice recognition is optional: Hark works fully without it.

The consent records we keep

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

• the email of the External Software account signed in to Hark on that computer,
• the full name the person typed as their electronic signature,
• the date and time they signed,
• the full text of the consent they agreed to,
• the text of the sentence they read aloud (the words, not the recording),
• the IP address they 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 the consent is withdrawn, when, and the IP address it was withdrawn from.

We keep each record for 6 years after the consent ends (when you withdraw, or when it expires), then delete it. Account holders can see the consent records made on their computers on their 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, unless a person sat at your computer and signed the consent and read the passage themselves. Nobody can agree for someone else. 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 each person sets up only their own voice, in person and of their own free will.

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.