Privacy Policy.

Version 1.1 — 10 October 2026 · Effective upon publication

This policy covers the Microsoft Store version of Sonik for Windows, soniksoft.com and correspondence with Sonik Software LLC.

Privacy at a glance

We do not sell personal information or share it with advertisers or data brokers.

1. Who we are

Sonik Software LLC, 10/2 Levan Iosebidze Str., 3700 Rustavi, Georgia, controls the personal data described here, except for the independent companies in section 8. Contact privacy@soniksoft.com, handled by Hans Peter Buhr, Director.

2. How Sonik handles data on your computer

Sonik transcribes and edits on your computer, without requiring an account or uploading your recordings, imported media, transcripts, scratchpads, editing history or custom processing rules.

These defaults can be adjusted in Sonik's settings. You can delete content, change retention, or turn history/audio saving off. If you choose timed history retention, editing history renews that period for the affected entry. Retranscribing audio renews its retention period; active processing and your preservation choices can extend it.

For text insertion, Sonik uses the clipboard and, by default, keeps restorable clipboard text temporarily in memory. It never sends that text to us or includes it in logs/reports.

Sonik stores which upgrade prompts it has shown and a copy of public licence offers on your computer. These records are not uploaded.

3. How we handle account and licence data

Sign-in, activation/licence checks, device management and online privacy controls contact our servers.

Activated installations need no periodic licence check to keep working offline.

At startup, Sonik requests current public licence offers from our website, including before you have an account. This request includes no account or installation identifier, recordings, transcripts or scratchpad content. Our server receives the network information needed to handle the request, including your IP address. We use this connection to provide current offers, not to measure your use of Sonik. If the request fails, Sonik uses saved or bundled offers and continues working offline.

An account requires an email address, a password and a US country declaration; your name is optional. We process:

• Account, session and licence references and purchase associations.
• Installation identifiers, device labels, app version and Windows major version.
• Sign-in and security events, times and masked IPs.
• Agreement versions and acceptances, notice-display and confirmation-delivery evidence, and optional-service choices.

If you declare a move outside the US, existing account, licence, support and privacy services continue, but account-linked diagnostics, product emails and their measurement pause.

You can withdraw consent while diagnostics, product emails and their measurement are paused. When you declare a return to the United States, collection of the relevant data resumes if your consent is still valid.

We do not infer residence changes from travel/IPs or require a foreign address.

Device removal ends registration and diagnostic permissions for that installation.

Account closure offers 30 days to change your mind, unless your statutory erasure request requires earlier account deletion. We handle erasure requests within applicable legal deadlines. If account deletion completes earlier, the cancellation period and licences end then; existing refund and withdrawal rights remain. Records lawfully needed for accounting, refunds or claims follow their separate retention periods.

Legal basis: Contract performance and legitimate interests in providing requested accounts, preparing transactions and securing services. Legal records support compliance duties and necessary claims.

4. How we handle diagnostics and correspondence data

Optional analytics and crash reports

Analytics and crash reporting are off by default, with separate consent switches per device, and require a US residence declaration. They are separate from local logging and website analytics.

• Analytics measure feature use, outcomes and performance through aggregate counts, model/backend information, broad duration/memory ranges and app/runtime versions. They exclude audio, transcripts, free text and exact event times.
• Crash and failure reports contain limited information about app and Windows versions, runtime, hardware, drivers, models, processing backends, errors, memory, technical events and code locations to diagnose faults. They exclude recordings, dictated or clipboard text, custom-rule text, passwords, paths, arbitrary exception messages and memory dumps.

You must review each crash report before sending it. Fatal reports are encrypted locally and expire 7 days after capture. Handled-failure reports remain in memory until they are sent or the app closes. Analytics waiting to be sent are stored encrypted on your computer and expire after 7 days. Expired analytics and reports are never sent and are deleted when the app next runs.

Account-free diagnostics use a random installation identifier never linked to an account. Licensing retires it and requires fresh choices for account/device-linked diagnostics.

For analytics and crash reporting, we also record your consent choices, an identifier for each submitted analytics batch or report, and when that batch or report was created and received by our servers.

Turning a category off stops collection, clears its queue of submissions and requests erasure of that device/category's received reports, leaving only legally required consent/compliance evidence. Collection stops and queued submissions are deleted immediately, even if your device is offline. Reports on our server are deleted when the request arrives.

Licensing, device removal, account deletion and a declared move outside the US clear affected queues when the app learns of the change, before further upload.

Feedback, support and business correspondence

Feedback includes your message, app version, submission/delivery details, signed-in account reference and any reply address.

Technical attachments require selection and review before sending.

Where applicable, separate Feedback Submission Terms require an email address for confirmation, and we collect evidence of your agreement and acceptance. Sending feedback through ordinary email needs no such agreement.

Submitted feedback is encrypted locally, and delivery is retried for up to 7 days after you select Send.

We use correspondence to provide support, improve Sonik and manage business relationships, under the applicable contract or our legitimate interests. Business correspondence may include names, roles, organisations and transaction references. Privacy and contract-withdrawal requests are processed to fulfil legal duties.

5. How we handle your consent to product and marketing emails

Product emails require consent. Measuring opens and clicks requires separate consent. Measurement processes engagement events, IP address and browser/mail-reader information.

You can stop measurement while keeping emails. Unsubscribing stops both; resubscribing does not restore measurement consent. Measurement withdrawal erases identifiable engagement, retaining only necessary choice evidence.

Account, security, legal and service notices are never tracked.

6. How we handle data related to payments and eligibility

Paddle, our merchant of record, receives payment details directly. It may use its own cookies under its privacy policy.

We receive payment email/country, product/tier, amount, currency, tax, date and payment/adjustment/reconciliation references and statuses. We discard supplied names, street addresses, card brands and last four digits; we never receive full card numbers or security codes.

We use verified account and payment information to associate and recover purchases, including through recovery links sent to the payment email address. We send product/price information and Paddle references to create/check transactions and manually request reviewed refunds.

Legal basis: Contract performance, legitimate interests in safe association, fraud/error prevention and recovery, and accounting obligations.

7. How we handle website analytics and logs

Our analytics measure page interactions, events, broad time-on-page ranges, referral sources, page variants and conversions. They exclude form text, query strings, page titles, IPs, user-agent strings and device details.

We specifically use random identifiers in order to connect events without linking accounts, email, registered devices, access logs or other websites.

Sessions expire after 30 minutes of inactivity. Browser collection identities rotate within 30 days, deleting linked events without a successor mapping.

Analytics are suppressed for EEA/UK visitors, when the visitor’s country is unknown, or when Do Not Track is enabled. Otherwise, they are on with notice and an opt-out. Opting out stops collection and erases linked events.

Legal basis: Our legitimate interest in improving the website.

Cookies/browser storage maintain sign-in, requested transactions, privacy choices and separate analytics identifiers. Analytics cookies remain for 30 days; the opt-out lasts up to one year. Clearing storage can lose choices/transaction continuity; blocking essential cookies can prevent account functions.

Access logs record masked IPs, request information and time for our legitimate interests in operating and securing services and investigating abuse. Analytics opt-out does not stop masked IP logging. Outside abuse investigations, logs are not joined to account or diagnostic records.

8. Our partners and sub-processors

Processor addresses: Hetzner, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany; AhaSend, Willem Fenengastraat 16, 1096 BN Amsterdam, Netherlands; Infomaniak, Rue Eugène-Marziano 25, 1227 Acacias, Geneva, Switzerland. Written processing terms cover services within their agreed scope.

We administer data from Georgia. Transfers to Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland rely on Georgia’s recognition of adequate protection. Provider staff and subprocessor access locations may differ. Separate EU/UK transfer safeguards for access from Georgia are not in place. The US is not on Georgia’s adequacy list; we hold no Georgian transfer permit for our requests to Paddle’s US company. This policy does not remedy these transfer risks or waive your rights.

Necessary records may be disclosed for binding legal duties, protection of rights or business succession, subject to required limits and notice.

9. How long we retain data

10. Your controls and rights

You may request processing information, access/copies, correction, erasure, restriction and portability where applicable.

Where applicable, you may request human review, explain your position and challenge a solely automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects.

• Local content: storage controls delete local copies, not information already sent.
• Account: export includes linked diagnostics/feedback. Diagnostics can be erased for selected or all devices.
• Account-free diagnostics: reports sent without an account are linked to a random identifier for your installation. To delete them from our servers, use the app’s privacy controls before activating a licence, uninstalling or removing that identifier. The app also offers deletion before switching to account-linked diagnostics. If you are offline, keep the identifier until the app reconnects and confirms deletion. A later account cannot locate these earlier reports; any remaining reports are deleted within six months.
• Website: exporting or erasing earlier events requires the browser identifier.

Email privacy@soniksoft.com. We may require reasonable identity verification. We will act or respond within 10 working days, or sooner where required. Decisions on requests to block processing are communicated within 3 working days. Complex access/copy requests may take another 10 working days with an explanation.

You may complain directly to the State Audit Office of Georgia, a court or another competent regulator without contacting us first. This policy does not limit your statutory rights.

11. We email you whenever we make substantive changes to this document

We email account holders before material changes take effect, present revised notices where relevant and obtain any required fresh consent before changed processing. Minor clarifications receive a revised date and revision entry.