Privacy Policy

Information we collect

Toast News requires an account. When you sign up we store your email address and authentication details through our auth provider (Supabase), and we count how many briefs you generate each month so we can enforce your plan’s limit. For Unlimited subscribers, our payment processor (Stripe) handles billing details — we never see or store your card number.

Article content you convert

When you convert an article, the extension reads that page’s text in your browser and sends it to our servers, where it is passed directly to the third-party AI providers that write your brief (currently Google Gemini and, as a fallback, Groq), and to our text-to-speech provider (Microsoft Azure) for narration. AI can make mistakes, so summaries may be inaccurate. We never write the article body to our database. It exists only in memory for the seconds it takes to produce the summary, and is then discarded.

The article’s link, title, and summary are held only long enough to hand the finished brief to your browser. Narration audio is generated moments after you convert, not during your original request, so we hold those few details until your browser confirms it has downloaded the brief — typically a few seconds — and then delete them entirely. Anything never collected (for example, if you close your browser before the brief arrives) is deleted automatically within 24 hours. We do not build a profile of your reading habits beyond the usage counts needed to enforce plan limits.

Images, audio, and your briefs

The pictures and animations in a brief are fetched by the extension directly from Google Image Search, from your own browser, and are stored only in your browser. They never reach our servers. Because the request is made from your browser as a normal search, Google receives it with your usual Google session and IP address — the same as if you had searched Google Images yourself. Toast News does not send these searches to its own servers, does not store them, and does not use them to profile you; they exist only to find imagery for the brief you asked for.

The narration audio is generated on our servers and held only until your browser downloads it, at which point our copy is deleted. Finished briefs live in your browser’s local storage, not with us.

The Toast mobile app (iOS and Android)

The mobile app follows the same principles as the extension, with a few differences worth calling out. Account & sign-in: you can sign up with email/password or with Google or Apple. If you use Google or Apple sign-in, we receive only the account identifier and email those providers choose to share with us, through our authentication provider (Supabase) — we never see your Google or Apple password. Regional coverage: at sign-up you choose which region’s news you want, pre-selected from your device’s time zone setting. The mobile app does not use any IP-address-based location lookup. On-device storage: your video briefs, Toast Report history, and app preferences are stored locally on your device (in the app’s private storage), the same role your browser’s local storage plays in the extension — not centrally on our servers. Images for mobile briefs and Toast Reports: the mobile app has no browser session to search Google Images from directly, so our server looks up illustrative images and short clips on your behalf using a third-party image search API (Serper), sending only a story’s search keywords — never your identity, your account, or the article text — and caching results per article so the same lookup is never repeated across users. Push notifications: the app does not currently send push notifications and does not collect a device push token. Account deletion: you can permanently delete your account and its data directly from the app’s Account tab, in addition to the website dashboard.

Problem reports

If a page fails to convert, Toast News offers to send us a report. Only if you choose to send it do we receive that page’s link and title, the reason it failed, and your browser’s user-agent string. We use these solely to fix extraction bugs.

Analytics

We use PostHog to understand how Toast News is used — for example, that a conversion succeeded or failed, which site it came from, the article’s language, and how long it took. These events are tied to your account identifier so we can debug problems and measure whether the product works. We do not send article text, article links, or images to our analytics provider, and we do not use analytics for advertising or cross-site tracking.

How we use your information

We use your email to authenticate you, send essential service notifications, and respond to support requests. We use usage counts (such as briefs generated this month) to enforce the 15-brief free limit and to improve the product. We do not sell your data, and we do not serve advertising.

What the extension can access

Toast News asks to run on any site, because a news article can be on any site and we cannot know in advance which pages you will want to convert. The extension reads a page’s article text only when you ask it to — by clicking Convert or using the right-click menu — and sends it to us only for that conversion. It reads nothing from pages you don’t convert, it never converts anything on its own, and it does not track your browsing.

Cookies and local storage

The extension stores your briefs, reading queue, and preferences locally in your browser. Our website uses essential cookies to keep you signed in. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Third-party services

We rely on a small set of trusted providers, each receiving only what it needs: Supabase for authentication; Stripe for payments; Google (Gemini) and Groq to summarize article text; Microsoft Azure to generate narration audio from that summary; Google Image Search for brief imagery in the extension (requested by your browser, not our servers); Serper for brief and Toast Report imagery in the mobile app (requested by our servers using only story keywords, never your identity); and PostHog for product analytics. Each is bound by its own privacy commitments.

Data retention

Article body text is never stored, so there is nothing to retain. A brief’s link, title, summary, and narration audio are deleted from our servers as soon as your browser confirms it has them — usually within seconds — and in every case within 24 hours. Your finished briefs live in your browser, not with us; deleting one there removes it. The only thing we keep is your account (email and billing reference) and your monthly brief count. If you delete your account from the Profile page, we remove those within 30 days, except where retention is required by law.

Your rights

You can access, correct, or delete your personal data at any time from your dashboard, or by emailing us. Depending on your location, you may have additional rights under the GDPR or CCPA, including the right to request a copy of your data or to object to certain processing.

Children's privacy

Toast News is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product evolves. Material changes will be announced on this page with an updated date, and where appropriate, by email. Continued use of Toast News after a change means you accept the revised policy.