Who is responsible
The data controller is the publisher of Lola, established in Malta. Contact: [email protected].
This policy covers the Lola app for macOS, this website, and any contact you have with us.
In short
- Speech recognition and the clean-up pass run on your Mac by default. Your audio and your words stay on your Mac.
- Lola has no account, no telemetry and no analytics.
- Lola uses the internet for 4 things only, listed below.
- This website has no analytics and sets no cookies of its own.
- Payments are handled by our reseller Polar. We never see your card details.
What stays on your Mac
Lola turns your speech into text with Whisper, a speech recognition model, then tidies the text with a clean-up model. By default, both run on your Mac. Your audio and the text you dictate are not sent to us or to anyone else.
Your dictation history is stored on your Mac, in your user Library folder. You can delete it at any time from the app with “Delete my data”.
Lola does not save your audio to disk by default.
Your licence is checked on your Mac too. Lola keeps one small record, in its folder in your Library (licence.json, readable by your user only) and in your login Keychain: a random id for this install, when your trial started, the latest date your Mac has shown (so the trial cannot be wound back), and once you activate, your licence key, its activation id, the email address and name Polar returns with it, and when it was last checked. “Delete my data” does not remove it; deactivating the licence in Settings frees your key for another Mac.
We cannot see, access or delete anything stored on your Mac. It stays under your control.
When Lola uses the internet
Lola makes network requests for these 4 things only:
- Model download, at first launch, and later only if you pick a model that is not on your Mac yet. Lola downloads its speech and clean-up models from Hugging Face, a model host. Like any download, this shows Hugging Face your IP address and the usual technical details of the request, which it handles under its own privacy policy.
- Update check, when you ask for it. Lola checks whether a newer version exists. Like any web request, this shows your IP address to the server that answers.
- A clean-up that runs elsewhere, only if you choose one. The clean-up runs on your Mac by default (“This Mac (free)” in Settings). Settings offers 2 other choices, and neither is on unless you pick it: “Anthropic API (your key)”, which uses your own Anthropic API key, and “Claude Code (its login)”, which uses your own login to Claude Code, Anthropic's command-line tool. With either, the text of each dictation (never the audio) is sent to Anthropic for the clean-up pass, under your own key or login, your own agreement with Anthropic and Anthropic's privacy policy. We never receive it.
- Your licence, with Polar, our store. When you activate your key, Lola sends Polar your licence key and a random id for this install (such as “lola-” and 16 random characters). After that, it checks the key again at most once a week, and only when the network is there; deactivating the key in Settings sends it once more. Each request also carries Lola's own store identifiers (the same in every copy of Lola), the activation id Polar gave back, and the app's name and version (for example “Lola/1.6.0 (macOS)”). Never your Mac's name, never your words, never your audio, never your settings. Polar sees your IP address, as any server does, and answers with the licence's details, including the buyer's email address and name: Lola keeps those on your Mac to show whose licence it is, and does not log them. Being offline, for any length of time, never costs you your licence: it is withdrawn only if Polar answers that the key is invalid, disabled, refunded or not for Lola. The 7-day trial needs no network at all.
Nothing else leaves your Mac: no account, no telemetry, no analytics.
When you buy Lola
Our order process is conducted by our online reseller Polar, who is the Merchant of Record for all our orders. Polar collects your payment and billing details (such as your name, email address, country and payment method) as an independent controller, under its own privacy policy: polar.sh/legal/privacy.
Polar shares with us only what we need to provide your licence and support you: your name, email address, country, and the details of your order and licence key. We never receive your card details.
Legal basis: performing our contract with you (GDPR, article 6(1)(b)) and meeting our accounting obligations (article 6(1)(c)).
This website
This website is a static site. It has no analytics, no tracking and no cookies of its own.
Polar's checkout script is served from this site and loaded only when you click Buy; the checkout itself then opens in a frame served by Polar. From then on, Polar may set its own cookies and processes your payment and billing data as Merchant of Record, under its own privacy policy.
Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, Inc. (Cloudflare Pages), keeps standard access logs, such as IP address, date and time, page requested and browser type, to keep the site running and secure. They are kept for [LOG RETENTION]. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a secure website (article 6(1)(f)).
When you write to us
If you email us, we use your email address and your message to answer you and support your purchase. Our email is hosted by Zoho Mail (Zoho Corporation B.V.). Legal basis: performing our contract with you, or our legitimate interest in answering you (article 6(1)(b) and (f)).
Who else handles data
- Polar: payment, invoicing, tax and order support, and the licence checks described above, as an independent controller.
- Cloudflare, Inc. (Cloudflare Pages): hosting this website, on our behalf.
- Zoho Mail (Zoho Corporation B.V.): our email, on our behalf.
- Hugging Face: the model downloads, under its own policy.
- Anthropic: only if you choose the clean-up on your own Anthropic API key or on your own Claude Code login, under your agreement with Anthropic.
We do not sell personal data and we do not use it for advertising.
Transfers outside the EU
Some of these companies may process data outside the European Union, for example in the United Kingdom or the United States. When a provider does so on our behalf, we rely on the safeguards the GDPR provides, such as an adequacy decision or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. Polar, Hugging Face and Anthropic describe their own transfers in their privacy policies.
How long we keep data
- On your Mac: your history and logs until you delete them, with “Delete my data” in the app; the licence record while Lola is installed, in Lola's folder in your Library and in your login Keychain, where you can delete it.
- Order and licence records: as long as your licence exists, then as long as Maltese tax and accounting law requires.
- Emails: up to 3 years after our last exchange, then deleted.
- Website access logs: [LOG RETENTION].
Your rights
Under the GDPR, you can ask us to:
- give you access to the personal data we hold about you;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- restrict or object to its use;
- send it to you in a portable format.
To use these rights, write to [email protected]. We answer within 1 month. We may ask you to confirm who you are, for example by writing from the email address used for your order.
For data held by Polar, Hugging Face or Anthropic, contact them directly, or write to us and we will help.
If you think we have not respected your rights, you can complain to Malta's data protection authority, the Office of the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (idpc.org.mt), or to the data protection authority of the EU country where you live or work.
Changes to this policy
If we change how Lola or this website handles personal data, we will update this policy and its date before the change takes effect.
Contact
Lola, Malta. Email: [email protected].