Privacy policy

What is stored, and where it comes from

• Club roster and meeting agendas — names, email addresses, meeting roles and speech assignments, synchronised from the club’s own FreeToastHost website, which the club already maintains.
• Speech feedback — the responses members and guests give about a speech, and the name they choose to put on them. Given through a link that requires no account.
• Club records — attendance at committee meetings as recorded by an officer, minutes of those meetings including motions and how each voting officer voted, the club’s annual Success Plan, and its Distinguished Club Program progress.
• Meeting recordings — retrieved from the club’s own Zoom account for the parts of a meeting that club recorded, together with the captions Zoom produces for them.
• Whole-meeting transcripts — where a club has switched Zoom’s automatic transcription on, Zoom produces a written transcript of the entire meeting whether or not anything was recorded, and this application stores a copy. It covers the whole meeting, not only the recorded parts, and where Zoom labels the lines it names who said what — including guests.
• Meeting attendance — the list of people at a club meeting and how long each was present. Where the club has connected its Zoom account this is the list Zoom reports, and the name is whatever that person typed into Zoom, kept as they typed it; otherwise it is entered by an officer. Where the club has matched a name to somebody on its roster, the record says which meetings that member attended. Names the club has not matched — guests, and anyone who joined under a device name — are kept as names only and belong to nobody. An AI notetaker that joined the meeting is kept exactly as Zoom reported it, because that is what happened, and is not counted as a person present.
• Consent records — what each person has agreed to about the club using recordings, photographs and their name, the date, and the exact wording they were shown when they answered. Set out in full in its own section below.

No payment details are handled. No advertising or analytics trackers are used, and nothing here is sold, rented, or shared for marketing.

Google account data

A club may connect its own Google account. What that permits is limited to the specific permissions the club grants on Google’s consent screen, and the application requests only these:

• Send email — so that meeting reminders and speech reports arrive from the club’s own address rather than a stranger’s. Sending only; the mailbox is never read.
• Calendar events — to put the club’s meetings, and any book-study series it runs, on the club’s calendar.
• Google Drive and Docs, restricted to files this application creates — a club’s filed Success Plan and its book-study session notes. It cannot see, open, or list anything else in the club’s Drive.
• YouTube upload — to publish a recorded speech to the club’s own channel, described below.
• Email address — to show the club which account it connected, so that an officer who signed in with a personal account instead of the club’s can see the mistake.

Toastmasters Club Advanced Tools’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data obtained through those APIs is used only to provide the features described on this page. It is not used for advertising, is not sold, is not transferred to anyone except as needed to provide those features or where the law requires, and is not read by a human except with the club’s explicit permission or where necessary for security or to comply with the law.

A club can withdraw this access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Doing so stops the application from sending mail as the club, writing to its calendar, or uploading video, and takes effect immediately.

YouTube

This application uses YouTube API Services to upload a club’s own meeting recordings to that club’s own YouTube channel. By using it, you are also agreeing to the YouTube Terms of Service, and to the Google Privacy Policy, which govern what Google does with the data it holds.

An upload happens only when a club officer chooses a recording and presses upload, and the default is unlisted — not listed on the channel and not searchable. An unlisted upload is deliberately not gated on consent, because it is how a speaker gets their own speech back to watch and to share as they choose. A club publishing a speech publicly does need that speaker’s agreement. Obtaining that agreement is the club’s responsibility. The application records those answers and checks them before it will set a video public: it does so only where that person’s recorded answer says the club may publish a recording of them where anyone can find it. Everything else refuses — a declined answer, a withdrawn one, and an unanswered one alike, because a question nobody has put to somebody is not permission from them. Anyone may change their mind at any time, and ask for a recording to be taken down, without giving a reason — write to the address at the bottom of this page, or tell any officer of your club. What that stops, and what it cannot undo, is in the next section.

Consent for recordings, photographs and posts

Three separate questions are recorded about each member. They are answered independently, and agreeing to one is not agreeing to another:

• Public video — the club may publish a recording of me where anyone can find it: public on the club’s YouTube channel, or on a page that is not behind the club passcode.
• Named in posts — the club may name me, quote me, or describe my speech in its own posts and promotional material.
• Photographs — my image may appear in photographs the club posts.

Recorded with each answer: the answer itself, the date, the exact wording the person was shown, and how it reached the record — whether they signed it themselves or an officer wrote down what they were told. Entries are never edited and never deleted. Changing an answer adds a new entry, so the record shows what was agreed and when it changed, rather than only the latest position.

What the software can and cannot actually do about it, plainly:

• Public video is enforced. The application refuses to set a video public without a recorded answer permitting it.
• Being named in posts is enforced where a post leaves the club. When the application drafts a social post or an email to guests, a person who has declined is left out of the material it writes from, and it will not let an officer copy or send text that still names them. Writing that stays inside the club — a recap to members, the club’s own meeting record — still names everyone who took part. The application drafts text; it does not publish it, so after an officer copies it this rests on the club following its own record.
• Photographs are recorded, not controlled. The application never receives, stores, or sees a photograph of a member — an officer takes them and posts them elsewhere. This answer is a note for those officers to check against, and calling it anything stronger would be a promise the software cannot keep.
• Withdrawing stops future use; it does not take anything down. Nothing in this application deletes a video from YouTube or removes a post from a social network. A person does that, and the club is expected to. A link that has already been shared may have been saved by somebody, and that cannot be recalled.

A member nobody has asked is recorded as exactly that, and is treated as a no wherever an answer is required — not because they refused, but because nobody asked them. An unlisted recording is not affected by any of this: it stays available to the speaker, whatever they answered, so that saying no never costs someone their own speech.

Processing by an AI model

Three features draft text using an AI model provided by Anthropic: writing a promotional email for an upcoming meeting, preparing discussion questions for a club book study, and drafting a public relations post about a meeting that has happened. What is sent is the material needed for that draft — the meeting’s date, theme and speech titles, or the book’s title and chapter list.

The public relations drafts are the exception worth stating plainly: they also send the transcripts of that meeting’s recorded parts, which are a record of what was said, with names. Speech feedback, minutes and attendance — both the committee kind and the meeting kind — are not sent. The material is not used to train models.

How information is used, processed and shared

Everything this application holds is used for one job: running the club’s meetings and keeping the club’s records — the features this page has already described, and nothing besides. It is not used for advertising, nobody is profiled, and none of it is sold or rented.

Inside the service, sharing follows the club’s own structure, set out under “Who can see it” below: officers holding the club passcode see the club’s records, a speaker sees the feedback about their own speech, and a public page shows only what that club chose to publish on it. The operator has administrative access to the server and database, because running the service requires it.

Information leaves this application only because it is built on other companies’ services, and each of them receives only the part its job needs:

• Vercel — hosts the application, so every request, and every page it answers with, passes through Vercel’s servers.
• Neon — runs the database. Everything listed under “What is stored, and where it comes from” lives there.
• Zoom — recordings, transcripts and attendance are read from the club’s own Zoom account. What travels the other way is the details of a meeting when the club has this application schedule one — date, time, topic — never member records.
• Google — where a club has connected its Google account: email is sent as the club through Gmail, meetings are written to the club’s calendar, the club’s Success Plan, book-study notes and celebration decks are created in its own Drive as Docs and Slides files, and recordings are uploaded to its own YouTube channel — each under the permissions the “Google account data” section describes. Setting up a book study also sends the title being searched for to Google’s public Books catalogue, with no member information attached.
• Anthropic — the three drafting features described under “Processing by an AI model” send the material listed there, and nothing else. It is not used to train models.
• Resend — carries email for a club that has not connected a Gmail account, which means it receives the recipients’ addresses and the message itself for the mail that club sends. A club that has connected Gmail never uses it.
• Free Toast Host — the club’s roster and agendas are read from the club’s own FreeToastHost website, signed in with credentials the club itself supplied. It is where that data comes from, and it is sent nothing it did not already hold.
• Toastmasters International — the club’s Distinguished Club Program standing is read from TI’s own public reporting site. What is sent to fetch it is the club and district number, which are public.

That list is complete: no other company receives information about you or your club’s members, there is no data broker and no advertising network, and nothing is disclosed to anyone else unless the law requires it. Each company named above processes the data to provide its service to the club and for no purpose of this application’s beyond it. What Zoom, Google and FreeToastHost do with the club’s own accounts on their platforms is governed by their own privacy policies, which the club accepted when it opened those accounts.

Who can see it

Each club’s area is opened with a passcode held by that club’s committee. Clubs on the same deployment cannot see one another’s records: every request is checked against the club it names. The operator has administrative access to the server and its database, which is what running the service requires.

Speech feedback is shown to the speaker it is about and to that club’s officers. Feedback links are single-purpose and unguessable; anyone holding one can submit feedback, which is deliberate — guests give feedback without accounts — and is why those links should not be posted publicly.

How long it is kept

Club records — rosters, agendas, feedback, minutes and goals — are kept for as long as the club uses the service, because they are the club’s continuing record and are what an incoming committee inherits. Recording data is kept while the recording is of use to the club.

A whole-meeting transcript is kept indefinitely once stored. It outlives Zoom’s own copy, which Zoom deletes on its own schedule, and deleting a recording does not remove it. Any of it may be deleted on request.

Meeting attendance for somebody on the club’s roster is kept while the club uses the service, like its agendas and speech records. A name that was never matched to a member — a guest, or somebody who joined under a device name — is removed after twelve months; the meeting’s head count stays correct, and the name does not. A name the club has itself matched to a member stays matched until the club changes it.

When a club stops using the service, its data is deleted on request from that club’s committee. Connection tokens are deleted as soon as a club disconnects an account or revokes access at Google.

Cookies and storage on your device

This application stores five small things in your browser, each a working part rather than a tracker. None is used for advertising, none follows you to other sites, and no third party sets or reads any of them. This is the complete list, under the names your browser will show you:

• The access cookie — set when you unlock a club with its passcode: a signed token naming which clubs this device has unlocked, which is the only thing standing between a club’s pages and a stranger. It lasts 30 days, or a year if “remember this device” was ticked, and locking your clubs removes it. It keeps you signed in; it does not record what you do.
• The ui-lang cookie — the interface language you chose (English, Spanish or French), kept for a year. It exists only once you use the language switcher.
• The sidebar cookie — whether you collapsed the club menu to its narrow rail, kept for a year so pages open at the width you left them.
• theme, in the browser’s local storage — your light-or-dark choice, read as the page paints so it never flashes the wrong colour.
• whats-new-seen, in the browser’s local storage — which release note you last opened, so the “what’s new” dot knows when to appear.

Clearing them costs you nothing that matters, because the club’s records live on the server, not on your device. Clear cookies and every club locks again until a passcode is re-entered, the language returns to English and the sidebar to full width; clear site data and the theme resets and the “what’s new” dot reappears. That is the whole of it.

That list is this application’s own. One other thing on club pages can store data on your device: a speech video plays inside YouTube’s embedded player. It is loaded in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, so a page that merely shows videos stores nothing — but once you press play, YouTube may set storage of its own, which belongs to YouTube and is governed by the Google Privacy Policy linked above, not by this list.

Your requests

You can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, or ask that a recording of you is not published or is taken down. No reason is needed. Write to 7642toastmasters@gmail.com, or speak to any officer of your club. Requests are answered within 30 days.

One limit worth being straight about: your club’s roster and agenda originate in the club’s FreeToastHost website and are re-read from it. Deleting them here alone means they return at the next synchronisation, so a deletion request is carried out in both places.

Security

Connection tokens are encrypted before they are stored. Traffic is served over HTTPS. Club areas are passcode-protected and the passcode is verified on the server. This is a small volunteer-run service rather than an enterprise system, and it is described here plainly so that a club can judge for itself what it is comfortable storing.

Children

Toastmasters membership is for adults, and this application is not directed at children. If a record about a child has been created, write to the address above and it will be removed.

Changes

If this policy changes in substance, the effective date at the top changes with it and connected clubs are told by email. Continuing to use the service after that means accepting the revised policy.