Privacy Policy

The short version

We collect the minimum needed to run the service: your account email (or, if you ask to test the iPhone app, the email you give us), the videos you upload, and the notes you add. Google sign-in can also provide your name and profile picture. Videos are processed by our own software and stored privately. Your videos stay in your library, within your storage allowance, until you delete them. Voice note audio is deleted after 90 days. Your point clips and match data stay available while your account is active. Payments go to Stripe directly; we never see card details. Nothing is sold or shared for advertising. You control who your matches are shared with. We do not use facial recognition and cannot identify anyone from your footage. Recollect is currently switched off.

Who is responsible for your data

PongLens is operated by PongLens LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company in the United States, which is the controller of the personal data described here. For any privacy question or request, including the ones listed in section 11, email support@ponglens.com.

1. What we collect

• Account information. We receive your email address through our authentication provider. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we also receive the name and profile picture that they provide. If you sign in by email, we send you a one-time sign-in link or code. PongLens does not collect or store an account password for any of these methods.
• Your birth month and year. Asked once at signup to confirm you meet the minimum age.
• How you found us. Your answer to “How did you hear about us?”, and the link or code you signed up with, if any.
• Requests to test the iPhone app. If you ask to test the iPhone app, we keep the email address, role, feature interests and optional feedback preferences you provide, along with when you requested access and whether the invitation was delivered. If you volunteer to share feedback, we may email you about your experience or to arrange the type of call you chose. This does not affect your test access. Only PongLens administrators can access these requests. We do not use them for marketing.
• Your videos. The match footage you upload, plus the processed results we generate from it: the cut video, the per-point clips, and match data such as who served and where the ball landed.
• Your notes. Text notes, voice note recordings, and the transcripts we generate from them.
• Recollect data. Concise reminders generated from eligible lesson and practice notes, their source links, and when you reveal, dismiss, or add them to Working On.
• Feedback. Anything you send through the in-app feedback form. Posts and comments on the feedback board are shown to other signed-in users with your first name and profile photo; private reports are not. We may use feedback to improve the service.
• Job metadata. Basic records about each upload: when it happened, its processing status, and any error message. We use these to show your job history and debug failures.
• Aggregate usage. Our website analytics are cookieless: they count page views and visits in aggregate, without setting cookies and without profiling or identifying you individually.

We run no third-party advertising trackers. The only cookies PongLens sets are the essential first-party cookies your sign-in session needs to keep you logged in, plus a cookie that remembers a link you opened before signing up, such as an invite, a shared match or a partner’s link, so we can take you back to it and credit whoever shared it. It lasts up to 30 days.

2. Where your data is held and processed

Video files, point clips, and voice note audio are held in private, encrypted cloud storage operated by a provider based in the United States. Your account, match data, and notes are held in a managed database in Canada. Video processing runs on hardware we control in the United States, or on cloud computers we rent: your video is brought to that computer, processed by our own software, and the results are returned to private storage.

Some steps send a limited amount of your content to two providers so we can give you the result. Each receives only what that step needs, returns the result to us, and may not use your content to train or improve its own models. Section 8 lists the categories of provider we use.

Your matches. Every check we make on a match video, including confirming it shows a table tennis table and finding the table, is done by our own software, and recording, uploading and processing matches do not need the permission described below. Automatic scoring, which you choose for each upload, is the exception: it sends content from that match to OpenAI to help score it, and it needs that permission.

Optional features. Deepgram turns speech into text: voice notes, dictation and recorded lessons. OpenAI powers the AI-assisted features you choose to use: lesson summaries (for a lesson video you import or film in the app, that includes its sound and a few still frames), Journal photo reading, Ask (which reads your notes and the scores and tags from your matches), Improve with AI, Recollect, match analysis (written from your match's scored points), automatic scoring, feedback assistance, page drafting for coaches, and review writing for coaches (Tidy up, and a check that a review answers the player's question). Before the first time any of this sends your content to either provider, we ask you in the app. It is one permission, and you can switch it off in Account.

2a. Why we are allowed to use your data

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, data protection law requires us to tell you the legal basis for each purpose:

• Running your account and processing your videos, including the checks that confirm a video shows a table tennis match: performing our contract with you.
• Keeping the service secure, debugging failures, and improving the accuracy of our analysis: our legitimate interest in running a reliable service. You can object to this.
• AI-assisted features, including Recollect: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Account.
• Purchase and payment records: our legal obligations, including tax and accounting.

Where we rely on consent, withdrawing it does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it, and it does not affect the rest of the service.

2b. If you are in Europe or the UK

PongLens is operated from the United States, so using it means your data is held and processed there, and in Canada. The European Commission has decided that Canada provides an adequate level of protection for personal data.

Every provider we use is bound by a data processing agreement that limits them to acting on our instructions, and those agreements include the European Commission's standard contractual clauses where they are required. If you want to know what applies to your data, email support@ponglens.com and we will tell you.

3. How long we keep things

• Your uploaded videos and cut videos: kept while your account is active and the video is in your library. They count toward your storage allowance, and deleting a video removes both and frees the space. A video you delete may take up to 30 days to clear from backup storage. The video of an upload we turn away, because it does not show a table tennis match, stops counting toward your storage at once and is deleted after 7 days.
• Voice note audio: deleted 90 days after recording. Audio that is part of a delivered paid review is kept with the review.
• Point clips and match data: kept while your account is active, so you can keep reviewing your matches.
• Note transcripts, account, and job records: kept while your account is active.
• Requests to test the iPhone app: kept while testing of the iPhone app continues and for up to 90 days after it ends, unless you ask us to remove yours sooner.
• Recollect reminders and scheduling: kept while Recollect is on and your account is active. Turning it off deletes this generated Recollect data.
• Server and processing logs: kept for up to 90 days, then deleted.
• Material we are legally required to report: kept, securely and with access restricted, for as long as the law requires, even if the account is deleted.
• Records of the terms you accepted and the consents you gave: kept while your account is active and for one year afterward, so we can show what was agreed and when.

You can delete your account yourself from the Account page, or email us and we'll do it. Either way we delete everything in every tier above: videos, clips, match data, notes, transcripts, and job history, within 30 days, except where we're legally required to keep something. Copies other people kept of your matches are theirs, and stay with them. See Copies of your matches.

4. Voice notes

When you record a voice note, the audio is uploaded to private storage and sent to a speech-to-text provider to produce a transcript. That provider may not use your recordings to improve its own models; it transcribes them and nothing more. We do not create a voiceprint and cannot recognise anyone by their voice. The audio is deleted after 90 days. The transcript stays with your account like any other note, and you can edit or delete it yourself at any time. If you want a specific recording or transcript deleted sooner, email us and we'll remove it.

5. Recollect

Recollect is currently switched off. When it is on, it is off for new accounts until you turn it on. When you save an eligible lesson or practice note, PongLens may send its text to an AI provider to identify a small number of useful, source-linked training reminders. A note may produce no reminder when it does not contain genuinely useful coaching or practice guidance. Reminders are generated automatically, so check the note they link to before relying on them.

You can turn Recollect off at any time in Account. Generated Recollect reminders, processing jobs, and scheduling data are deleted when you do. Your original Journal notes remain and are not deleted by this setting.

6. Coach access

If you share a match (or all your matches) with a coach, that person can see what you see on the shared matches: the cut video, the point clips, placement views, and your notes, including voice note transcripts. They can add their own notes. They cannot edit or delete your content, and they cannot see matches you haven't shared.

You can revoke a share at any time from your account, and the coach's access ends when you do. Notes they already left stay on your match.

Coaches can keep lesson notes about their students inside PongLens. A coach may add a student by name before that student has an account; those notes belong to the coach and are visible only to them until the coach shares an entry with you. When you join a coach from their invite link, the entries they share appear in your journal, and the coach can see the matches you upload. You can leave a coach at any time from your account: their access to your matches ends and their shared entries stop reaching you. The coach keeps their own notes.

When you ask a coach for a review of a match, that coach sees the match and the note you send with the request, and the two of you can message each other about it. The review can include written notes, voice notes, drawings on frames from your match, documents and links to other websites. A link opens that website, which has its own privacy policy. The messages and the review stay with the review. If you delete your account, your messages are deleted and the review is no longer linked to you or your match. Either of you can report a message or a review from the review, and we look at every report within 24 hours.

6a. Copies of your matches

If you turn on Let people keep a copy when you share a match, anyone with the link who has a PongLens account can add that match to their own account. We copy the video, the points, the score if you included it, and your starred points. We never copy your notes, voice notes, drawings, tags, the reasons you gave for points, or coach reviews. The person who keeps a copy sees your name, and you see theirs. Their copy stays with them if you turn the link off, or delete your match or your account. Until they change it, their copy updates when you change yours.

6b. Sending points to a venue

Some clubs and venues have a PongLens account. When a match's venue is one of them, Send to Venue sends the points you starred to that venue. Its account can watch, download and post those clips, and keeps them if you later delete the match or your account. If you keep a copy of a match a venue shared, the venue sees which points you star on your copy. Picking a venue for a match sends nothing on its own.

7. What we never do

• We do not sell your data. Ever.
• We do not share your videos with advertisers or data brokers.
• We do not use your footage to promote the service without your explicit permission.

If a PongLens coach asks to share a review of your match and you allow it, clips from that match and the coach's feedback may appear on the coach's social media. You can take that permission back at any time from the review.

7a. When the law requires us to share

We share personal data with courts, law enforcement, or government agencies only when the law requires it, for example to answer a valid subpoena or court order, or when it is needed to protect someone from serious harm. If we find sexual or abusive imagery of a child, we remove it, close the account that uploaded it, and report it, with the account details the law requires, to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which works with law enforcement.

8. Service providers

We rely on a small set of providers to run PongLens. Each one processes only what it needs to perform its role, and none of them may use your content to train or improve their own models:

• Authentication, database, and job queue, hosted in Canada.
• Private cloud storage in the United States, for video files, point clips, and voice note audio.
• Cloud computing, for processing match and lesson videos.
• Deepgram, in the United States, for turning voice notes, dictation and recorded lessons into text.
• OpenAI, in the United States, for the AI-assisted features listed in section 2.
• Website hosting and cookieless, aggregate traffic analytics.
• Email delivery, for one-time sign-in links and codes, match-ready notifications, the invitations to test the iPhone app that you request, and an occasional email about what is new in PongLens, which always carries an unsubscribe link.
• Sign-in with Google or Apple, if you choose it. Their own privacy policies govern your Google or Apple account.
• Stripe, for payments and coach payouts. See section 9a.

Every provider that receives your data must protect it at least as well as this policy describes, and may use it only to provide its service to us.

If you want to know exactly which companies these are, email support@ponglens.com and we will tell you. Clubs and coaching organisations can also request the full list as part of a data processing agreement.

8a. YouTube

PongLens publishes its own tutorial videos to the PongLens YouTube channel using YouTube API Services. This uses only PongLens’s own channel. We do not access, collect or store any YouTube data about you. YouTube’s handling of data is covered by the YouTube Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy.

9. Other people in your videos

Match footage usually includes an opponent and sometimes bystanders. You're responsible for making sure everyone recorded has consented where the law requires it. See our Terms. If you believe footage of you was uploaded without your consent, email support@ponglens.com and we'll investigate promptly and remove content that shouldn't be there.

9a. Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details, and a coach's identity and bank details, go to Stripe directly and never touch PongLens servers. We store the purchase or order itself: what was bought, from whom, its price, and its status, plus your current balances of processing minutes and storage.

10. Security

Videos live in private buckets that only your account, the people you've shared with, and the systems that run PongLens can access, enforced by row-level security and expiring signed links. Transfers use HTTPS. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep the attack surface deliberately small: no passwords stored, no card details touching our servers, minimal personal data held.

A small operations team (today, the two people who run PongLens) can access stored videos and account records when needed to run the service: debugging a failed upload, reviewing content that was reported or refused, or answering a support request you sent. We do not browse your library otherwise, and your notes are not read for support unless you send them to us.

10a. What our analysis does, and what it does not do

Our software finds the ball, the table, and where the players are standing, so it can cut a match into points and show you where serves landed. It does not use facial recognition, does not create voiceprints, and cannot work out who anyone is. We do not keep the body-position data it uses along the way, and we never use your footage to identify a person.

The analysis is automated, and it produces no legal effect and nothing that similarly significantly affects you. It is a training aid, not an official record of play. Summaries, reminders, and transcripts are generated automatically and can contain mistakes, so check them against your own notes before relying on them.

11. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, or delete your account and everything tied to it across every retention tier listed above. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you can also ask us to restrict how we use your data, object to our use of it where we rely on legitimate interests, receive it in a portable form, and withdraw any consent you have given.

Email support@ponglens.com and we'll respond within 30 days. If you are in the EEA or the UK and you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work. Residents of California and other US states may have further statutory rights; we honour reasonable requests regardless of where you live.

12. Children and young players

A player needs to be at least 13 to have their own PongLens account, or at least 16 in the European Economic Area unless their country sets a lower age. A younger player uses PongLens through an account created and held by a parent or legal guardian, who accepts the Terms for them, decides what is shared, and can delete everything in the account at any time. Copies that other players kept, from a link where the account allowed it, stay with them.

We do not knowingly collect data directly from a child below those ages, and we do not advertise or profile anyone. If you believe a child holds their own account, contact us and we will move it to a parent or delete it. If you are a parent or guardian and you want to see, correct, or delete what we hold about your child, or you believe your child appears in someone else's video without your consent, email support@ponglens.com and we will deal with it.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data, we'll update this page and the date at the top, and flag material changes in the app or by email.

If PongLens moves to another company, for example its own company or a buyer, your data moves with it and stays covered by this policy. We'll tell you in the app or by email before that happens.

14. Contact

PongLens LLC, New Jersey, United States. Privacy questions or requests: support@ponglens.com.