Privacy Policy

Who we are

Counterfactual Limited (“Counterfactual”, “we”) is a company incorporated in Hong Kong. We are the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at [email protected] — put “Privacy” in the subject line and we will treat it as a formal request.

The short version

• We collect what a product needs to do its job, and not more. We do not sell personal data, and we do not use your content to train models.
• Our products use language models. When you ask for a summary, a recipe, an illustration or an answer, the text or media needed to produce it is sent to a model provider under a contract that forbids them from training on it.
• Deleting your account deletes your data. Where a product has no delete button, one email does it.
• This website itself sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from third parties.

This website (www.sameatoms.com)

The site is static. It sets no cookies and includes no analytics, tracking pixels or third-party scripts; fonts and images are served from our own domain. Like any website it is delivered through a content network (Cloudflare) and a web server, both of which keep ordinary access logs — IP address, time, page requested, browser type — for security and capacity planning. We keep these for no more than 30 days.

If you email us, we keep the correspondence for as long as needed to deal with your request and for our records afterwards.

Cooking Videos

What we collect

Account

Your email address, and if you sign in with Google, the name, email address and profile picture Google shares with us. Sign-in codes are sent by email through Resend. We record sign-in attempts per address for rate limiting.

Content

The video links you submit and the videos you upload; the thumbnail, title, description and creator name of a linked video as published on its source page; and everything we produce from a video — transcripts, translations, ingredients, steps, tags, narration audio and the narrated video.

Purchases

Your credit balance and credit history. Payments are processed by Stripe; we receive the amount, the date and a transaction reference. We never see or store your card number.

Preferences

Your language choice and recent searches are kept in your browser's local storage, not on our servers.

Technical

Server logs as above, and error reports through Sentry when something breaks (the error, the page, browser and OS type — never the content of your videos).

How we use it

To run the service: to process your videos, show you your recipes, take payment, sign you in and help you when you write to us. We send email only for sign-in codes, receipts and replies to your messages — no marketing.

Who processes it for us

Video, audio and transcript data is processed by AI providers: Volcengine (ByteDance's cloud, for speech recognition, translation, recipe extraction and English narration) and OpenAI. Video files are stored in Volcengine object storage. Our application and database run on servers in Singapore (Vultr). Stripe handles payment; Resend delivers email; Cloudflare fronts the site; Sentry receives error reports. Each processes data only on our instructions.

How long we keep it

For as long as your account exists. Delete a video and its files are removed. Delete your account (Profile → Delete account) and your account, recipes, uploads and credit history are deleted immediately; a recipe you shared that another user has saved stays in their list with no link to you. Payment records are kept by Stripe and in our accounts for as long as tax law requires.

Reading

Reading works with your own subscriptions. To fetch articles on your behalf it stores the sign-in state you give it for each publication, on our server, and uses it only to load the articles you ask for or the front pages you follow. It stores the text of those articles for as long as needed to summarise and show them, the summaries and translations it produces, your reading history and the feeds and newsletters you subscribe to. The morning digest is sent by email through Resend to the address you give us. Summaries, translations and illustrations are produced by AI providers (OpenAI, Volcengine, Google). Some publications are fetched through a proxy network provider, which sees the address fetched but not your account. Ask us to delete your account and everything above is deleted within thirty days.

Deep Read

Deep Read stores the books you upload, your reading position, highlights, notes, look-ups and the illustrations made for you, on our server, for you alone. When you ask for a chapter to be illustrated, a name to be explained or a map to be drawn, the relevant passage — never the whole book — is sent to an AI provider (OpenAI, Volcengine, Google) to produce it. Historical map data is served from our own domain. The Android app contains no analytics and sends nothing to us except the requests you make in it. Delete a book and everything derived from it is deleted; ask us to delete your account and all of it goes.

Read Mail

Read Mail runs on your own computer. Your mail, the index it builds and your conversation with the assistant are stored on your machine, and we operate no server for this product and receive no data from it. When you ask the assistant a question, the messages needed to answer it are sent to the AI provider you configured, under that provider's terms. Uninstall the extension and delete its data folder, and nothing remains.

AI providers

All of our products send data to third-party language and image models to do their work. We use these providers under business terms that do not permit them to train on the data, and we send the minimum needed for the request. Depending on the product this is OpenAI (United States), Google (United States), Volcengine (China, with servers in mainland China and Hong Kong) and Anthropic (United States).

Where data is stored and transferred

Our servers are in Singapore. The providers above operate in the United States, China and the European Union. When your data leaves Hong Kong we rely on contractual safeguards with each provider. We comply with the Hong Kong Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance; if you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you also have the rights set out in the GDPR, and this policy is intended to meet its requirements.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to a particular use. Write to [email protected] from the address on your account; we answer within thirty days and do not charge for it. Where a product has its own delete button, that is the fastest route.

Children

Our products are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we will delete it.

Security

Data in transit is encrypted with TLS. Access to production systems is limited to the people who run them and protected with keys, not passwords. Sign-in codes expire after thirty minutes and attempts are rate-limited. If we ever learn of a breach affecting your data we will tell you without undue delay.

Changes

When this policy changes we update the date at the top and, for anything that changes what we do with your data, tell account holders by email. Earlier versions are available on request.

Contact

Counterfactual Limited, Hong Kong · [email protected]