Verbatim Voices

Verbatim Voices

How we handle your documents

Plain words about what happens to your document. We only state things our system actually does. Where something is a rule we follow rather than a technical lock, we say so.

The short version

  • Your file is stored encrypted and reachable only through a private link.
  • It is deleted automatically 48 hours after your recording is ready, or right away when you press Delete this audio now.
  • The words are sent to Amazon (Amazon Polly) so it can make the voices. Our Amazon account is opted out of Amazon using that text to improve its services.
  • We do not use your documents to train anything of our own.

Private link, not a public page

Your listen page has a long, unguessable link. The link is the only way in. There is no public list of recordings and no search. Pages and audio tell search engines to stay away. The link is stored on our side only as a scrambled (hashed) value.

Anyone who has your link can listen until the files are deleted. Treat it like a key.

Encrypted storage

Your upload, the extracted text, the recording, the listen page and the job's working notes are stored in a private Amazon cloud storage folder (Amazon S3) that is encrypted at rest with a key we control (AWS KMS). The folder blocks all public access and refuses connections that are not encrypted in transit. Uploads go from your browser directly to that folder over an encrypted connection.

Deletion

  • Delete now: the button on your listen page removes the files and the job record and the link stops working.
  • Automatic, 48 hours: a clean-up job runs every hour and removes recordings whose 48 hours are up. Because it runs hourly, removal can happen up to about an hour after the time shown. As a second safety net, the storage folder itself expires anything under the job area after two days.
  • If you never press "Make the recording": the upload is deleted automatically after 24 hours.
  • If something fails: a job that gets stuck or fails is cleared automatically after about 12 hours.
  • If a file is refused (for example, the scan is unreadable or the job is over a limit), the document and any work files are deleted straight away (a tiny status note, with no document text, stays until the normal 24-hour clean-up).

Deleting removes the files and the job record. It does not call back a copy you already downloaded. That copy is yours.

Who can see your files

Nobody browses them. Our software has no screen that lists or opens people's documents, and the email we send contains only your private link and the deletion time, never the words of the document. We do not read documents.

One honest limit: this is a rule we follow and a design we built, not a promise that is impossible to break. The owner of the Amazon account that hosts the system holds administrator rights over the encryption key and could, in principle, change permissions to open a file before it is deleted. The short 48-hour life is there partly to limit that exposure.

What is sent to Amazon for the voices

To make the recording, the text to be spoken is sent, encrypted, to Amazon Polly, Amazon's text-to-speech service, and the audio comes back. Amazon receives your document's words for that purpose. Amazon's own terms and privacy notices govern anything beyond what is described here.

Amazon opt-out. Our Amazon account has an AI services opt-out policy (named “Polly AI opt-out”) attached at the organization root. It opts out of Amazon using Polly content to improve its services, so your documents are not used by Amazon to improve its services. This was checked in the Amazon console on October 9, 2026. Amazon can still process the text while it makes the voices, and Amazon's own terms apply to that processing.

After the audio is made, a check on our own servers listens to it and compares it with the page. That audio is not sent to any speech-recognition company.

No training on your documents

Verbatim Voices does not use your document, your recording or your text to train AI models of our own. Nothing in our system does that.

What we keep

While your job exists, the record holds only: an internal job ID, which invite it belongs to, its status, when it was created and when it became ready, file size, page count, spoken-character count, the price quoted, which voice engine was used, and the hashed link. It does not hold your document's text or your file's name in the database (the file name is kept inside the encrypted job folder, only so Download MP3 can use it, and is deleted with the job).

When the job is deleted, that record is deleted too. What can remain afterward:

  • A running monthly spending total (an amount, not tied to your document).
  • Short operational log lines kept for 7 days, containing only: job ID, status, file size, page count, character count, estimated price, duration and an error code. Never document text.
  • Your invite record (your invite ID, the email address that gets ready notices, and usage limits). If a billing history is kept later, this page will be updated first.
  • Emails you send us at [email protected], which we keep like any correspondence.

This website

The pages on this site use no advertising or analytics scripts. The site is delivered through Cloudflare, which, like any web host, handles ordinary web traffic to get pages to you.

Redactions and names

Anything the court blacked out stays blacked out. The narrator says "redacted" and never guesses what is underneath.

Your responsibilities

Upload only files you have the right to use. Court transcripts can be sensitive even when filed publicly. If a document is sealed or restricted, check the rules that apply to you before uploading it anywhere.

Questions? [email protected]. See also Terms (draft) and FAQ.