Privacy Policy

RetroQue is a private-beta analytics tool that helps YouTube creators understand their existing video library — surfacing patterns, diagnostics, and recommendations so older videos can keep working for the channel. This policy explains what information RetroQue collects, how it is used and shared, how long it is kept, and the choices you have. It applies to the RetroQue website and dashboard. Questions can be sent to skellyviperbusiness@gmail.com.

RetroQue uses YouTube API Services to access and analyze YouTube channel and video data after you connect your YouTube account.

Connecting a channel means signing in with Google and granting RetroQue read-only YouTube permissions on Google's consent screen. RetroQue does not request or use any permission that would let it change your channel, and it never reads YouTube data before you authorize it. By connecting a YouTube account you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service.

Your use of YouTube is also governed by the Google Privacy Policy: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy.

RetroQue's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements: that information is used only to provide and improve the RetroQue features you see, is never sold, is never used for advertising, and is never read by a person except with your permission, for security, or to comply with the law.

Account information

When you request access or create an account: your name, email address, and password (handled by our authentication provider — RetroQue never sees or stores your password in plain text), and the channel URL and message you include in an access request.

Google account and channel identifiers

When you connect YouTube: your Google account ID and email address, the permissions you granted, and your YouTube channel ID. RetroQue also stores the OAuth access and refresh tokens Google issues for your authorization. Tokens are encrypted before they are stored (see Security).

YouTube data accessed through YouTube API Services

Depending on what your channel makes available, RetroQue accesses, stores, and analyzes:

• Channel metadata: channel title, description, custom URL, thumbnail, country, creation date, and public subscriber and video counts.
• Video metadata for your videos: titles, descriptions, tags, thumbnails, durations, publish dates, and privacy status (public, unlisted, or private).
• Public video statistics: view, like, and comment counts.
• YouTube Analytics data for your videos: views, watch time, average view duration and average view percentage, likes, comments, shares, subscribers gained and lost, retention curves, traffic sources, and similar per-video and per-day metrics.
• YouTube Reporting API data, where available: impressions and click-through rate (CTR). RetroQue can also read the same figures from a YouTube Studio report (CSV) you choose to upload.
• Caption or transcript text for your videos, where captions exist, used only for the transcript diagnostics you trigger.
• Public comments on your own videos, only when you run a comment analysis. RetroQue stores summarized themes only; the comment text and commenter identities are not kept, and the summaries expire after 30 days.

Private videos are never imported. Unlisted videos are imported only if you turn that option on. RetroQue does not access data about your viewers as individuals.

Public YouTube data about other channels

Some optional features — market and niche context, and the Deep Niche Scan you confirm before running — use YouTube API Services to search public YouTube content and read public metadata and statistics of videos and channels that are not yours. This is public information; it is stored in aggregate and per-video form to show you how a topic is performing, and it is refreshed or expires over time. RetroQue does not connect it to identifiable viewers.

Information you submit

Video ideas, titles, thumbnail concepts, notes and drafts (Idea Preflight), experiment records, hypotheses and verdicts (Tracker), review notes on generated reports (Channel Audit), sync preferences such as excluded videos, and bug reports (subject, description, the page you were on, and a reply email).

Generated analysis

Everything RetroQue derives from the above: format and topic clusters, channel-relative scores, the opportunity queue, refresh kits, transcript and comment diagnostics, channel memory snapshots, audit reports, preflight feedback, and niche scan findings.

Technical and usage information

Sync job status and error logs, counts of how often you use capped features (for example how many syncs or reports you generated this month), and standard server logs kept by our hosting providers (IP address, browser type, timestamps, pages requested). RetroQue does not run third-party advertising or behavioral-analytics trackers.

RetroQue uses the information above to:

• Sync your channel catalog and keep it up to date each time you run a sync.
• Show dashboards and the Video Inspector for your videos.
• Compute channel-relative opportunity recommendations (the Queue) and Refresh Kits.
• Run Idea Preflight checks against your own channel history.
• Build and refresh your channel memory (Channel Brain) so answers are grounded in your data.
• Track experiments and evaluate what happened after a change you made.
• Provide niche and market context from public YouTube data.
• Generate Channel Audit reports you request.
• Authenticate you, secure the service, prevent abuse, enforce usage limits, and debug problems you report.
• Improve RetroQue's features and reliability, only in ways consistent with this policy and with Google's Limited Use requirements.
• Contact you about your account, access request, bug report, or important changes to the service.

All scoring is relative to your own channel. RetroQue does not combine your YouTube data with other users' data to build benchmarks, does not use it to target advertising, and does not use it to train general-purpose models.

RetroQue does not sell your personal information or your YouTube data, and does not share your YouTube data publicly. Information is shared only in these cases:

• Service providers (processors) that run RetroQue on our behalf and may only process data under our instructions: Supabase (database and authentication), Vercel (web hosting and serverless functions), cloud compute hosts for background sync and clustering workers, Anthropic (Claude models — used only when you run a sync with cluster labelling enabled, or trigger a feature such as a Refresh Kit, transcript or comment analysis, Idea Preflight, or Channel Brain answers, to turn the relevant titles, descriptions, metrics, transcript excerpts, comment text, or your idea text into written summaries and suggestions), and Resend (email delivery for bug-report notifications, when configured).
• Google and YouTube — RetroQue sends requests to YouTube API Services and Google's sign-in and token endpoints to do what you asked it to do. Public pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which receives your browser's IP address.
• Authorized team access — a small number of people operating RetroQue may access data when needed to provide support you asked for, investigate a bug or security incident, or verify compliance. Access is limited, logged where possible, and never used to view your YouTube data for any other purpose.
• Legal requirements — if required by law, regulation, legal process, or an enforceable governmental request, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of RetroQue, its users, or the public.
• Business transfer — if RetroQue is acquired or merged, information may be transferred to the successor, which must honour this policy or give you notice and a choice.

RetroQue may use cookies, localStorage, sessionStorage, or similar technologies for login and sessions, preferences, security, saved interface state, and product functionality. In practice that means:

• Authentication cookies set by our authentication provider (Supabase) to keep you signed in. These are strictly necessary.
• A short-lived, HTTP-only security cookie (about 10 minutes) used to protect the YouTube connection step against cross-site request forgery.
• Browser localStorage for interface preferences, such as your preferred Queue view, sync filters and excluded videos, dismissed notices, and selected videos in filters.
• Browser sessionStorage for temporary, per-tab state, such as an Idea Preflight draft token so a reload does not create a duplicate draft.

RetroQue does not use advertising cookies, cross-site tracking, or third-party analytics cookies. You can clear or block storage in your browser settings; some features (staying signed in, saved preferences) will stop working if you do.

• Revoke YouTube access. At any time, remove RetroQue from your Google Account permissions page (also reachable via the Google security settings page). RetroQue will no longer be able to retrieve new YouTube data.
• Reconnect or re-authorize from RetroQue Settings, which replaces the stored authorization with a new one.
• Request deletion. Email skellyviperbusiness@gmail.com from your account address and we will delete your account, stored tokens, synced YouTube data, and generated analysis, normally within 30 days, unless we must keep specific records to comply with law.
• Request a copy or correction of the information we hold about you by contacting the same address.
• Choose what is imported: you can exclude videos from analysis and decide whether unlisted videos are included.
• Control optional processing: transcript and comment analysis, Refresh Kits, Idea Preflight, Deep Niche Scan, and Channel Audit run only when you trigger them.

Disconnecting or revoking access limits what RetroQue can do — dashboards stop updating and features that depend on fresh YouTube data become unavailable until you reconnect.

• Synced YouTube data and generated analysis are kept while your channel stays connected, so RetroQue can show historical trends and evaluate experiments over time. Each sync refreshes the stored catalog and metrics. By connecting a channel you consent to this storage beyond 30 days; you can delete it at any time (see above).
• Comment analysis summaries expire and are removed after 30 days.
• Stored OAuth tokens are replaced when you reconnect and deleted when your account or data is deleted.
• Public market and niche data about other channels is refreshed or expires on a schedule and is not tied to your identity.
• Bug reports, access requests, usage counters, and server logs are kept as long as needed to provide the service, resolve disputes, enforce our terms, and keep the service secure, then deleted or anonymized.
• Deleted data may persist in encrypted backups for a limited period before it is purged.

• OAuth access and refresh tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM using a key that is stored separately from the database.
• All traffic between your browser, RetroQue, and YouTube API Services uses HTTPS.
• Database access is scoped to your account: every read and write is checked against your user ID, and row-level security policies apply where the public key is used.
• RetroQue requests only read-only YouTube permissions, so a compromise of RetroQue could not be used to change your channel.
• Bug reports never include tokens, cookies, headers, uploaded files, or raw error traces.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your data we will notify you as required by law.

RetroQue is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

RetroQue's providers may store and process information in the United States, the European Union, and other countries. Where required, transfers rely on the providers' standard contractual safeguards.

We may update this policy as RetroQue evolves. The “Last updated” date at the top shows the current version. Material changes — especially any change to what YouTube data RetroQue accesses or how it is used — will be signposted inside the product or by email before they take effect.

Questions about this policy or your data? Email skellyviperbusiness@gmail.com. You can also review our Terms of Service, the YouTube Terms of Service, and the Google Privacy Policy.