Privacy Policy — Creator Tools Lab

Last updated: October 29, 2026 · Effective: October 29, 2026

1. Who we are & scope

This Privacy Policy explains how Creator Tools Lab ("Creator Tools Lab", "we", "us", "our") handles personal data in connection with the website ctlab.app (the "Site"), our desktop applications including SyncLab (the "Software"), and related services (together, the "Services"). For the purposes of the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar laws, Creator Tools Lab is the "controller" of the personal data described here.

This policy does not apply to third-party products, websites, or services that we do not own or control, even where we link to them.

Our software is licensed under the CT Lab License Agreement; for how the software handles data, that agreement refers to this policy.

2. Privacy by design — what stays on your device

Your media is processed on your own computer. When you use SyncLab, your video, audio, project files and timeline data are read and processed locally. We do not upload, transmit, copy, stream or store that content on any server, and there is no cloud-analysis step. That is a statement about the content of your media specifically — the Software is not offline-only. It requires a license, so it contacts our server about that license, and it sends a diagnostic log so we can fix problems and improve how well it syncs: that log describes how the app behaved and the technical properties of your files, as text. Before it is sent, any file or folder name that could identify you, a client or a project is replaced with a neutral label, and it never includes the contents of your files. Both are set out in detail below.

Because of this design, the personal data we actually process is limited to what is described in the next section.

3. Information we collect

3.1 Information you provide to us

Account, trial & subscription details: when you sign up (on the Site, in CT Lab Hub, or by removing the GifLab watermark, see section 3.4), start a trial or subscribe, we collect the information you submit — typically your name, email address, and optionally a messaging handle (e.g. Discord/Telegram) and what kind of editing you do.
Signing in with Google or Apple: if you choose to sign in this way, Google or Apple tells us your email address, that they have verified it, and an identifier for your account with them, so that you land in the same CT Lab account each time. We do not receive your password, your contacts or anything else from them, and we never post anything on your behalf. If you use Apple’s option to hide your email address, Apple gives us a private relay address that forwards to you, and that address becomes the email on your CT Lab account.
Support & communications: the content of emails, messages, feedback, and bug reports you send us, including any information you choose to include.
Your license record: the entitlement attached to your account — which product, which plan, and when it runs to. It lives on our servers and unlocks the Software when you sign in; there is no license key for you to hold or paste. Where a key exists behind the scenes it is stored in hashed form.
Why you canceled: when you cancel a subscription from your account we ask why — you tick at least one reason or write a few words — and we store that answer with your account to understand why people leave. It is used for nothing else. A cancellation made directly at link.com does not go through this form.

3.2 Information collected automatically

Diagnostics & crash reports: technical information that helps us fix problems — such as application version, platform, and error/stack-trace data.
Activation & license data: when the Software checks a license we record a computer identifier, the platform, the application version, the times of your activations and when the Software last ran. This is what enforces the seat limit and the one-trial-per-computer rule, and what lets you move a seat to a new computer yourself. The computer identifier is a short one-way hash we compute on your computer from stable hardware and operating-system values — it is never a hardware serial number and cannot be reversed back to your device. One older form of it is derived in part from your operating-system account name; it is hashed before it ever leaves your computer and is never transmitted or stored in a readable form. The same identifier may also be attached to diagnostic logs, crash reports and error reports, so that a report can be matched to the license it came from. Diagnostic logs from CT Lab Hub may also carry the number of the CT Lab account signed in to it — the account’s number, never its email address — so that we can match a log to the person it belongs to when helping them.
Approximate country: when you create an account, and whenever the Software or a plugin checks its license, we derive your approximate country from the IP address of that request and keep only the two-letter country code. The lookup runs against an offline database on our own server, so your IP address is not sent to anyone for it, and the address itself is not stored. We use the country only to understand, in aggregate, where our users are — not for advertising, and it is not shared. Country data: IP geolocation by DB-IP, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Session and error telemetry: the Software sends a diagnostic session log automatically: a first copy when it starts, updates while a sync runs (when it begins, about once a minute while it runs, and after each analysis or export), and the full log when it closes. If a session ends without reporting, for example after a crash or a forced quit, its log is sent the next time the Software starts. The plugins for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve send the same logs. Crash reports and the text of any feedback you send from inside the app are sent too. These describe how the software behaved, not your media. Every session log also describes your computer: its operating system, its processor as the operating system names it, the number of processor cores, its total and free memory, and the names of its graphics cards, so we can see how SyncLab performs on different computers; and its clock, as the time in UTC and the local time side by side, which shows the time zone the computer is set to. From SyncLab 1.1.0 the session log also carries, as text, so that we can improve synchronization quality:
- the technical properties of each file: the camera make and model as written in the file, the container and codec, the frame rate, whether the file has timecode and in which mode, whether its creation date carries a time zone (which can hint at the region where it was recorded), and how far each device’s clock was from the others’, in seconds. From SyncLab 1.1.6 it also carries the date and time recorded in the file, its start timecode, its length in seconds, the name of the software that wrote the file (such as an encoder library), which numbered device the clip belongs to, and where the clip was placed on the timeline, in seconds, and whether SyncLab or you placed it there;
- how the synchronization went: for clips that could not be confirmed by sound, which numbered clips they were compared with, how strong the best match was, how much they overlapped, how loud each was, and why the Software chose the result it did;
- how the session went: how many times a sync was run and on how many files, whether and how soon a result was exported, whether a run was stopped, and whether feedback was sent.
Before a log is sent, the Software replaces every file or folder name that could identify a person, a client or a project with a neutral label, such as “folder_003”, “name_012” or “device_001_file000013.mp4”. A media file’s label may carry the camera’s or recorder’s brand and model (never its serial number), and error and crash reports call a file “clip 001”. Your computer’s account name is always replaced. From SyncLab 1.1.6 the log also records how you laid your files on the timeline — for each track, the folders and files its clips came from — so we can see how footage is organized and improve synchronization. From 1.1.6, a folder name made only of generic shooting or computer words, single letters and short numbers (such as “cam A”, “footage” or “DCIM”) is kept as it is; in the timeline record, so is such a file name (such as “C0001”). Every other name is replaced as above, and the original names stay only in the log on your computer. The logs never contain the media itself. Feedback you send may include an exported project file only if you tick that option yourself.
Promotional codes: if you redeem a code we store an irreversible hash of your IP address — never the address itself — so the same code cannot be farmed. The hash cannot be turned back into an IP address.
Visit counts: we count visits to the Site, including the GifLab page, with a counter that runs on our own server. For each page you open it records the page (its path only, never the rest of the address), the name of the website that linked to it, the campaign source named in the link if there was one (such as utm_source), your country (looked up from your IP address, which is then discarded and never stored) and whether you are on a phone, tablet or computer. For the page you arrive on, it also records how long that page took to appear and to respond to you, in milliseconds, so we can see when the Site is slow. It also records how long each page stayed open and in view, in seconds, so we can see which pages people read and in what order they move through the Site. To count each visitor once a day, it makes a code from your IP address, your browser’s details and a random value that is replaced every day, with the old value deleted, so the code cannot identify you or connect your visits on different days. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and no other company receives this data.
Website analytics by Cloudflare: we also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts page views without cookies and without storing anything on your device. To do that, Cloudflare receives the details of each page view, such as the page, the referring website, your browser type and your IP address.
Where you came from: when you first arrive, the Site keeps a short note in your browser’s local storage of how you got here: the referring website, any campaign tags or creator’s invite code in the link, and the first page you opened. It stays on your device and reaches us only if you create an account or buy something, so we know which link or which creator brought you, and that creator can be credited. You can remove it at any time by clearing this site’s data in your browser.
Server logs: standard logs generated by our hosting providers, including IP addresses, kept for security and reliability.

3.3 Information we deliberately do NOT collect

Your video, audio, or project media — the content is never uploaded. Audio is decoded in memory to analyze it and is never sent to us.
The names of your files and folders where they could identify you, a client or a project — they are replaced with neutral labels before a diagnostic log is sent; only generic names such as “cam A” or “C0001” are kept (see section 3.2).
The contents of your timelines or projects.
Special-category data (e.g. health, biometrics, political views). Please do not send it to us.

3.4 GifLab, our free in-browser GIF maker

Your video and the GIF you make from it are processed in your browser and never sent to us. That is a statement about your media — the video, the GIF and their file names — not about the page as a whole. GifLab sends us the following:

A record of each export: each time you export a GIF, we receive one record with the output width and height, the number of frames, the length in seconds, the file size, whether it carries the GifLab watermark, the time, and your approximate country, which we look up from your IP address in the same way as in section 3.2 and then discard the address. It also carries the visit counter’s daily code described in section 3.2, so we can tell which visit, and so which link, an export came from; like that code, it cannot identify you or connect different days. It contains no part of the video or the GIF and no file name.
Your name and email address, if you removed the watermark: removing the watermark asks for your name and an email address, and sends a code to that address. When you ask for the code, we keep the address and how you arrived at the page, even if you never enter the code. Once you enter the correct code, a CT Lab account is created for you with that name and email address, as in section 3.1: we record your approximate country (section 3.2), how you arrived, that the account was made on the GifLab page, and when you agreed to the License Agreement, the Terms of Use and this policy. The account has no password; you sign in to it with a code we email you. If the address already has a CT Lab account, the watermark removal is linked to that account and nothing in it changes. A new account gets our product emails, each with a link to turn them off (section 5). For a disposable email address no account is created, though the watermark is still removed. From then on, your export records carry that email address, so we can see how many GIFs you have made. If you have not removed the watermark, the records carry no email address and nothing else that identifies you.
GifLab inside CT Lab Hub: when you use GifLab in the CT Lab Hub app, the same export record is sent, marked as coming from the app. If you are signed in to your CT Lab account there, it carries your account’s email address.
Feedback you choose to send from the GifLab page, as in section 3.1.

We use these records to understand how GifLab is used. They are not used for advertising and are not shared with anyone.

3.5 StabLab, our stabilization plugins

Your video, its audio, the picture in any form and the gyro samples your camera recorded are processed on your computer and never sent to us. StabLab’s plugins for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve send us the following, all as text. Before anything is sent, the names of your media and project files become numbers (“clip 001”), folder paths are removed whatever they contain, and lines that record the full path of what you opened are deleted. Project names and contents, and your computer’s name and user name, are not sent.

License checks: about once a week, the plugin asks our server for its license. The request carries the computer identifier described in section 3.2, the StabLab version, the platform and your CT Lab Hub sign-in.
Usage and diagnostic events: when a plugin loads, when its license is checked, when a clip is analyzed or its analysis fails, when a clip has no gyro data, when a frame is returned unstabilized (and why), and when the graphics card is set up, the plugin sends a short record. The same event for the same clip is sent at most once a day. It carries the StabLab and editor versions and your computer’s operating system, processor, memory and graphics card. For each analyzed clip it carries technical properties: the camera make and model, frame size, frame rate, length, rotation, file type, lens geometry, the camera’s own stabilization and sensor readout, how much gyro data the clip had (counts and rates, never the data itself), the StabLab settings used, the result and quality figures such as how much shake was removed. It also carries the timeline’s size and frame rate and how long frames took to render, and whether the graphics card or the processor did it.
Errors and crash reports: if an analysis fails or StabLab crashes, the error code and message, and for a crash a technical trace of StabLab’s own code.
A daily working log: once a day per plugin, the log of what StabLab did that day — clips opened, analysis steps, settings changes, timings, warnings and errors — cleaned as described above. When we are helping you, we can ask CT Lab Hub on your computer to send that day’s log early; it is the same log, built the same way.

Each of these carries the computer identifier from section 3.2. None of them carries your email address, your account number or a license key itself, but because the license check is made with your CT Lab Hub sign-in, our server links that computer identifier to your account, so on our side these records are tied to your account. We use them to fix problems and to improve stabilization. They are not used for advertising and are not shared with anyone.

4. Legal bases for processing (EEA/UK)

Where the GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases:

Contract — to provide the Services you request (e.g. issuing your license, signing you in to the Software, providing support).
Consent — where we ask for your consent to something optional. You may withdraw it at any time.
Legitimate interests — to operate, secure, debug, and improve the Services, prevent fraud/abuse, and understand aggregate usage (including counting visits to the Site and knowing which links bring people to it), and to tell people who have an account with us about our products (see section 5; you can opt out in any of those emails), provided these interests are not overridden by your rights.
Legal obligation — to comply with applicable law, tax, and accounting requirements.

5. How we use information

Provide, maintain, activate, and support the Services.
Send you essential service messages (e.g. your sign-in codes, purchase confirmations, security or availability notices, material changes to terms).
Send you emails about our products, such as news and new versions, trial reminders, new tools, early-access invitations, tips and short surveys. These are on when you create an account. Every one of them has a link at the bottom to unsubscribe or to choose which of them you get, and you can change that at any time. Unsubscribing does not stop the essential service messages above.
Fix bugs, improve performance and synchronization quality, and develop new features using diagnostics, aggregate metrics, and any feedback you choose to send us — including the optional note when you cancel.
Protect the Services, enforce our terms, and prevent fraud or abuse.
Comply with legal obligations and resolve disputes.

6. Sharing & sub-processors

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only as needed to run the business, with service providers ("sub-processors") that act on our instructions under appropriate contractual safeguards. By category, these typically include:

Hosting & infrastructure — to serve the Site and run our backend (e.g. static hosting and application hosting providers).
Email delivery — Resend, to send transactional mail (sign-in codes, trial and account notices, purchase confirmations) and our product emails (see section 5). Your email address is shared with them for that purpose. Signing in depends on a code arriving by email, so this is a necessary part of the service.
Payments — payments run through Stripe Managed Payments, under which Link acts as merchant of record and is the legal seller for the transaction. Card details are entered on their systems and never reach us: we do not see, store or process them. From them we receive only what we need to run your license — your email address, the fact and date of payment, which product you bought, the country of your billing address (collected at checkout for tax), and, for a subscription, when it renews.
Website analytics — Cloudflare Web Analytics, as described in section 3.2. Our own visit counter runs on our server and shares nothing.
Internal operations tooling — limited operational notifications to our team.

We may also disclose information (a) to comply with law, legal process, or enforceable governmental requests; (b) to enforce our terms or protect the rights, property, or safety of Creator Tools Lab, our users, or others; and (c) in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, in which case we will notify you of any material change to how your data is handled.

7. International data transfers

We and our sub-processors may process personal data in countries other than your own, including outside the EEA/UK. Where we transfer personal data internationally, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK equivalent) or an adequacy decision, as applicable.

8. Cookies & similar technologies

The Site sets no advertising or tracking cookies, and we use no advertising pixels, cross-site trackers or session recording. It keeps a few small items in your browser’s storage:

Signing in: to keep you signed in to your account. This is necessary for the account to work.
The background animation: to keep it continuous as you move between pages. It holds nothing about you and is gone when you close the tab.
Where you came from: the note described in section 3.2, kept until you clear this site’s data.

Our visit counter and Cloudflare Web Analytics set no cookies and store nothing on your device. You can clear or block site data in your browser settings at any time; blocking it will sign you out and may affect how the Site works.

9. Data retention

We keep personal data for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this policy. In general: contact and license records are kept while your relationship with us is active and for a reasonable period afterwards; device records tied to a license are kept until you release that computer from your account (or we remove it). Diagnostic logs and crash reports are kept for 2 years from the last time anything was added to them, and are then deleted automatically. After that we keep only anonymized usage statistics, such as camera and clip properties and how well a sync went, with nothing that links them to you or your computer. Apart from diagnostics, we do not run these on a fixed automatic schedule, and if you want any of your data removed sooner you can ask us and we will do it — see "Your rights" below. We may retain certain data longer where required by law.

Visit counts are kept as statistics; they contain no IP address and nothing that can identify you. Where you came from, once you create an account or buy something, is kept with your account record for as long as that record is kept.

One thing we keep indefinitely, and why. Where a product offers a reduced price to someone who has bought it before, that entitlement is not meant to run out — a gap of years should still count. It is counted per product — buying one thing again is cheaper, having bought one thing does not make a different one cheaper. The only way that can never run out is if we remember, without a time limit, that you bought: your account, which product, and the date. That narrow record is therefore kept indefinitely, for exactly that purpose and no other. It is the fact of the purchase only — payment details are not kept, because they are never ours to keep.

10. Security

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data, including encryption in transit (HTTPS), restricted access, and storing license keys in hashed form where feasible. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security; you use the Services at your own risk to the extent permitted by law.

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights regarding your personal data:

Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Rectification — correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
Erasure — ask us to delete your data ("right to be forgotten").
Restriction / objection — limit or object to certain processing, including processing based on legitimate interests.
Portability — receive your data in a portable, machine-readable format.
Withdraw consent — at any time, without affecting prior processing.
Complain — lodge a complaint with your local data-protection supervisory authority.

What deletion actually does. On request we erase the personal profile tied to your email address — your account and contact details, your license keys and the device records attached to them, and any pending verification codes. There is no self-service delete button; a person handles each request, so please email us (below). Two honest caveats about what is not fully erased. First, your purchase and billing records are anonymized rather than deleted: we remove the link to your identity from them — in both directions, whether you were the buyer or the person who referred one — while the bare financial record remains: which product, the date, the amount, and the payment provider's own transaction reference, but never any card details, which are never ours to hold. We keep that because it is a financial record we may be required to retain for tax. This removes the link to you in our systems; it does not promise that no one, anywhere, could ever reconnect a payment through the provider. One consequence worth knowing: a returning-buyer discount recognizes you by exactly the link we have just removed, so once your profile is deleted we can no longer recognize you as a returning buyer — coming back later is at the first-time price. Second, records of a redeemed promotional code are anonymized the same way — the link to you is removed while the fact that a code was used remains, because otherwise deleting an account would reset every anti-abuse limit and the codes could be farmed indefinitely.

To exercise any right, email support@ctlab.app. We will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

12. We do not sell your data, and these rights are open to everyone

We do not sell or share personal information, and we never have. There are no advertising pixels, no remarketing tags and no session-recording tools anywhere on this site — a deliberate choice, not an oversight.

Most consumer-privacy statutes set thresholds we are nowhere near, so rather than list which law reaches us where you live, we offer the same rights to everybody: ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it. Write to support@ctlab.app and we will act on it. Asking costs you nothing and changes nothing about your account or your price. Where a law in your country gives you more than this, that law applies on top — nothing here replaces it.

13. Children's privacy

The Services are intended for professional and adult users and are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16 (or the minimum age in your jurisdiction). If you believe a child has provided us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Automated decision-making

We do not make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you based solely on automated processing.

15. Third-party links

The Services may link to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for their privacy practices; please review their policies before providing personal data.

16. Do Not Track

Some browsers send a "Do Not Track" signal. Because there is no common industry standard for these signals, the Site does not currently respond to them, but we limit tracking as described above regardless.

17. Governing law

This policy and any dispute relating to it are governed by the laws of the United States and the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. If you are in the EU or UK, your mandatory data-protection rights under the GDPR still apply regardless.

18. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will update the "last updated" date above and, for material changes, take additional steps such as notifying you by email or via the Site. Your continued use of the Services after an update means you accept the revised policy.

19. Contact

For any privacy question or request, contact us at support@ctlab.app or via our contact page.

Creator Tools Lab · ctlab.app · This document is provided for transparency and may be updated as our practices evolve.