InqScribe Has Privacy in Its Bones
InqScribe started as a tool we built for our own research. We’re educational researchers, and our work at major research universities has always gone through Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), which carefully review how we protect the people who take part in our studies. Student identities must stay confidential. Recordings and transcripts must be handled and stored securely.
So we built InqScribe to be privacy-first: your media and transcripts stay on your computer, and you decide what happens to them.
What “privacy-first” means
- Everything stays local. InqScribe runs entirely on your computer. Your transcripts and media are never uploaded, synced, or stored anywhere else.
- Your transcripts are ordinary files. When you save, InqScribe writes a local file to the location you choose. There’s no hidden library in the cloud and no online account.
- We never copy your media. Your media stays with InqScribe, not the cloud.
This matters more than it might seem. When you upload a recording to a cloud transcription service, your files sit on someone else’s servers. That service’s retention policy and terms of service now apply to them, and so do the policies of any third parties it relies on. In some cases, that data can even be used to train AI models. With InqScribe, none of that applies, because your files never leave your computer.
Whether you’re handling IRB-protected research footage or unreleased studio content, you don’t have to worry about InqScribe sending your material somewhere it shouldn’t go.
Private AI transcription with Whisper
InqScribe 3 adds automatic transcription with Whisper AI, built on the same principles:
- AI is not used until you explicitly request it. AI only runs on the media that you choose.
- AI transcription runs locally on your computer. Not in the cloud.
- Transcriptions are stored locally. Transcriptions are stored in your library and as InqScribe files when you choose to save them as such.
- AI never runs behind your back. Your media and transcripts are never sent anywhere for processing.
You decide when and if to use Whisper AI for your transcript. You enable it selectively once per transcript, you control when it is used, otherwise it is off.
What InqScribe does send (and what’s optional)
To be fully transparent, InqScribe does connect to the internet in a few limited ways.
Required:
- License activation. During activation, InqScribe contacts our servers to confirm your license. The only data sent are your name and your activation code. Once you’ve activated, there’s no more communication. (One exception: Site licenses may need to phone home regularly.)
Optional (you choose whether to turn these on):
- Version checking. InqScribe checks whether a new version is available. No personal data is sent as part of this check.
- Anonymous usage data. If you turn this on, InqScribe sends anonymous information that helps us improve the app, such as what kinds of media files are used, error reports, whether Whisper was used, or whether a document was exported. It contains no personal information and never includes the contents of your files. See our telemetry page for full details.
In none of these cases does InqScribe send your transcripts or media.
Your files, your storage rules
InqScribe works with normal files on your computer, so you can store them however your IRB, institution, or studio requires: on an encrypted drive, with full-disk encryption, or on approved institutional storage.
The flip side is that InqScribe can only keep data as private as the place you keep it. If you open media from a cloud service, or save or share transcripts through one, that service’s policies apply to those files. The choice is always yours and always under your control.
For more details, see our privacy policy.
As always, please Contact Us with any questions or suggestions! And tell your friends!
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