Last updated: October 19, 2026
ViralBurst is designed to run entirely on your own computer. This
statement explains what that means in practice.
The first time you run ViralBurst, and at most once every 24 hours
after that, it checks your license key with our payment processor
(Polar) to confirm it's still active — typically a sub-second
check, and skipped entirely on launches within 24 hours of the last
one. This sends only your license key and a randomly-generated
installation identifier; no other data is included. If this check
can't reach the internet, ViralBurst continues working normally — it
only requires a successful check after an extended stretch (10 days)
with no connection at all, so brief periods offline don't interrupt
your work.
Outside of this check, ViralBurst works entirely offline, the same as
described everywhere else in this statement.
Video files you provide, and everything generated from them (clips,
transcripts, subtitles), are processed and stored **only on your own
device**. ViralBurst does not upload your videos, transcripts, or output
files anywhere. ViralBurst servers never see or have access to
this content.
If you paste a YouTube URL instead of a local file, ViralBurst uses the
open-source tool yt-dlp to download that video directly from YouTube to
your own computer. That request goes to YouTube, not to us — we don't
see which URLs you enter or what you download. Your use of this feature
is subject to YouTube's own terms and privacy practices.
Speech-to-text transcription happens locally on your computer using the
faster-whisper library and OpenAI's Whisper model weights, downloaded
once to your machine on first use. Your audio and video are never sent
to a server (ours, OpenAI's, or anyone else's) for transcription.
ViralBurst never checks for updates automatically. If you click "Check
for Updates" in Settings, it sends a request to viralburst.app with
your current version number (so we know what to compare against) and
gets back the latest available version. No other information is sent
-- no license key, no installation identifier, nothing about your
usage. If you don't click that button, this never happens at all.
(via your system's package manager or winget), the Whisper model
weights (via Hugging Face), and -- only if you turn on AI Highlights
or AI Captions and choose to download a model -- that model's own
file, also via Hugging Face. All standard software installation,
fetched directly by your own machine from those projects' own servers.
libraries are downloaded from PyPI, the same way.
only happens if you click the button yourself.
analytics or telemetry of any kind.
These AI features are highly experimental and may not work as
intended -- results can be inconsistent, low-quality, or wrong.
That said, they're completely safe to test: nothing about using
them can damage your files, your computer, or your original video,
worst case is a bad or empty result. There is no customer support
for AI features at this time.
If you turn on AI Highlights (finding highlight-worthy moments) or AI
Captions/Hashtags/Titles (suggested post text for your clips), a small
language model runs 100% locally on your own computer to read your
video's transcript (and, with a model that "sees video", still frames taken from the video). To be explicit about what that means:
Your transcript and video frames are never sent anywhere -- this works the same way
local transcription already does. Neither feature downloads a model
automatically: you choose and download one yourself from Settings,
and that download (from Hugging Face) is the only network activity
involved. Using either feature afterward involves no network activity
at all.
None. The ViralBurst app has no account system, no server component, and no
mechanism to send us information about you or your usage.
The app itself collects nothing. The community forum on our website (forum.php) is separate from the app and only involved if you choose to post there. When you post, the forum stores what you type — the name you enter and your message — and shows it publicly. It does not ask for an email address or an account.
To stop spam, the forum also stores a scrambled (salted, one-way hashed) version of your IP address next to each post, used only to limit how fast one visitor can post. Your actual IP address is not stored. The forum sets two cookies: a session cookie that makes the posting form and spam check work (deleted when you close your browser), and one that remembers the name you last posted under so you don't retype it. No tracking or advertising cookies are used.
To have a post removed, email viralburstai@gmail.com with a link to it.
This statement is kept up to date with what the app actually does --
if a future version changes any of this, the statement will be
updated to reflect it before that version is released.
Questions about this statement can be directed to viralburstai@gmail.com.