Thumbnail Bench ("we", "us") makes thumbnails for video creators. To do that we handle some of your data. This page says what, why, and for how long. It is not long, and nothing in it is a surprise.
What we collect
- Account data. Your email address. We sign you in with a link sent to that address, so there is no password to store.
- What you put on the bench. Prompts, headlines, uploaded images and faces, YouTube links you paste, and the thumbnails we generate for you.
- Public YouTube data. If you paste a link, we fetch that video's public title, thumbnail and, when YouTube provides them, its captions, so you can plan a cover or remake one. If you add a channel by its handle, we read that channel's public feed to learn the look of its latest covers. None of this needs your account.
- Your YouTube channel, only if you connect it. See Connect YouTube below.
- Billing data. Your plan, credit balance and invoice history. Card numbers go straight to our payment processor and never touch our servers.
- Usage data. Which features you use, how long renders take, and errors. This is how we find what is broken.
Your photos and faces
The bench works best with a real face, so you will upload photos of yourself or people you have permission to use. Here is what happens to them:
- They are used only to generate thumbnails for your account.
- They are sent to the AI model provider that renders your thumbnail, under a contract that forbids the provider from training on them.
- We do not build face recognition, we do not match faces across accounts, and we do not sell or license photos to anyone.
- You can delete any upload at any time from your library. Reference images and faces you delete are removed from storage at once.
You must have the consent of any person whose face you upload. See the acceptable use section of the Terms.
Connect YouTube
Thumbnail Bench uses YouTube API Services. Connecting a channel is optional; everything else on the bench works without it. When you connect, you sign in with Google and grant three permissions, and here is exactly what each one is used for:
- Manage your YouTube videos (youtube.upload): one job only, setting the thumbnail on a video you pick, after you confirm it on a screen that shows the current thumbnail next to the new one. We never upload videos, change titles or descriptions, or touch anything else.
- View your YouTube account (youtube.readonly): to show your channel name and the list of your own uploads so you can pick the video.
- View YouTube Analytics reports (yt-analytics.readonly): to read the daily thumbnail impressions and click-through rate of your own videos from YouTube's reports, so the bench can show what each thumbnail you published earned against your channel's 28-day average.
What we store. Your channel id and name, the list of thumbnails you published from the bench, the daily impression and click-through numbers per video, and a refresh token, encrypted, so the bench can read the next day's report. We never see your Google password. We do not read comments, subscribers, revenue, or anything about other channels. Nothing from your channel is shown to other users, sold, or used to train any model.
How long. The numbers refresh once a day while the channel is connected and are kept for 13 months. Disconnect on your Account page and the bench revokes its access at Google and deletes the numbers, the publish log and the token at once. Deleting your account does the same. You can also remove the bench's access from your Google Account permissions at any time.
Google's handling of your data is described in the Google Privacy Policy. By connecting, you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service.
How we use it
To run the service: generate your thumbnails, keep your library, charge your plan and answer support. To improve the service: we look at aggregate usage, such as which styles get remade most. We may use thumbnails you mark as public in the Explore gallery as examples. We do not use your private thumbnails or photos to train models.
We send email about your account, billing and service changes. Product news is opt-in and every email has an unsubscribe link.
Who we share it with
Only the vendors that run the bench, and only the data they need:
- Railway (United States) hosts the app and the database.
- Cloudflare stores your images and faces (R2), serves them through its CDN, and hosts this site.
- Kie.ai runs the image generation model. It receives your prompt, your headline and any reference images or faces for the render. In development only, a copy of an upload may sit on Kie's file host for up to 3 days.
- fal.ai removes the background from face photos you upload to Face Lab.
- Resend sends sign-in links and account email.
- Stripe handles cards, invoices and subscriptions.
- PostHog counts product usage without cookies.
- Sentry receives error reports so we can fix what breaks.
- Google (YouTube API Services), only if you connect a channel: it receives the thumbnail you publish and the requests to read your own reports. See Connect YouTube.
We will disclose data if the law requires it, or to protect the safety of a person or the service. We do not sell personal data.
Cookies and analytics
We set one cookie to keep you logged in. Our site analytics are cookie-free and do not track you across other sites. We do not run advertising trackers on thumbnailbench.com. If you arrive from a link that carries a campaign tag or an ad click id, we keep that tag in a first-party cookie for 90 days and store it with your account when you sign up, so we know which campaign brought you; for Google Ads we may report the signup or purchase back to Google by that click id. No advertising script runs on our pages.
How long we keep it
- Account and library: as long as your account exists. Delete the account and everything goes within 30 days, except invoices, which tax law makes us keep for the required period.
- Uploaded photos: until you delete them, or 30 days after account deletion. Reference images and faces you delete are removed from storage at once.
- YouTube reach numbers and the publish log: 13 months, or the moment you disconnect the channel.
- Logs: 90 days.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, export it, or delete it. Write to us at the address below and we will answer within 30 days. If you are in the EU, UK or California you have specific legal rights to these things, and you also have the right to complain to your local data authority.
Children
You must be at least 13 to use Thumbnail Bench, and 18 to hold a paid plan. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you think a child has an account, tell us and we will remove it.
Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will email account holders before it takes effect and show the new date at the top of this page.
Contact
Thumbnail Bench is a product of Agent Marketing Essentials LLC, a limited liability company registered in Florida, United States. That company is the controller of the data described here.
Privacy questions and data requests: [email protected] with "Privacy" in the subject. Everything else: the contact page.