Privacy Policy

1. Overview & Private Nature of the Application

TakeoutBackup is a privately developed, self-hosted application designed to automate the discovery, download, and integrity verification of personal Google Takeout archives from Google Drive to local on-premises network attached storage (Synology NAS).

Not a Hosted Service: TakeoutBackup is operated privately by individual system owners on their own private hardware. It is not a commercial software-as-a-service (SaaS), hosted multi-tenant cloud application, or public subscription service. No central server or third-party entity operates, processes, or holds access to the data transferred by the software.

This Privacy Policy explains what Google account data is requested, how it is processed and protected on local hardware, and the safeguards enforced to ensure absolute data isolation and confidentiality.

2. Google Drive API Scopes & Access Justification

TakeoutBackup connects to Google Drive API v3 to discover and download Takeout archives. The application strictly follows the principle of least privilege:

3. Data & Metadata Accessed

When TakeoutBackup interacts with Google Drive, its access is narrowly restricted to Takeout export items:

• Folder Metadata: Identifies folders named Takeout and retrieves their immutable Google Drive IDs, creation timestamps, and ownership attributes.
• File Metadata: Inspects filenames (e.g. takeout-*.zip), unique Drive file IDs, file sizes (in bytes), remote MD5 checksums, and MIME types.
• Archive Byte Streams: Downloads the binary stream of Takeout ZIP archive files over encrypted HTTPS directly to local storage.

TakeoutBackup does not query, read, access, or index any other files, folders, shared drives, or documents present in your Google Drive account.

4. Infrastructure & Local Storage

TakeoutBackup is engineered from the ground up for on-premises confidentiality:

• Local Execution: The application runs as a containerized process (Docker) on the operator's private Synology NAS hardware located inside their local network.
• Direct Peer-to-Peer Communication: All network requests are initiated directly by the local container to Google's official endpoints (oauth2.googleapis.com and www.googleapis.com) using TLS 1.3 encrypted HTTPS.
• No Cloud Intermediaries: There are no relay servers, application proxies, hosted backend databases, or cloud processing layers.
• Local Destination Storage: Downloaded Takeout archives are written directly to local NAS filesystem volumes (e.g. Btrfs/ext4 volumes on Synology DSM) controlled exclusively by the owner.

5. OAuth Token Storage & Protection

TakeoutBackup implements Google OAuth 2.0 with Proof Key for Code Exchange (PKCE) for authorization. Token management follows strict security boundaries:

• Local Secret Storage: Refresh tokens and access tokens are stored strictly on the local filesystem of the user's trusted machine and Synology NAS within a dedicated secrets directory.
• Restrictive POSIX Permissions: Token files are created with POSIX 0600 permissions (read/write by owner only) and parent directories are restricted to 0700.
• Account Isolation: In multi-account setups, each account maintains a separate, isolated token file, database, and credential set. Tokens are never shared across accounts.
• No Version Control Exposure: All token files (*_token.json) and client secret files (*_client_secret.json) are strictly excluded from source control (.gitignore) and Docker images.
• No Token Logging: OAuth access tokens, refresh tokens, and authorization codes are scrubbed and never printed to application logs or console output.

6. Zero Third-Party Sharing & Telemetry

TakeoutBackup does not share, transmit, disclose, or sell any user data or metadata to any third party:

• Zero Telemetry: No analytics libraries, crash reporters, telemetry beacons, or usage tracking mechanisms are included in the codebase.
• Zero Third-Party Advertising: No advertising networks, marketing tools, or tracking pixels exist in the application or on this website.
• Zero External Dependencies: This website is fully static and self-contained, with no external tracking scripts, third-party web fonts, or CDN analytics.

7. Data Retention & Deletion Behavior

Data handling is governed by clear retention and lifecycle boundaries:

• Local Archive Retention: Downloaded ZIP archives remain stored on your private Synology NAS until you choose to delete, move, or archive them according to your personal retention policy.
• Remote Google Drive Deletion:
  • In the current version, remote deletion is unimplemented. Remote files on Google Drive remain untouched.
  • In future versions, remote deletion will remain strictly disabled by default (delete_after_verify: false, dry_run: true). It will only execute if explicitly enabled by the user in configuration and will only delete export folders whose archives have been downloaded and verified via SHA-256 and CRC checksums.
• Token Retention: OAuth refresh tokens are retained locally on your NAS to enable unattended periodic backups until you revoke authorization or delete the token file.

8. Google API Services User Data Policy Compliance

Specifically:

1. Human Access: No human beings access, view, or read your Google Drive data or Takeout archive contents, except the system operator accessing their own private files on their own NAS.
2. No Advertising: Information received through Google Drive APIs is never used to serve advertisements, perform user profiling, or target marketing campaigns.
3. No AI/ML Training: Google user data is never used to train, evaluate, or fine-tune artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or large language models.
4. Limited Transfer: Data is never transferred to third parties, except as directly requested by the user to download files to their own local storage.

9. Revoking Google Account Access

You can revoke TakeoutBackup's access to your Google account at any time through Google's central security settings:

1. Go to your Google Account permissions page at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions (or Third-party apps & services).
2. Find TakeoutBackup in the list of authorized third-party applications.
3. Click on the application and select Delete all connections (or Remove Access).

Once revoked, all active access tokens and stored refresh tokens will be immediately invalidated by Google. TakeoutBackup will be unable to make any further API requests. To remove local tokens, you can also delete the *_token.json files from your secrets folder.

10. Inquiries & Policy Updates

TakeoutBackup is a privately developed, self-hosted application created strictly for personal and household backup. For questions or privacy inquiries regarding this application:

Changes to This Policy

Any changes to this policy will be published directly to this website. Because TakeoutBackup is a private, self-hosted application, substantial architectural changes impacting data access will be updated here prior to implementation.