Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your data

CleverWorkaround is an independent software studio, built and maintained by a solo developer based in Bangladesh, operating both WACompanion and Reminiscent. For the purposes of the UK and EU GDPR, the operator of CleverWorkaround is the data controller for the small amount of personal data described below. You can contact us about anything on this page at hello@cleverworkaround.com, and a person reads it — there is no ticketing queue in between.

If you need our full legal and contact details in order to exercise one of the rights below or to complain to a regulator, email us and we will give them to you.

We are not large enough to be required to appoint a Data Protection Officer, and have not appointed one. Your enquiry reaches us directly.

2. Your content never reaches us

WACompanion: WhatsApp List colors, custom tags, message templates, chat reminders, tagged messages, private notes, and your settings are stored locally — in your browser's own storage (chrome.storage.local) for the extension, or in a local application-data folder for the desktop app. This data is never transmitted to us or to any server we control. We have no backend that could receive it.

Reminiscent: the browser extension saves photos you choose to download straight to your own Downloads folder using Chrome's own download API — the file goes from Facebook's CDN to your disk, and never passes through a server of ours. The desktop app keeps saved photos in a local SQLite vault on your own machine. Neither the extension nor the desktop app uploads a photo anywhere.

Because this data lives only on your device, uninstalling an extension or desktop app, or clearing your browser's extension storage, permanently deletes what it holds. WACompanion has a built-in Export All Data option in Settings — use it before uninstalling if you want a backup.

If you choose to use WACompanion's multi-device sync feature, it sends your own encrypted settings to yourself as a WhatsApp message. That travels over WhatsApp's infrastructure, never ours, and is encrypted with a passphrase only you hold.

3. This website

This site is deliberately plain, and after a recent rebuild it makes no third-party requests at all. Fonts, stylesheets, icons and images are all served from our own domain. There is no Google Fonts request, no CDN script, no advertising SDK, no analytics and no session recording.

Cookies: this website sets none, and uses no local storage. That is why you have not been asked to dismiss a cookie banner — there is nothing to consent to.

The contact form: if you send us a message, the name, email address and message you type are submitted to Splitforms, a form-delivery service that forwards it to our inbox. Nothing is sent until you press "Send message". Our lawful basis is legitimate interest — answering a question you asked us. We use what you send only to reply to you, never for marketing.

Hosting: the site is hosted on Netlify, which keeps standard server access logs (IP address, page requested, timestamp) for security and abuse prevention. We do not analyse those logs to profile visitors.

4. Purchase & subscription (WACompanion desktop app)

When you buy the WACompanion desktop app, Creem (operated by Armitage Labs OÜ, Estonia) acts as merchant of record: it collects your payment details, billing country and email in order to take payment, handle sales tax, and send your receipt. That is governed by Creem's own privacy policy. We never see or store your card details. What we can see through their dashboard is your email address, country, and subscription status, which we use to provide the subscription and answer support requests. Our lawful basis is performance of a contract with you.

Licence checks: the desktop app currently unlocks by being the desktop app — it does not phone home, and there is no licence key to enter. There is no licence-checking code in the app at all. If we switch on licence-key activation in a future release, the app would send that key plus a randomly generated install identifier to our own licence endpoint to confirm the key is valid and to enforce the per-licence device limit. That identifier is a random string generated on your machine; it is not your name, email, device name, or any advertising ID, and it can never be linked back to your chats. No message content is ever included in such a request. We will update this policy before any such change ships.

Reminiscent has no paid tier at this time — both the extension and the desktop app are free, and no payment data is collected for it. If that changes, this section will be updated, and a purchase flow through Creem, before any charge is introduced.

5. Plain-language search (WACompanion desktop app)

The desktop app can find messages by meaning rather than by exact wording. The open-source model that powers this (Xenova/all-MiniLM-L6-v2, Apache-2.0) is bundled inside the app, so a normal install downloads nothing and the feature works offline from first launch. If those model files are ever missing from an install, the app re-fetches them once from Hugging Face's public model hub; that request contains no message text and no account information. All search processing happens on your own device — your messages are never sent anywhere to be searched.

6. How long we keep things

Your product data: WhatsApp-related data (WACompanion) or saved photos (Reminiscent) are kept on your device for as long as you keep them, and deleted by you at any time. We hold no copy, so there is nothing on our side to delete.

Support emails and contact-form messages: kept for up to 24 months so we can follow up on a recurring problem, then deleted.

Subscription records: held by Creem for as long as required by tax and accounting law (typically 6–7 years). We keep no separate customer database of our own.

Server access logs: retained by Netlify under their standard retention period, which is short and measured in weeks.

7. Your rights (UK and EU)

If you are in the UK or the EU, the UK GDPR and GDPR give you the right to: access the personal data we hold about you; have it corrected; have it erased; restrict or object to how we use it; and receive it in a portable format. Where we rely on legitimate interest, you can object at any time.

To exercise any of these, email hello@cleverworkaround.com. We will respond within 30 days, free of charge. In practice we hold very little — usually just an email address and a support thread — so most requests are quick to satisfy.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO); in the EU it is the supervisory authority for the country you live in. We would much rather you told us first so we can put it right.

8. Your rights (California and other US states)

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We never have. There is no "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link on this site because there is nothing to opt out of.

Under the CCPA/CPRA and comparable state laws, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to request its deletion, to request a copy, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of those rights. Email us at the address above and we will handle your request within 45 days. The categories we collect are described in sections 3 and 4; we collect no sensitive personal information and do not use your data for profiling or automated decision-making.

9. International transfers

We are based in Bangladesh. Of the three services we rely on, Creem (Armitage Labs OÜ) is established in Estonia, inside the EU; Netlify is based in the United States; and Splitforms, which delivers the contact form, currently stores submissions outside the EU. If you are in the UK or EU, that means the limited personal data described above (your email address, a support message, a server log entry) may be processed outside your home country.

Those providers offer Standard Contractual Clauses for such transfers, and we rely on them. Your WhatsApp data and your saved Reminiscent photos are never transferred anywhere, because neither ever leaves your device in the first place.

10. Security and breach notification

The strongest security measure here is structural: we do not collect your chat data, so it cannot be leaked from us. The site is served over HTTPS, and payment data is handled entirely by Creem as merchant of record — card details are entered on their checkout, never on our site, and we never see or store them.

If a breach ever did affect your personal data, we will notify the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours where the law requires it, and tell affected users directly by email without undue delay.

11. No ads, no trackers, no analytics

Neither the software nor this website runs advertising SDKs, third-party analytics, or session-recording scripts. We have no visibility into how you use the product beyond what you tell us yourself.

12. Permissions we request

The WACompanion Chrome extension requests access limited to web.whatsapp.com (to inject the sidebar and features you see) — nothing else. It does not request access to any other site you visit, and it has no permission to read your browsing history.

The Reminiscent Chrome extension requests access limited to facebook.com and fbcdn.net — the two domains a photo you want to download can actually appear on. It only acts on a photo you are already looking at and click to download; nothing runs automatically in the background, and it does not request access to any other site.

13. Children's privacy

Our products are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them — in practice, we collect almost no personal data from anyone, per the sections above. If you believe a child has sent us personal data through the contact form, email us and we will delete it.

14. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update the "Last updated" date above. If a change materially affects how we handle your personal data, and we have your email address because you are a subscriber, we will tell you by email before it takes effect.

15. Contact

Questions about this policy, or want to exercise any right described above? Email hello@cleverworkaround.com or use the form on Support page.