DTMG Tools

Privacy policy

Last updated

DTMG Tools is the internal software that Digital Trends Media Group (“DTMG”, “we”) uses to plan, produce and publish content for its own brands, including Digital Trends and The Manual. It is not offered to the public: only DTMG staff and contractors we invite can sign in. This policy explains what information DTMG Tools collects, how we use it, and the choices you have.

YouTube API Services

DTMG Tools uses YouTube API Services to publish videos to DTMG’s own YouTube channels and to read public information from YouTube. When DTMG Tools uses them, Google’s handling of your information is covered by the Google Privacy Policy, and your use of YouTube is covered by the YouTube Terms of Service.

Information we collect

Your account. When you are invited, we keep your name, email address and the roles you have in DTMG Tools, and a record of the changes you make (for example, who saved a video title and when).

A connected YouTube channel. If you own or manage one of DTMG’s YouTube channels and you connect it to DTMG Tools through Google sign-in, we receive and keep:

  • a refresh token from Google that lets DTMG Tools act on that channel within the permissions you approved, stored encrypted;
  • the channel’s ID and name, so we can confirm the right channel was connected;
  • the IDs of the videos DTMG Tools uploads to that channel.

DTMG Tools uses that connection only to upload a finished video to the channel as a private draft and to add its title, description, captions and thumbnail. It never publishes, schedules or makes a video public: a person does that in YouTube Studio. It does not read your private videos, comments, subscribers or messages, and it does not touch any channel other than the one you connected.

Public YouTube information. Using a YouTube API key (not your account), DTMG Tools reads:

  • the view counts of the videos we made for a sponsor’s campaign, so we can report to that sponsor how they performed;
  • for a topic one of our videos covers, the titles, channel names, view counts and publish dates of up to ten public videos that rank for it on YouTube, which our staff and our AI writing assistant use as context when drafting that video’s title and description.

On your device. DTMG Tools keeps you signed in with a session cookie set by our sign-in provider, and keeps a few preferences (such as the colour theme) and any error reports not yet sent in your browser’s storage. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and DTMG Tools shows no advertising.

How we use and share it

We use this information only to run DTMG Tools for DTMG’s own work. We do not sell it, and we do not use it for advertising. We share it only with the service providers that host and operate DTMG Tools for us (cloud hosting, our database, our sign-in provider, and the AI model providers that help draft video titles and descriptions), and only so they can provide that service. The one exception is a sponsor: we tell a sponsor the view totals of the videos made for its campaign. Otherwise, information from YouTube is shown only to DTMG staff and contractors signed in to DTMG Tools.

How long we keep it

  • A channel connection is kept until it is disconnected or you revoke it. When access is revoked, we delete the token and the YouTube information tied to it within 30 days.
  • View counts are refreshed from YouTube or deleted within 30 days of being read.
  • Public videos that rank for a topic are deleted within 30 days of being read.
  • Your account information is kept while you have access to DTMG Tools.

Your choices

You can remove DTMG Tools’ access to your YouTube channel at any time from your Google account’s security settings: https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions. You can also ask us to disconnect it. To ask what we hold about you, or to have it deleted, write to privacy@digitaltrends.com; we delete it within 7 days of your request.

Contact

Questions or complaints about this policy or how DTMG Tools handles your information: privacy@digitaltrends.com. If we change this policy, we update the date at the top of this page.