Privacy Policy

Last updated: 27 July 2026

WatchHire checks whether an online job interview was conducted fairly. Doing that does not require watching everything a candidate does, and we have deliberately built it so that it doesn't. This page describes exactly what is collected, what is never collected, how long anything is kept, and how to have it removed.

The short version. WatchHire records no video, no audio, no screenshots, no keystrokes, and no browsing history. It records a short list of named technical signals with timestamps — for example "a screen-capture-evading window was open" or "focus stayed on a non-call window for 20 seconds". If you use the optional identity check, your photo and webcam image are never uploaded: the comparison happens inside your own browser and only the result is saved.

1. Who we are

WatchHire ("we", "us") provides interview-integrity software to employers, and operates from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. For the purposes of India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (the "DPDP Act"), the employer running the interview is generally the entity deciding to collect this data, and WatchHire processes it on their behalf and under their instruction.

For anything in this policy, or to exercise any right described in section 8, contact karthi@watchhire.in.

2. Who this applies to

Two different groups of people interact with WatchHire, and they are treated differently:

Candidates — people being interviewed, who run our monitoring companion or take an AI interview. Most of this policy concerns you.
Client users — recruiters and hiring staff at an employer with a WatchHire account. See section 7.

3. What the Anti-Cheat companion collects

Before anything runs, the companion shows a consent screen describing what it does. You may decline, and nothing is scanned. If you continue, it checks your computer roughly every five seconds for a fixed list of specific technical conditions, and reports only the ones it finds.

What is sent to us

Integrity signals ("flags") — a short machine-readable name (such as capture_exclusion or ai_tool_process), a confidence level, a one-line description, and a timestamp.
Names of certain running programs, but only where a program matches a published list of AI-assistance, remote-control, virtual-camera or deepfake tools. Programs that do not match are never named or reported.
Window titles, where a window is relevant to a signal — for example the title of the window that held focus during a flagged switch. Titles can contain the name of a page or document you had open, so this is disclosed plainly rather than buried.
Counts of certain conditions — number of monitors attached, number of running processes, and the approximate length of text placed on the clipboard.
Session housekeeping — when the companion started, whether it was still running, and whether your computer went to sleep.
A diagnostic log uploaded when the session ends, used to investigate faults.

What is never collected

No screen recording or screenshots. The contents of your screen are never captured or transmitted.
No keystroke logging. Our input check reads a single technical bit that says whether an input event was generated by software rather than a human hand. It never reads which key was pressed, nor mouse coordinates.
No clipboard contents. Only the approximate size of clipboard text is measured. The text itself is never opened or read.
No browsing history, no reading of your files or folders, and no scanning of your documents.
No microphone or camera access by the companion.

When the interview ends, the companion deletes itself from your computer automatically.

4. The optional identity check

Some interviews offer an identity check. It is optional and may be skipped. If you use it, this is what happens:

Your ID photo and your webcam frame are processed inside your own browser. Neither image is ever uploaded to us or stored anywhere.
Your browser converts each into a "faceprint" — a list of 128 numbers that cannot be turned back into a photograph — and sends only those numbers.
We compare the two sets of numbers. If they match, the ID faceprint is deleted immediately. The webcam faceprint is never stored at all.
If they don't match, the ID faceprint is kept for the rest of your interview — and only for that — so you can try again if the first webcam frame was badly lit or at an awkward angle. It is deleted when your interview session ends. If a session is never properly closed — you shut the laptop, the app crashes — it is deleted automatically within 30 days at the outside. It is never used for anything other than that single comparison.
All that remains is a verdict — match, likely match, or no match — and a numeric similarity score.

Under the DPDP Act, biometric data warrants particular care. That is why this check is opt-in, why no images leave your device, and why the underlying faceprints are discarded rather than retained.

5. The AI Interview product

Where an employer uses our AI interviewer, the interview is conducted through your browser and does involve recording, because the interview itself is the thing being assessed. This is separate from the Anti-Cheat companion described above.

Audio of your answers, periodic webcam snapshots, and any code you write are recorded and stored so the employer can review your interview.
Your answers are transcribed and assessed automatically.
If you upload a CV, its text is processed to generate relevant questions.

You are told this before the interview begins.

6. How long data is kept

Data	Retention
Diagnostic session logs	Automatically deleted after 90 days.
AI Interview recordings (audio, snapshots)	Automatically deleted after 60 days.
Identity faceprints	Deleted immediately on a match. On a no-match, kept until the end of that interview session so you can retry, then deleted — and within 30 days at the outside if the session is never properly closed. Never used for any other purpose.
Interview report (flags, timestamps, summary, score)	Retained for as long as the employer keeps their WatchHire account, as it is their hiring record. Deleted on request — see section 8.
Candidate name and email	Provided by the employer; retained with the report.

7. Client account data

For recruiters and hiring staff we store an email address, a securely hashed password (we never store the password itself), the organisation you belong to, and the time of your last sign-in. Each organisation can only ever access its own interview data.

8. Your rights, and how to use them

Under the DPDP Act you may:

Ask what we hold about you and receive a summary of it.
Ask for correction of anything inaccurate or incomplete.
Ask for erasure of your data.
Withdraw consent — you may decline the companion before it runs, or skip the identity check, at any time and without needing to explain why.
Raise a grievance with us, and escalate to the Data Protection Board of India if you are not satisfied with our response.

Email karthi@watchhire.in with your request. We will respond within 30 days. Where the employer who interviewed you is the one who decided to collect the data, we may need to direct your request to them, and we will tell you if that is the case.

9. Who else sees the data

We do not sell personal data, and we do not use it for advertising. It is shared only with:

The employer who interviewed you. They see the report.
Anthropic, whose Claude AI writes the plain-English summary of the flags and answers the interviewer's questions about a report. Only the flag list and session metadata are sent — never images, audio, or recordings.
Our hosting and storage providers, who run the servers the service operates on.
Where the law requires it.

10. Security

All traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Each integrity flag is cryptographically chained to the one before it, so any later alteration of a stored record is detectable — a candidate's record cannot be quietly edited after the fact. Access to interview data is restricted to the employer's own account.

11. Children

WatchHire is for recruitment and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly process the data of anyone under 18. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

12. Changes

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top of this page. Interview data already collected continues to be handled under the policy in force when it was collected.

13. Contact and grievances

WatchHire
Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
Email: karthi@watchhire.in

Grievance Officer: Karthik, Founder — karthi@watchhire.in
If you are not satisfied with our response to a grievance, you may escalate it to the Data Protection Board of India.

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