Money Under the Microscope

Privacy policy

Effective date: 11 October 2026 (previous version: 26 September 2026).

This policy covers this website (moneymicroscope.co.uk) and two private, internal analytics tools used only by the owner of the Money Under the Microscope YouTube channel: the application "MUTM Hermes Read Only", which reads the channel's own data, and a public research tool, which reads publicly available information about other YouTube channels and videos.

This website

This website is a simple information page. It does not use cookies, analytics trackers, advertising or sign-up forms, and it does not ask you for any personal information. Our hosting provider (Cloudflare) may process basic technical data, such as IP addresses, to deliver and protect the site, under its own privacy policy.

The "MUTM Hermes Read Only" application

This application uses YouTube API Services. It is used only by the owner of the Money Under the Microscope channel, and only to access that channel's own data. It is not offered to the public or to other YouTube users.

With the channel owner's permission, it requests two read-only Google permissions:

It cannot upload, edit, delete, comment on, or change anything on YouTube, and it does not access any other user's account, private messages or revenue data.

The public research tool

This tool also uses YouTube API Services (the YouTube Data API). It does not ask anyone to sign in and cannot access any account. It reads only information that YouTube makes public about UK personal-finance channels and videos: channel names and descriptions, subscriber counts, video titles, publication dates, durations, thumbnails, and public view, like and comment counts.

We use it to understand which money questions viewers are interested in, so that we can choose better subjects for our own videos. From the public statistics we calculate our own measures, for example how a video's views compare with that channel's typical views. These are our own calculations, labelled as such, and are not YouTube data or YouTube-endorsed figures. They are used only internally; we do not publish rankings or scores of other creators, and we do not try to infer anything personal about creators or viewers.

How the data is used

The data is used only to produce internal reports that help the channel owner understand how videos perform and improve future videos. Reports may be prepared by software tools, including AI assistants, that run for and are controlled by the channel owner. The data is not sold, not used for advertising, and not shared with anyone else.

Where it is stored, and for how long

Data retrieved through either tool is stored privately on the channel owner's own computers. Sign-in credentials and API keys are stored separately and are never published. Data is kept only as long as it is useful for the purposes above and in line with the YouTube API Services Developer Policies: titles, descriptions, names and other non-statistical information are refreshed or deleted within 30 days; public statistics (such as view and subscriber counts) and the measures we calculate from them are kept for no longer than 36 months, as those policies allow.

Removing access

Access can be withdrawn at any time through the Google security settings page for connected apps: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions. When access is removed, the application can no longer retrieve any data.

Google and YouTube terms

By using YouTube, you are bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. Google's handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy. This application's use of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy: [email protected].

If this policy changes, the updated version and its effective date will be posted on this page.