Trust & Verifiable Privacy

Security Architecture, Privacy & Licenses

This document serves as the formal technical and legal security audit of ClipGum for macOS. It specifies our absolute zero-telemetry guarantee, compliance with global data protection standards (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS), and third-party open-source licensing.

Table of Contents

1. Threat Model & Local Confinement

Traditional clipboard managers store an unencrypted SQLite history of everything copied (passwords, tokens, private chats), creating a massive honeypot for infostealer malware. ClipGum inverts this model: zero persistent storage, processing strictly triggered on paste demand.

Zero-Persistence Architecture: When you copy a token or password, ClipGum never writes to NVMe SSD disk, log files, or databases. All filtering occurs strictly inside volatile process RAM.
Risk Vector ClipGum Mitigation Architecture Status
Remote exfiltration over network No outbound network sockets are ever created for data processing. Bonsai 4B MLX executes entirely on-device. Mitigated by Design
Theft of disk-persisted clipboard DB ClipGum does not maintain any database or disk cache of clipboard items. Non-existent Vector
Unauthorized process memory snooping macOS Hardened Runtime, App Sandbox compliance, Apple System Integrity Protection (SIP). Apple Certified
Accidental leakage of team API keys Deterministic high-entropy regex engine (AWS, GitHub, Stripe, JWT tokens automatically redacted). Active by Default

2. Zero-Network Air-Gap Guarantee

ClipGum operates without any tracking infrastructure. There are no telemetry pings, crash reporting endpoints, or user analytics SDKs (no Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Segment).

The software is fully compatible with strictly air-gapped workstations in defense, finance, and medical sectors. You can monitor ClipGum using packet inspection tools such as Little Snitch or Wireshark: zero packets are transmitted during sanitization or inference.

3. Clipboard Data Lifecycle

  1. Explicit User Invocation: ClipGum only inspects clipboard content when triggered via hotkey (⌘⇧V or radial wheel ⌘⌥V). No background clipboard spying.
  2. Ephemeral RAM Processing: Text is filtered (removing UTM query params, masking secrets, converting tables, or running MLX inference).
  3. Target Application Injection: Purified content is returned to the clipboard and pasted.
  4. Instant Eviction: Swift memory buffers are deallocated immediately by Automatic Reference Counting (ARC).

4. GDPR, HIPAA & PCI-DSS Compliance

4.1 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR - EU 2016/679)

Under GDPR Article 4, ClipGum acts neither as a Data Controller nor as a Data Processor, as no personal data is ever collected, stored, or transferred to third parties.

4.2 HIPAA & Protected Health Information (PHI)

ClipGum is not a Covered Entity or Business Associate under HIPAA. Utilizing ClipGum on hospital workstations to clean medical clinical notes or patient IDs creates zero HIPAA violation exposure since no cloud transit occurs.

4.3 PCI-DSS (Payment Card Security)

ClipGum includes built-in Luhn algorithm verification to automatically mask inadvertent credit card numbers before pasting into Slack, support tickets, or issue trackers.

5. Apple Silicon Hardware Encryption

On Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3, M4), ClipGum benefits from native hardware-enforced silicon security:

6. Enterprise Deployment & MDM Configuration

ClipGum is ready for enterprise fleet management (Jamf Pro, Microsoft Intune, Kandji, Mosyle). System administrators can distribute XML .mobileconfig profiles to enforce deterministic mode or disable external API endpoints:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>PayloadType</key> <string>com.clipgum.enterprise</string> <key>AllowExternalAPI</key> <false/> <key>EnforceStrictTrackerPurge</key> <true/> <key>AutoRedactCreditCards</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>

7. Complete Open-Source License Register

ClipGum is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Below are the upstream licenses and attributions for bundled open-source dependencies:

7.1 ClipGum Core (Apache 2.0)

Copyright 2026 ClipGum Contributors Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

7.2 Apple MLX & MLX Swift (MIT License)

MIT License Copyright © 2023-2026 Apple Inc. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

7.3 PrismML Bonsai 4B Model (Apache 2.0 / Open RAIL)

The model prism-ml/bonsai-image-ternary-4B-mlx-2bit is an open-weights model designed for low-power Apple Silicon inference under the Apache-2.0 license.

7.4 llama.cpp / llama.framework (MIT License)

MIT License Copyright (c) 2023-2026 Georgi Gerganov Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.