InterviewBeacon Security

Nothing about your interview ever reaches a server we operate — no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting. That's possible because your audio is captured and transcribed locally on your own machine and never leaves it; there's no InterviewBeacon server anywhere in the audio path at all. What network activity does exist is limited to five specific, narrow connections, each detailed below: your own LLM provider (using your key), LemonSqueezy for license checks, GitHub's public API for update checks, a free-tier hint counter (hashed device ID, free tier only), and — once you activate a paid license — an activation log (your license key plus a hashed device ID, so a key shared across many devices can be spotted).

At a glance

Every network connection this app makes

This is the complete list — not examples. You can confirm it yourself with a network monitor while the app runs.

1. Your own LLM provider. Eitherapi.anthropic.com/v1/messages orapi.openai.com/v1/chat/completions, depending on which you choose — connected directly from your machine to the provider, using your own API key. This happens only when you actually submit a question. There is no InterviewBeacon server in this path; your request goes to Anthropic or OpenAI and nowhere else.

2. LemonSqueezy's License API.api.lemonsqueezy.com/v1/licenses/activate and /validate. This happens when you enter a license key, and then roughly once every 30 days for a silent background revalidation. If you're offline when that check would run, it's a no-op — it doesn't block anything or interrupt you. Freeing up a device slot is self-serve, done from your own LemonSqueezy account portal, not from inside the app.

3. GitHub's public releases API. InterviewBeacon and SyntaxCue are the same underlying app, built and maintained by the same solo developer, distributed from one shared public releases repository: github.com/ZetBaur/syntaxcue-releases, once per app launch, to check whether a newer version exists. No account, no auth token — it's the same public endpoint anyone can curl. If a newer version exists, the app shows a note. It never auto-downloads or auto-installs anything.

4. A free-tier hint counter — free tier only. A Cloudflare Pages Function the developer operates, currently reachable atsyntaxcue.com/api/trial-hint — the same backend infrastructure shared across both of the developer's products, since it's the same app under the hood. Here's exactly what it does and doesn't see. It exists because the original design — a hint counter in a local file — turned out to be trivially defeated by deleting and reinstalling the app, with no technical skill required, which undermines the whole point of a metered free tier. The app sends a hashed hardware identifier (hashed with SHA-256 before it ever leaves your machine, so the raw ID never reaches us) to check and record your remaining free hints. It receives nothing else — not your name, email, audio, transcribed text, screenshots, or AI answers. This call happens once when a hint is requested and once after, to record it used. It stops entirely the moment you activate a license — a paid copy never contacts this endpoint, ever. If this endpoint is unreachable, the app failsclosed: it blocks the hint rather than silently allowing one.

5. A paid-license activation log — paid tier only. Also a Cloudflare Pages Function operated by the same developer, at syntaxcue.com/api/license-activation. It exists to catch the one gap self-serve licensing has no technical way to prevent: a person deactivates their license and hands the key to someone else, who activates it on a different device. There is no DRM against this — see below — but this is how it's watched for. Each time you activate a license, the app sends your license key as-is(it's proof of a $79 purchase, not a secret the way an API key is) plus ahashed hardware identifier, the same kind used for the free-tier counter. A key seen on an unusually high number of distinct devices gets flagged for manual review — there is no automatic revocation. This call happens only on activation, never on ordinary use, and never for the free tier.

That's all of it — five connections, no analytics beacon, no usage statistics, no crash reporter, and nothing about your interview reaches any server we operate.

What never leaves your machine

• Your audio. An on-device model transcribes it right on your machine, keeps it in memory only, and neither writes it to disk nor sends it anywhere — no audio-shaped data ever touches the network. What does leave your machine, once transcription happens, is text: the transcribed question itself, plus an optional screenshot if you capture one, both sent straight to whichever LLM provider you've chosen.
• Your hint history. The visible hint history in a session resets when you close the app. It is not persisted between sessions by default.
• Your API key. Stored in OS-native secure storage — macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager — never in a plaintext file. Clearing the API key field in the app actually deletes that entry, not just hides it from the UI. Freeing up your license's device slot is self-serve from your LemonSqueezy account portal.

Your settings (provider choice, interview context, hotkeys) and license state are stored as plain local JSON files in the OS's standard per-app data directory. These are preferences, not secrets — which is why they're not in the Keychain, but your API key, which is a secret, is.

How to verify your download

Every release on github.com/ZetBaur/syntaxcue-releases publishes a SHA-256 checksum of the installer in that release's notes. One thing worth knowing before you download: the installer and the installed app are named"SyntaxCue," not "InterviewBeacon" — it's the same shared build (see the note above on the GitHub releases connection). Nothing else about the app changes. To confirm the file you downloaded matches what was published:

macOS:

shasum -a 256 /path/to/SyntaxCue.dmg

Windows (PowerShell):

Get-FileHash C:\path\to\SyntaxCue-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

Compare the output against the value posted on the GitHub release page. If they match, the file wasn't corrupted or swapped in transit. This confirms the file you have matches what was published under that release tag — it is not, by itself, proof of what's inside the app, since there's no reproducible-build setup today that would let you independently verify the binary was built from a specific source.

What we don't do (yet)

Stated plainly, because vague reassurance would defeat the point of this page:

• The client source code is not open source. The main development repo is private. There is a separate public repo, but it hosts only the compiled release binaries — not source. So you cannot audit the source today.
• No independent third-party security audit has been done.
• No bug bounty program exists.
• The Windows build is not yet code-signed. On first launch, Windows SmartScreen may show an "unrecognized app" notice; you get past it with "More info" → "Run anyway." The macOS build is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized, so it opens with the standard Apple confirmation, not an "unidentified developer" warning.

InterviewBeacon is a solo-developer product, and these are the honest current limits of what you can independently verify. The things you can verify today — every network connection, local-only audio, where your key is stored, and the download checksum — are listed above specifically so you can check them yourself.

How to report a security issue

Found something? Email us directly — the same address used for all feedback, listed on the Contact page. There's no public issue tracker or bug bounty (it's a solo-developer product), but security reports are taken seriously.

Get InterviewBeacon

Download it, check every claim on this page yourself, and decide from there.