Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 June 2026

This policy describes how bidsmith — an open-source command-line tool for managing Google Ads campaigns as code — handles your data, including data accessed through Google APIs.

The short version

bidsmith runs entirely on your own computer (or your own CI). It has no servers and no backend. It talks only to Google’s own API endpoints, on the accounts you choose, using credentials you supply. It sends nothing to the bidsmith authors or any third party — no telemetry, no analytics, no error reporting.

What bidsmith accesses

When you connect bidsmith to Google Ads, you grant it the single OAuth scope https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adwords. With that scope, and only on the Google Ads accounts you point it at, bidsmith reads and writes campaign configuration: campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, budgets, targeting, conversion actions, assets, and the related reporting metrics.

bidsmith requests no other scopes — no Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Cloud Platform, profile, or contacts access.

How bidsmith uses what it accesses

The data is used for one purpose: to show you the difference between your local configuration files (.bid files) and your live Google Ads account, and — only when you confirm — to make your account match those files. That is the entire function of the tool.

bidsmith does not:

• transmit your Google Ads data to the bidsmith authors or any third party;
• use your data to serve advertising;
• allow any human (including the bidsmith authors) to read your data;
• use your data to train machine-learning models;
• sell, rent, or share your data with anyone.

What is stored, and where

Everything bidsmith stores lives on your own machine. Nothing is uploaded anywhere except to Google’s APIs as part of fulfilling your commands.

Data	Where it lives	Notes
OAuth credentials (refresh + developer tokens)	Environment variables you set, or ~/.bidsmith/credentials.toml	The file is written owner-only (mode 0600). Created only if you run bidsmith auth login.
Short-lived access token	.bidsmith/cache/ in your project	Owner-only (0600); expires within ~1 hour and is re-minted as needed.
Account read-cache	.bidsmith/cache/ in your project	A copy of the account configuration you can already see in Google Ads, kept briefly to make previews fast. Contains no credentials.
Your campaign configuration	Your .bid files	Authored and version-controlled by you, typically in Git.

bidsmith reads credentials only from the two locations above and nowhere else.

Network connections

The bidsmith binary makes outbound HTTPS connections to exactly two Google hosts:

• oauth2.googleapis.com — to exchange your refresh token for a short-lived access token (and, during bidsmith auth login, to complete the one-time sign-in).
• googleads.googleapis.com — to read and write your Google Ads account.

During bidsmith auth login, your web browser additionally opens Google’s own sign-in page (accounts.google.com); bidsmith captures the result on a temporary localhost port on your own machine. It makes no other network connections.

Compliance with the Google API Services User Data Policy

bidsmith’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Google user data is used solely to provide and improve the tool’s user-facing functionality described above, is processed only on the user’s own device, is not transferred to others except as necessary to provide that functionality (i.e. to Google’s own APIs), and is never used for advertising or sold.

Data retention and deletion

Because all data is stored locally, you control its lifetime:

• bidsmith auth logout removes the saved sign-in; bidsmith auth logout --all deletes the entire credentials file.
• Deleting the .bidsmith/cache/ directory removes the local read cache and any cached access token.
• You can revoke bidsmith’s access to your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com → Security → Third-party access.

Uninstalling bidsmith and deleting these files removes all data it held.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be published on this page with a revised “last updated” date.

Contact

bidsmith is an open-source project. Questions about this policy or about how bidsmith handles data can be raised at the project’s repository: github.com/chrmod/bidsmith.