WeTransfer Terms of Service — What’s really changing

First things first. Your content is always your content. This is specified in section 6.2. Ownership of Content of our Terms of Service, which says: “We do not claim any ownership rights to the Content. You or your licensors own and retain all right, title, and interest, including all intellectual property rights, in and to the Content.

Now, let’s get into the details. 

On July 1, 2025 we started notifying our customers about our updated Terms of Service, which come into effect on August 8, 2025 for existing customers. The version of the terms that was published and that we started notifying included the following section: 

6.3. License to WeTransfer. In order to allow us to operate, provide you with, and improve the Service and our technologies (and to develop new ones), we must obtain from you certain rights related to Content that is covered by intellectual property rights. You hereby grant us a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable license to use your Content for the purposes of operating, developing, commercializing, and improving the Service or new technologies or services, including to improve performance of machine learning models that enhance our content moderation process, in accordance with the Privacy & Cookie Policy. Such license includes the right to reproduce, distribute, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, broadcast, communicate to the public, publicly display, and perform Content. You will not be entitled to compensation for any use of Content by us under these Terms. The processing of personal data is always carried out in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy, which provides further details on the purposes and legal bases for such processing.

This led our customers to wonder about two key parts, which we clarify below: 

Machine learning

We don’t use machine learning or any form of AI to process content shared via WeTransfer.

The passage that caught most people’s eye was initially updated to include the possibility of using AI to improve content moderation and further enhance our measures to prevent the distribution of illegal or harmful content on the WeTransfer platform. Such a feature hasn’t been built or used in practice, but it was under consideration for the future. To avoid confusion, we’ve removed this reference.

Licensing

Because your content is yours, we need a license from you to provide you with our service. The language regarding licensing didn’t actually change in substance compared to the previous Terms of Service. Here is the relevant part from the previous version of our Terms of Service under a different provision (10.5):

10.5 WeTransfer requires a license from you with regards to the Content to enable us to provide the Services to you. You hereby grant: (1) us an unlimited, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to (i) use, host, store, scan, search, sort, index, create previews and (ii) reproduce, communicate, publish, publicly display, distribute and edit and prepare derivative works from (including but not limited to scaling, cropping, adapting and translating) the Content in connection with our operating, enabling, providing, making available, commercializing and improving the Services and (2) other users the right to access and use your Content in accordance with their use of the Service. The foregoing license may be sublicensed by us to our service providers, partners, contractors and other persons and entities providing services for us. Notwithstanding any term of this provision, this license will survive any termination of these Terms and any deletion of your account or your Content with respect to Content archived in storage media (but otherwise rendered inaccessible to the public).

There’s no change in how WeTransfer handles your content in practice. The change in wording was meant to simplify the terms while ensuring our customers can enjoy WeTransfer’s features and services as they were built to be used. 

From your feedback, we understood that it may have been unclear that you retain ownership and control of your content. We’ve since updated the terms further to make them easier to understand. We’ve also removed the mention of machine learning, as it’s not something WeTransfer uses in connection with customer content and may have caused some apprehension.

The passage from the updated version you can find in our Terms of Service is as follows:

6.3. License to WeTransfer. In order to allow us to operate, provide you with, and improve the Service and our technologies, we must obtain from you certain rights related to Content that is covered by intellectual property rights. You hereby grant us a royalty-free license to use your Content for the purposes of operating, developing, and improving the Service, all in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy.

So, to be extra clear: 

1. YES—your content is always your content. In fact, section 6.2 of our Terms of Service clearly states that you “own and retain all right, title, and interest, including all intellectual property rights, in and to the Content”
2. YES—you’re granting us permission to ensure we can run and improve the WeTransfer service properly
3. YES—our terms are compliant with applicable privacy laws, including the GDPR
4. NO—we are not using your content to train AI models
5. NO—we do not sell your content to third parties

We apologize for any confusion this may have caused, and we’re happy to answer any additional questions. 

💙The WeTransfer team