The short version.
Our instruments and effects don't go online: no account, no activation server, no usage data, no update check. This site counts how often each page is seen, on our own server, with no cookie and no tracking script, and without knowing who you are. We keep what it takes to give you your license, to answer your email and, if you ask for it, to send you the newsletter.
Who is responsible.
Polarfon is the controller of your data: we decide what is kept and why (who we are in law: the imprint). Write to support@polarfon.com about anything on this page.
What we keep, and why.
- When you buy
- Your email address, the name you put on the license, the license itself, and the order's number and what Paddle told us about it (the product and the amount). We need these to make your license, to send it, and to send it again when you ask. The law we rely on: carrying out the agreement with you.
- When a license reaches you another way
- Transferred to you by its holder, or given by us (a press copy, a replacement): the name and the email address we were given for you, and the license. We need them for the same things, and rely on the same law.
- From Paddle
- You pay Paddle, not us. Paddle is the seller and decides for itself what it keeps about the payment (Paddle's privacy notice). We don't see your card, and we don't keep what Paddle tells us of how you paid. Paddle passes us your email address and the order, so we know whom to send the license to.
- When you ask for your licenses, or redeem a code
- The address you type, and for a code the name. To stop the form being used to pester someone, we count the requests per address and per caller; the address and the caller are kept as fingerprints (hashes), for two days at most. The law we rely on: our legitimate interest in keeping the forms from being abused.
- When you write to us
- Your email and our answer, in our mailbox, for as long as the question may come back. The law we rely on: answering you, and our legitimate interest in remembering what we said.
- The newsletter
- Your email address, from the moment you ask for it, with when you asked and confirmed, the page you asked on and what it promised you: the proof that you agreed. If you don't confirm, it is deleted after seven days. Once you unsubscribe, it is kept thirty days more as a mark that you did (so the unsubscribe link in an older issue still works), then deleted. Every issue has an unsubscribe link. No pixel tells us whether you opened it. The form counts its requests as the others do: fingerprints of the address and the caller, for two days at most. The law we rely on: your consent, which you withdraw by unsubscribing.
- When you visit
- The server's log notes the address a request came from, the time, the page and the browser's name, as every web server does. We use it to keep the site safe and working, and delete it after thirty days at most. Apart from that, the server counts each page seen and each download, and the site a visit came from when your browser names it: a number a day, nothing about who you are. That is how we know what people read. The law we rely on: our legitimate interest in a site that is safe and works.
Cookies.
This site sets one cookie, and only if you press the theme key at the top of a page: it holds the word "day" or "night", for a year, so the next page looks the way you chose. It identifies nobody.
On the payment page, Paddle's checkout opens in a frame of Paddle's own and sets the cookies it needs to take a payment safely. They are Paddle's, for the payment you asked for.
That is all, which is why no banner asks for your consent. If that changes, this page changes first.
Who else handles it.
Hetzner hosts this site and keeps its backups, in Germany and Finland. Amazon Web Services sends our email, from Germany. Fastmail keeps our mailbox in the Netherlands, and a copy of it in the United States. Each handles data only for us, under an agreement, and we sell nothing to anyone.
Where data is kept or reached outside the European Economic Area, the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision cover it.
How long.
Your license and what belongs to it: for as long as the license exists, so that you can get it back. A license that has ended (refunded, charged back, withdrawn or transferred) stays in our records with its name and address, so that its number is not used twice and a question about it can be answered, until you ask us to delete it. What Paddle sent about an order: two years. The words of an email we sent you: thirty days. The newsletter's list: until you leave, and thirty days after. Records the tax office requires are kept for the seven years it asks for, because the law says so.
Encrypted backups keep a copy of all of this until they age out, twenty-four months at most. After a restore, a deletion made since that backup is made again.
Your rights.
You may ask what we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, take it with you, or object to its use or have it limited. Write to support@polarfon.com from the address concerned and we do it within a month, usually within days.
Two limits. Once your record is deleted we can't send your license again, and later releases won't open with it; the version you have keeps working. And the encrypted backups keep a deleted record until they age out (above).
No decision about you is made by a machine, and no profile of you is built. You don't have to give us anything, but without an email address and a name we can't make or send a license.
If you think we handle your data wrongly, tell us. You may also complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or to the authority of your own country.
Questions.
Write to support@polarfon.com.