Akastroid collects nothing about you or your images. The one network request it makes, and how to switch it off.

This is the operative document. The terms andprivacy pages summarise it in plainer language; where a summary and this page differ, this page is what you agreed to.

Version 1.0 · Effective [DATE]

The short version

Akastroid collects nothing about you or your images.

Not your images. Not your file names. Not your camera, your location, your operating system, how often you open it, which buttons you press, or whether it crashed.

In the application there is no analytics library, no crash reporter, no telemetry, no “anonymous usage statistics”, and no account.

Two exceptions, and they are the whole of it. When you enter a licence key, Akastroid contacts our activation server once — see section 2. And if update checking is switched on — it is by default — Akastroid asks a file hosted on GitHub whether a newer version exists. That request sends the version you are running and your platform, and, as with any request over the internet, your IP address is visible to the host serving it. It sends nothing else, and nothing about your photographs.

Switch it off under Help → Check for updates, and once your licence is activated, Akastroid makes no network requests at all. It works identically with the machine offline either way — including processing, which never needs a network under any circumstances.

The website is a separate thing. akastroid.com runs Google Analytics, which sets cookies and records which pages are visited. That is about the site, not the software — see section 8. Nothing links the two, because the application never contacts the site.

Most privacy policies say what a company promises not to do with data it is nevertheless collecting. This one describes a program that has nothing to send.

1. Who we are

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME], of [COMPANY ADDRESS], is the data controller for the limited information described in section 5. Contact: hello@akastroid.com.

2. Activation

A licence covers two computers, and counting them is the one thing that cannot be done on your own machine: a second computer has no way to know about the first. So when you enter a licence key, Akastroid makes one request to our activation server.

What is sent: your licence key, a short value identifying this computer, and a name for the computer so you can recognise it on your account page. The identifying value is a hash of a system identifier your operating system already provides — not the identifier itself, and not reversible into one.

What is not sent: anything about your images, file names, folders, camera, settings, or how you use the Software. Not then, and not afterwards.

When: once, at the moment you enter the key. Not on launch, not on processing, not on export, not on any schedule. Once your licence is confirmed Akastroid never contacts the activation server again.

If we cannot be reached: Akastroid works normally for fourteen days and confirms itself when you are next online.

We keep, against your licence: the hashed computer value, the name you gave the computer, and when it was activated and released. You can see that list, and release every computer on it, at akastroid.com/account. Deactivating in the application deletes the local record and frees the place.

3. What the application does with your files

Akastroid reads the frames you point it at, processes them on your computer’s own CPU, and writes the results where you tell it to.

While it is working it writes a scratch cache of intermediate frames to your system temporary directory. This cache is deleted when the session closes, and any cache left behind by an interrupted run is removed the next time the application starts.

Your source frames are never modified.

4. How this can be verified

You do not have to take our word for any of it. The claim is checkable:

Watch the network. Run Akastroid behind Little Snitch, LuLu, Wireshark, or your firewall’s logging, and process a session. You will see no requests at all: activation has already happened, and the update check is the only other one — and only if it is switched on.
Pull the plug. Disconnect from the network entirely. Everything works.
Turn the update check off. Then watch again: nothing at all.

The part of Akastroid that reads and processes your frames is a separate Rust engine with no networking code in it. Not disabled — absent. There is no code path by which an image could be sent anywhere, because none was written. The activation request lives in a different module entirely, is made from one place, and never sees a frame.

5. What we do hold

We collect nothing through the application. We do hold information you give us directly:

What	Why	How long
Your email address and licence key	To issue and support your licence	While your licence is active
The email address you give to download	To know whether the free version leads to a purchase, and to send you release notes for the build you took	2 years from your last download
The computers a licence is active on	To enforce the two-computer limit in clause 2.3 of the Licence Agreement	While the licence is active
Payment records	Legal and tax obligation	As long as tax law requires, typically 6–7 years
Emails you send to support	To answer you	2 years, then deleted
Diagnostic reports you choose to send	To fix the problem you reported	Deleted when the issue is closed

The download address is not a mailing list. We do not sell it, share it, or add it to marketing without asking you first. You can have it deleted at any time by writing to hello@akastroid.com, and doing so costs you nothing — the software does not check it and never did.

Payment card details never reach us. Payment is handled by our payment processor, [PAYMENT PROCESSOR], under its own privacy policy. We receive confirmation of payment and your email address, not your card number.

6. Diagnostic reports

Akastroid can produce a diagnostic report — the processing log, the app version, your operating system and CPU core count — through Help → Diagnostics.

This report is never sent automatically. It is copied to your clipboard or saved to a file, and nothing happens to it unless you choose to paste it into an email to us.

Before it is shown to you, file paths in the report are shortened so that your username and folder structure are replaced with ~. Read it before you send it. If you would rather not send it, describe the problem in words instead; we will still help.

Nobody, except:

our payment processor, to take payment;
our email provider, to reply to you;
an authority, where the law requires it.

We do not sell data. We do not share data for advertising. We do not run advertising.

8. The website uses Google Analytics

This applies to akastroid.com, not to the application. The two are separate, and the distinction is the whole point: the software you install sends nothing but its update check, and no analytics code exists in it.

The website loads Google Analytics 4, which sets cookies and records the pages you visit, roughly where you are (country or city level, from your IP), and which site or search sent you. Google is the processor; its own privacy terms apply to what it does with that.

It is there to answer one question — which guides bring people who go on to download — and nothing about your photographs is involved, because your photographs never reach this site.

To opt out: use a browser that blocks trackers, an extension that blocks Google Analytics, or Google’s own opt-out add-on. None of that affects the software, which does not consult it either way.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live you have rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and to object to our processing of it. Write to hello@akastroid.com and we will act within 30 days.

Because we hold so little, most of these requests resolve to “your email address, your licence key, and your purchase record”.

If you are in the UK or the EU and are unhappy with our response, you may complain to your national data protection authority.

10. Children

Akastroid is not directed at children under 13, and we knowingly collect nothing from them.

11. Changes

If this policy changes we will publish the new version at akastroid.com with a new effective date. If a change ever meant the application started collecting something, we would say so prominently and ask first — but the design intent is that it never will.

[LEGAL ENTITY NAME] · [COMPANY ADDRESS] hello@akastroid.com · akastroid.com

Privacy Policy