Privacy Policy

1. What this policy covers

yangbyte (“we”, “us”) is an independent software project operated as a sole individual venture, reachable at support@yangbyte.com. We build and sell small macOS utilities. This policy explains what information we come into contact with in two places: the yangbyte.com website and our apps installed on your Mac. Product-specific local behaviour is in section 2 and will be extended when we ship new products. Gridly is the product currently on sale.

The short version: if you are just browsing the site, we know almost nothing about you. Only when you buy something do we receive an email address.

2. Our apps, by product

The following describes only what the named product does on your Mac. Permissions and data paths may differ by product.

2.1 Gridly

Gridly has no account system and collects no usage data. It contacts our servers at three moments only, and is completely offline the rest of the time.

1. Checking for updates (once a day by default; you can turn this off in Settings)

Gridly requests update information from https://yangbyte.com/gridly/appcast.xml. This is an ordinary web request and carries neither your email address nor your license key. Our server reduces the requesting IP to a one-way fingerprint valid for that day only, using a key that is not stored in the database, so that we can estimate how many machines still have Gridly installed. Fingerprint detail is kept for 100 days and then only the totals remain; on a different day the same person produces a different fingerprint, so nothing can be strung together into a trail.

2. Starting the trial (once, when this Mac has no trial record)

On first launch, or after the local trial ledger has been cleared, Gridly sends the same device identifier and model used for activation — not your email or license key. The server records the first day it saw this Mac and returns a signed receipt. After that the trial is counted locally and Gridly does not contact us about it again. A different Mac, or a logic-board replacement, starts a new 14-day trial.

3. Claiming an activation when you activate your license (one Mac per license)

This happens only when you activate, or when the binding stored on this Mac no longer matches it and has to be renewed. What is sent:

• your license email address and license key;
• a device identifier — derived from this Mac’s hardware UUID through a keyed one-way hash. We receive the derived value and can neither obtain nor reconstruct the hardware UUID;
• the model (such as MacBookPro18,3), so you can tell your Macs apart. The computer’s name is not sent — names often contain a real person’s name.

The server decides whether this license still has an activation available and returns a signed device binding, which is stored on your Mac. Once that binding is in place, Gridly never contacts our servers about licensing again — every later launch verifies the signature offline. Losing your connection, or us shutting the service down, does not affect a Mac that is already activated.

Everything else is unchanged:

• No accounts. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to log into.
• No telemetry, crash reporting, or usage analytics.
• Accessibility permission. Gridly needs macOS Accessibility permission to read the position and size of windows and to move them. That information is used in memory, on your Mac only. It is never written to a file we can read, and never transmitted.
• Local log file. Gridly writes a diagnostic log to ~/Library/Logs/Gridly/gridly.log. The file stays on your computer; we cannot see it unless you choose to send it to us, and you can delete it at any time.
• License data. After activation, your email address, license key, and device binding are stored locally so the app can verify the signatures offline at every launch. Verification happens on your machine and requires no network access.

3. Website visits and language preference

• No tracking cookies or third-party analytics. We do not build visitor profiles or measure time spent on the site.
• We store a yb-lang cookie for about one year to remember the interface language you picked. It is sent with requests to this site so we can render pages in that language. Clearing your browser cookies removes it.
• To understand broad website and product trends, our server counts successful public page views, DMG downloads, and Sparkle ZIP update downloads. The requesting IP is used in memory only to query a local GeoLite2 Country database and create a one-way fingerprint valid for that day. The analytics tables do not store the raw IP, full User-Agent, query string, or referring URL.
• Country means the request source inferred from the IP, not nationality or residence. Daily fingerprints cannot be linked across days and are kept for 100 days; after that, only daily totals grouped by page or download file and country remain.
• As with any website, the hosting server produces access logs (IP address, timestamp, requested path, User-Agent) for security and troubleshooting. They are kept for no longer than 30 days.
• To prevent abuse we keep a per-IP address count of orders placed that day (at most 5 per IP per day). It is a counter, not a record of what you looked at.

4. What we receive when you buy

Every order is handled by Creem (Armitage Labs OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia) acting as Merchant of Record. Creem is the party you enter into the sale contract with; it collects payment, issues the receipt, and handles applicable sales tax and VAT.

• Creem collects your email address, billing details, country or tax region, and payment information under its own privacy policy. See the Creem Privacy Policy.
• We receive the order number, product, amount, and buyer email address from Creem to issue and send your license key. We do not see your card number or other payment credentials.

5. What we do with it

Four things only:

• Issue and deliver your license. Your email address is used to generate the license key and to send you the key and a one-click activation link. The key is bound to that address, so the address is part of the license.
• Start the trial. To record the first day this Mac started a trial and to issue a signed receipt. For that we store the device identifier, model, and first-seen date.
• Check activations. To decide whether this license still has an activation available, and to issue this Mac’s device binding. For that we store the device identifiers already bound to the license, along with their model and first-bound date.
• Support. When you write to us, we need to find your order by email address.
• Accounting and legal obligations. We keep transaction records to meet tax and bookkeeping requirements.

We do not sell your information to anyone, do not use it for advertising or profiling, and do not send marketing email without your consent. The only email you will get from us is your license, and replies to messages you send us.

6. Third parties we use

Service	Purpose	Data involved
Creem Armitage Labs OÜ	All payments, Merchant of Record	Email, billing and tax details, payment information
Resend Resend, Inc. (USA)	Delivering license emails	Recipient address, message contents

7. How long we keep it

• Order and license records (email, order number, amount, issue date): kept for as long as the license is valid, because reactivation depends on them, and for any statutory accounting and tax retention period.
• Trial records (device identifier, model, first-seen date): kept so the same Mac cannot restart the trial by clearing local data. Deleted if you ask us to delete them; that Mac can then start a new trial.
• Activation records (device identifier, model, first-bound date): kept for as long as the license is. Removed when we free that activation from the admin console, or when you ask us to delete your data.
• Install-count fingerprints: 100 days, after which only the daily totals remain (see section 2.1).
• Website and download fingerprints: 100 days, after which only daily totals without raw IP addresses remain (see section 3).
• Support correspondence: kept for 24 months after the matter is closed.
• Server access logs: see section 3.

8. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can write to support@yangbyte.com to ask what we hold about you, to correct it (for example, to move your license to a different email address), to have it deleted, or to receive a copy of it.

If you are in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, you also have the rights the GDPR gives you, including restriction of processing, objection to processing, and the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority. If you are in California, you have the rights the CCPA/CPRA gives you to know, delete, and opt out of sale — we do not sell personal information in the first place.

Please note: deleting your license record means that license key can no longer be reissued, and the activation records go with it, so Macs that were already activated will need to be activated again. We will say so before acting on the request. We respond within 30 days.

9. International transfers

We and our providers may process and store data outside your country of residence. Creem, for example, is based in Estonia and processes billing and payment information for every order under its own privacy policy.

10. Children

Our products are not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Security

We keep the minimum information necessary, sensitive payment data never passes through our servers, and traffic is served over HTTPS. That said, no system is perfectly secure and we cannot offer an absolute guarantee.

12. Changes

When this policy changes we update the “last updated” date at the top of this page. For material changes we will notify you at your license email address.

13. Contact

support@yangbyte.com