Privacy

NeoDownloader downloads on your computer and keeps what it downloads there. This page lists every request it makes on its own, what each one carries, and what you can switch off.

What NeoDownloader sends on its own

Three of them. The first two have a switch in Settings… → Program → General, apart from one question about the licence described below; the third has none.

Checking for a new version

Once a day, and right away on a new installation, NeoDownloader asks our server whether a newer version is out. The address carries the version you have, the system and the architecture; on a new installation it says once that this copy is new. Nothing identifies you, so the service can count versions and installations and cannot tell one person from another.

The switch is Check for updates. Check for updates in About… works either way. See When a new version is out.

Checking the licence

Only a copy with a licence does this, and only while Check the licence online is on: when NeoDownloader starts, then once a week - once a day in the two weeks before and after the end of your updates. It sends the identifier of this activation, the version of NeoDownloader, the version of Windows and the architecture. Your computer's name is not sent.

Activating sends the code you typed, the same versions and architecture, and a number made from this computer's Windows identifier - a number, not the identifier itself.

If your build is outside your update window, NeoDownloader also asks which version the licence still covers, each time the NeoDownloader window opens and whatever Check the licence online says. That request carries the date your updates end and nothing else about the licence.

Check now in the Licence window makes the check when you ask for it, whatever the switch says. See Checking the licence online.

The page inside the window

While no project is open, the panel on the right shows a page from our site, and NeoDownloader asks for it whenever that panel appears, starting when NeoDownloader starts. The address carries the language of the window, how the page should be painted - the theme and the accent colour - and whether you have any projects at all, so the page knows whether to greet you or to point at your list. There is no switch for this one. Unlike the rest of the site, the pages shown inside the window carry no analytics.

What goes out only when you do something

• Activating a licence with a code, Deactivate, Check now.
• Upgrade to Premium, Renew, More info, Help - these open a page in your browser.
• The wizard: when you give it an address, the plugins go to that address to see whether they can take it.
• A run: the plugin goes to the sites whose addresses you gave it and downloads from them. When a project is created, NeoDownloader may also fetch a picture from the page at the project's address for its cover.

What never reaches us

• Nothing about what you download: not the addresses, not the names of the files, not the journal, not NeoDownloader's log. The journal and the log are files on your disk, and they travel only when you send them yourself - see Reporting a problem.
• No telemetry: NeoDownloader does not report what you do in it.
• Your sign-ins to sites stay in NeoDownloader's own browser profile, in its data folder.

As with any request on the internet, those that reach our server carry your IP address and the time.

The window opens only on this computer

NeoDownloader's window is a page that NeoDownloader itself serves, and it answers on this computer only: told to listen anywhere else, it refuses to start. The page is locked with a key kept in a file in the data folder, and the file is as private as that folder: in the installed version it sits in your Windows profile, which other accounts on this computer cannot open without administrator rights.

So another device on your network cannot open your NeoDownloader, and another account on this computer cannot read the key of an installed NeoDownloader; the key of a portable one is open to anyone who can open its folder. A program running under your own account can read it either way - against that, the key protects nothing.

Turning the two requests off

Settings… → Program → General holds Check the licence online and Check for updates. With both off, NeoDownloader checks the version and the licence with our server only when you ask it to: when you activate a licence, click Check now, or click Check for updates in About…. A licence keeps working offline, and a renewal is picked up the next time you check by hand. The page inside the window still loads, and a build outside your update window still asks which version the licence covers: neither request has a switch.