Privacy policy
Effective October 19, 2026
This policy explains what personal information Tristar Advanced Software, LLC ("Tristar Advanced Software", "we", "us") collects through tristaradvanced.com and our software products, how we use it, and your rights.
Who is responsible
Tristar Advanced Software, LLC, 6545 Market Ave. North, STE 100, Canton, OH 44721, USA, is responsible for your personal information (the "controller" under data protection laws such as the GDPR). Contact us by opening a support ticket (you don't need an account), or by writing to us at that address.
For legal inquiries, you can also email legal@tristaradvanced.com.
What we collect
- Account details: your username, email address and display name, plus any profile picture link, time zone and language you set. Your password is stored only in a form we can't read back. If emails to your address are returned as undeliverable, we record that and when, so we can ask you to update it and stop sending to it until you do. If you buy without an account, we create one for the email address you give, with the name the license is for as its display name, and email you a link to choose its password.
- Sign-in and security information: two-factor authentication settings and recovery codes, and a record of each sign-in: the time, the type of browser and device, a random id for the browser, your IP address, and the approximate location and internet provider that IP address points to (city, region, country, and rough coordinates).
- License information: the licenses on your account, the name each is licensed to and, when you activate a product, the computer's name, a one-way hash of an identifier of the computer (not the identifier itself), its operating system, the product version, and when it was activated and last checked in.
- Purchases: each order: what you bought, the name it's licensed to, the email address it was bought with, the price, tax and total, Paddle's reference for the transaction, and its status (paid, refunded).
- Support tickets: what you write and the files you attach, the license a ticket is about (if any), and our replies. If you open a ticket without an account, also the name and email address you give, which we use to send you a private link to the ticket and tell you when we reply.
- Mailing list: if you ask us to email you when a product is released, your email address, the products you asked about, whether you also asked for other news, which wording of the sign-up form you agreed to, where on the site you signed up, and when you confirmed. Until you follow the link in our confirmation email, we keep only a one-way hash of your address, for an hour, to limit how many confirmation emails it gets. If one of our emails to you bounces for good, or you mark one as spam, we keep a one-way hash of your address (not the address itself) so we don't email it again.
- Documentation downloads: when you download product documentation as a PDF, we record your username, the product, which version of the documentation, the time, your IP address and the download ID printed on the PDF. Each PDF shows your username and that ID.
- Update checks and requests: when a product checks for updates or your browser talks to our servers, we receive its IP address. Our servers keep technical logs of requests, including IP addresses, and a security record of sign-ins, changes to accounts and other data, and administrators' actions: who made the request, from which IP address, what it was, when, and how it went.
- Anonymous statistics: as you browse the site, it tells our servers which page, product or checkout you're viewing. On the first page of a visit, it also sends the page you came from (without any part of its address after a "?"), any campaign tags in the link you followed (such as
utm_source), and your browser's preferred language. We add these to daily totals by country, which we work out from your IP address. The totals don't include your IP address or anything else that identifies you, and no cookies or browser storage are used for them. Administrators' own browsing isn't counted, and browsing from data centers' IP addresses, which is almost always automated programs, is counted separately.
You pay in the checkout of Paddle, our reseller, which opens over our site: your card details or PayPal sign-in go to Paddle, never to us, and we never see or store them. We don't use third-party analytics, advertising or tracking services, and our emails don't track whether you open them or click their links. We don't make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects.
How we use it, and why we're allowed to
We use your information only to run this site and our products. Data protection laws such as the GDPR require a legal basis for each use:
| Use | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and running your account (including the one we create when you buy without one), signing you in, issuing and managing licenses, downloads, update checks, and account emails (verification, password resets, sign-in codes) | Performing our contract with you |
| Answering support tickets, and emailing you about them | Performing our contract with you, or for questions before you buy, our legitimate interest in answering them |
| Emailing you when a product you asked about is released, and other news about our products if you asked for that too | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email |
| Checking that a sign-in, a password reset request, a new support ticket or a mailing list sign-up isn't from an automated program (Cloudflare Turnstile) | Our legitimate interest in protecting accounts from password guessing and keeping spam out of our support and our emails |
| Protecting the site, our products and our users: detecting suspicious sign-ins, limiting abuse, and diagnosing problems | Our legitimate interest in keeping our services secure and working |
| Counting visits anonymously (which pages and products are viewed, where visits come from, and how many lead to a purchase), to understand interest in our products and improve the site | Our legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used. Only the totals are kept, and they identify no one |
| Marking documentation PDFs with your username and a download ID, and recording who each was made for, so a copy shared without permission can be traced | Our legitimate interest in protecting our documentation, which is for registered users only |
| Selling you a license through Paddle, issuing it, emailing your receipt, and handling refunds | Performing our contract with you |
| Keeping order records | Complying with legal obligations |
| Keeping records we're required to keep, and responding to lawful requests | Complying with legal obligations |
Account details are needed to provide an account: without them we can't create one.
Who we share it with
We don't sell or rent your personal information, and we don't use it for advertising. It goes to these services, only so they can do the following for us:
- Amazon Web Services hosts the site, stores the data and sends our emails, under a data processing agreement.
- ip-api.com, an IP address location service, receives your IP address each time you sign in, and as you browse the site, and tells us its approximate location and internet provider. We use the location to spot suspicious sign-ins, and only the country, and whether the address belongs to a data center, for the anonymous statistics. It receives nothing else about you, and we use it under a commercial subscription.
- Paddle (Paddle.com) is our online reseller and the merchant of record for our orders: it sells you the license, takes the payment, works out and pays any sales tax or VAT, and sends your receipt and any refund. You give your payment and billing details to Paddle directly, in its checkout. We send it your email address, the product, the price and the order number, and it tells us the price, tax and total it charged.
- Cloudflare runs Turnstile, the check that you're not an automated program on the sign-in, password reset, new support ticket and mailing list sign-up forms. It receives your IP address and information about your browser when you open one of those forms, but nothing you type in it, such as your username, password or email address.
Paddle and Cloudflare use what they receive under their own privacy policies: Paddle as the seller, to take payment, prevent fraud and meet its legal obligations, such as tax.
We would only disclose information otherwise if the law required it.
International transfers
Our servers are in the United States, so if you're outside the US, your information is transferred there. For information from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, these transfers are protected by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses (and their UK and Swiss equivalents), which are part of our agreement with Amazon Web Services. Contact us for a copy. ip-api.com handles the IP addresses it receives under its own terms and privacy policy, Paddle handles payment information under its own, and Cloudflare handles what Turnstile receives under its own.
How long we keep it
| Information | Kept |
|---|---|
| Account details and two-factor authentication settings | While your account exists. Deleted when your account is deleted. |
| Sign-in records (time, browser and device, IP address, approximate location) | Currently kept even after your account is deleted. Ask us and we'll delete them. |
| License records, including the name licensed to and activated computers | For the life of the license, because a license keeps working after its owner's account is deleted. Ask us if you want a license and its records removed. |
| Support tickets, with their messages and files | Those on an account: while the account exists, and deleted with it. Those opened without one: until you ask us to delete them. |
| Mailing list sign-ups | Until you unsubscribe, when they're deleted. A sign-up you don't confirm is never kept. |
| Hashes of addresses that bounced or were marked as spam | Until you sign up again and confirm, so we don't email an address that doesn't want our emails |
| Documentation download records (username, product, time, IP address, download ID) | 2 years, including after your account is deleted, so a copy can still be traced |
| Order records (what was bought, the price and tax, and the payment's reference) | 7 years, including after your account is deleted, as tax and accounting law requires |
| Server logs (request details, including IP addresses) | 2 years, for security and diagnosing problems |
| Security record of sign-ins, changes and administrators' actions (who, IP address, what, when) | 2 years |
| Anonymous statistics (daily totals of visits by country, page, product, source and language) | Indefinitely, since they identify no one |
| IP addresses used to limit abuse (as one-way hashes) | For the hour or day they apply to |
We may keep some records longer where the law requires it.
Cookies and browser storage
We use only the cookies and browser storage the site needs to work, or settings you choose yourself. See Cookies and browser storage for the full list.
Do Not Track
We don't track you across other websites, so we don't change anything when your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit between your browser or our software and our servers, and between our servers and the services above. Sign-in sessions use secure cookies that page scripts can't read, and you can protect your account with two-factor authentication. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information.
Your rights
You can view and update your account details on your profile page. Wherever you live, you can also open a support ticket or write to us at Tristar Advanced Software, LLC, 6545 Market Ave. North, STE 100, Canton, OH 44721, USA, to:
- stop our mailing list emails, which you can also do yourself with the unsubscribe link in any of them;
- get a copy of your information, including in a portable, machine-readable form;
- correct information that's wrong;
- have your account and information deleted, including the sign-in records we otherwise keep;
- object to, or ask us to restrict, how we use your information.
Depending on where you live, such as the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or California, the law may give you these rights and others. We'll confirm who you are before acting on a request, respond within the time the law requires (usually a month), and won't treat you differently for making one. If you're in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you can also complain to your local data protection authority, though we'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Age requirement
You must be at least 16 to create an account. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we'll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here and update the effective date. For significant changes, we'll let account holders know by email.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your information: open a support ticket (you don't need an account), or write to Tristar Advanced Software, LLC, 6545 Market Ave. North, STE 100, Canton, OH 44721, USA.
For legal inquiries, you can also email legal@tristaradvanced.com.