Privacy Policy

This policy explains what data is processed when you visit getvalterra.com, purchase a ValTerra license, and use ValTerra for Autodesk 3ds Max (“the Software”).

Data controller: Valerii Nikulin, sole proprietor (FOP) registered in Ukraine, trading as Shall We Art. Contact: hello@getvalterra.com.

The short version

• We never see your map data. Map tiles, imagery, and elevation data are requested by the Software on your machine directly from the providers you use (Google Maps Platform under your own API key, OpenStreetMap, open elevation tile services). This traffic does not pass through our servers, and we have no access to it.
• Your API keys stay on your machine. They are stored locally and sent only to the respective provider, never to us.
• The Software sends us data in exactly three situations, and you control all three: two happen only when you press a button, and the third — the update check — can be switched off in the panel (1.3). When you activate a license key (once per machine: the key, a machine fingerprint and the computer’s name), when you press Deactivate this machine, and when the panel checks for a new version (a request that carries the plug-in’s version and nothing about you). Nothing periodic, nothing at start-up, and an activated machine runs without an internet connection (1.2, 1.3).
• No usage tracking. The Software records no events, timings, crash reports or hardware inventory, and there is no setting for any of that (1.4).
• The website sets one cookie, and only if you sign in to your account. No analytics script, no tag manager, no consent banner. The one third-party script is Paddle’s checkout on the home and pricing pages (2.4). We count installer downloads and page visits on our own side, from the request your browser already makes: without cookies or identifiers, and without keeping your IP address or user agent (2.2, 2.5, 2.6, 2.8).
• Our email provider keeps a copy of every email the site sends, for up to 60 days. That covers the emails that deliver license keys and sign-in links, and the questions and applications the site’s forms send to our mailbox, with any attached files. Zoho, which delivers them, keeps each copy for up to 60 days after the email was sent, so that we can see how an email we sent looked (section 4).
• A question you send from the site reaches us as an email. The site keeps no copy of it; to stop the form being abused, it keeps only a short-lived hash of your address. Zoho’s copy of that email is kept as described above (2.7).
• We process what it takes to sell licenses, deliver keys, hold one seat to one machine, see why an activation was refused, serve updates, answer the questions you send us, check eligibility for a free educational license, know how many copies go out, and see which pages people read and where they come from.
• If you apply for an educational license, we delete the proof of your status from our mailbox once we have decided, and within 7 days. The application form delivers it to our mailbox as an email, and the site keeps no copy. Zoho’s copy of that email, with the document attached, is not deleted with ours: it is kept for up to 60 days after the email was sent. We keep only your name, email, institution and the date we checked (1.7).

1. What we process and why

1.1. Purchases and the license register (via Paddle)

Purchases are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record. Paddle is the seller of record and an independent data controller for the checkout: it collects your name, email, billing country, VAT/tax data, and payment details under its own privacy policy (https://www.paddle.com/legal/privacy (opens in a new tab)). We never receive your payment card details. From Paddle we receive: your name, email, the order and customer identifiers, and the product and number of seats bought.

The license register. Every license key we issue — one per seat, so an order for several seats produces several rows — gets a row in our own database: a serial number (which is also written inside the key), your email and name, the tier, the dates of issue, of the update period and of expiry, the Paddle order and customer identifiers (the keys of one order share them), the label you have given the key in your account, if any (2.6), whether our mail provider accepted the email that carried the keys, and, if we end a key for a breach of the license, the date and the reason stated in the notice we send you (1.2). For an educational license (1.7), which is not bought through Paddle, the row has no Paddle identifiers and holds instead the institution and the date we checked your status. We do not store the key itself in our database: it is re-signed from these fields whenever your account shows it or sends it again. The email that delivers keys carries them in full, and Zoho, which sends it, keeps a copy of that email for up to 60 days after it was sent (section 4). Your name is used to address the key email and appears nowhere public.

When an order is paid, the site also sends a short note about it to our own mailbox: the tier, the number of seats, the Paddle transaction identifier and the domain of the buyer’s email address — not the address itself. A note about a Paddle event that needs our attention carries Paddle’s identifiers for that event and, where relevant, for the customer, the transaction, or a refund or chargeback.

• Purpose: delivering your license key, holding one seat to one machine (1.2), your account (2.6), support, legally required accounting.
• Legal basis: performance of a contract; legal obligation (accounting/tax records).
• Retention: for as long as your license exists, plus the period required by Ukrainian accounting and tax law; the notes about orders in our mailbox, the same. Zoho’s copies of the key email and of the notes, up to 60 days after each was sent (section 4).

1.2. License keys, activation, and one seat per machine

What a key is. A license key is a signed text. The Software checks the signature on your own machine; our server is not needed to verify it.

Activation: one request, when you paste the key. A paid seat is held to one machine. To do that, the Software contacts getvalterra.com exactly once per machine, at the moment you paste a key into the panel, and sends three things:

• the key from your email (it contains your email address, the tier, the number of seats it covers, the Paddle order number and the key’s serial);
• a machine fingerprint: a SHA-256 hash of two values Windows already holds — the machine GUID and the identifier of your Windows user account. The Software computes it on your machine, and it cannot be turned back into either value. Two Windows users on the same workstation give two different fingerprints;
• the machine name: the name of the computer as Windows reports it, cut to 60 characters, so that you can recognise the machine later.

Our server checks the key, records the fingerprint, the machine name and the time of activation against your license, and returns a key bound to that machine. When a seat is released, the time and the reason (for example “moved to another machine” or “refunded”) are recorded next to it. From then on the Software runs without an internet connection: no check at start-up, no periodic re-validation, no “heartbeat”.

There is one case in which even that request is not made: for a computer that is never connected, we can issue by hand a key already bound to its fingerprint — a fingerprint you send to us yourself, which we handle as support email (1.5) — and entering that key on that machine stores it locally and sends us nothing.

What we do not store from that request. Your IP address and your software identification string are written nowhere by us; the request reaches us through Cloudflare, whose edge logs are described in 2.1. No cookie or identifier is placed on your machine by this request.

When the seat is taken. If the key’s seat is already in use on another machine, the server answers with that machine’s name and activation date, and the panel asks whether you want to release it. Anyone who holds the key sees that. Because each key covers one seat, a colleague holding a different key from the same order is shown nothing about your machine; the account that bought the order (2.6) does see every key’s machines.

When activation is refused. Sometimes our server refuses an activation — for example, because the key’s seat is in use on another machine and you do not release it, the license has ended or expired, the key has reached the limit of activations within an hour (EULA, Section 3.2), the email inside the key no longer matches our register, or the request failed on our side. If the key checks out as one we issued, we record against its license the time of the most recent refusal, its reason, the time of the first refusal and how many there have been. Nothing else from the request is kept with it: not the machine fingerprint, not the machine name and not the key. A key that does not check out — damaged, altered, or not one of ours — is recorded against no license.

Daily totals. Separately, we count the activation requests our server answers, per day (UTC) and per outcome: activated, seat in use, key not recognised, a fault on our side, and the like. A daily total holds the date, the outcome and the number, and nothing else: no license, key, machine, email, IP address or user agent.

We use the record of refusals to help you when a key does not activate — when you write to us, or by writing to you ourselves about that activation, at the address the key was delivered to — and, with the daily totals, to notice when something is wrong on our side. We use them for nothing else.

Deactivation. Deactivate this machine in the panel sends the machine-bound key back to getvalterra.com, and the server frees the seat. Nothing else is sent. The Software then deletes the key from that computer.

The revoked list. A seat you released, every key of an order that was refunded, and a key we ended for a breach of the license are all published as serial numbers in one small public file on getvalterra.com. The Software reads that file when it checks for updates (1.3), keeps a copy, and drops to the Lite tier if its own serial is on it. The file names no person and no machine; the serials mean nothing to anyone but the Software that carries them.

If we end a key. When we end a key for a breach of the license, we email the address the keys were delivered to, in the same step, naming the key (its position in the order and the label you gave it, if any), the date and the reason; the other keys of the order are not affected. That is the notice the EULA (Section 10.2) provides for. For a refund there is no separate email from us: you asked for it, and Paddle confirms it to you.

• Purpose: making the license you bought work on the machine you chose, and holding one seat to one machine, which is a term of the license. The record of refusals and the daily totals: helping you when a key does not activate, and noticing faults on our side.
• Legal basis: performance of a contract. The request is made only when you ask for it — by pasting a key or pressing Deactivate — and carries only what the machine-bound key needs. The record of refusals and the daily totals: legitimate interest — being able to tell you why a key you hold did not activate, and to find and fix faults on our side; you may object (section 6).
• Retention: the machine record is kept with your license record (1.1), including after the seat is released, because the revoked list is built from it. The record of refusals: 90 days from the most recent refusal; a later successful activation does not shorten this. Daily totals: 14 months. Once their time is up, both are deleted the next time our server records an activation request, so if none comes, they stay until one does; after that they remain only in Cloudflare’s restore history, for a limited period (section 7).

1.3. Update checks and the revoked list

When you open the panel, the Software asks getvalterra.com for one small file that names the newest version, and for the revoked list described in 1.2. That is an update check and nothing more: the request identifies itself as ValTerra, with its version number, and carries no key, serial, fingerprint, account or identifier of any kind. This is the one request you can switch off: untick Check for updates when the panel opens in the panel (it is on by default) and the Software makes no request at all when the panel opens — neither for the version file nor for the revoked list — until you tick it again. The setting lives in the Software’s local preferences on your machine and is never sent to us. We keep no record of these requests — our download counter (2.5) does not count them, and neither does the visit counter (2.8) — and both files are the same for everyone who asks. Cloudflare, which serves getvalterra.com, records the connection the way 2.1 describes, including your IP address.

Copies of the Software installed from releases published before the update channel moved to getvalterra.com ask a public feed at GitHub instead; GitHub’s privacy statement applies to those requests (https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-privacy-statement (opens in a new tab)), and we receive nothing from them.

• Purpose: telling you that a newer version exists, and telling a released or ended seat that it has ended.
• Legal basis: legitimate interest (the version check); performance of a contract (the revoked list, which is how one seat per machine is kept).
• Retention: none by us. Cloudflare’s edge logs are covered by 2.1.

1.4. What the Software never sends

The three requests above — activation, deactivation, and the update check with the revoked list — are the complete list of what the Software sends to us, and each is described in full in 1.2 and 1.3. Beyond them the Software sends us nothing: no usage events, no timings, no feature counts, no crash reports or stack traces, no hardware inventory, no scene or file names, and nothing about how you work. There is no setting for any of this, because there is nothing behind it. Map data goes from your machine straight to the provider you use (section 3) and never touches us.

Earlier versions of this policy described an opt-in telemetry feature. That feature was never built, and describing it was our mistake; this section states what the Software actually does.

1.5. Support and email

If you write to support, we process your email and the contents of your messages for as long as needed to help you and keep support history, except proof of status sent for an educational license, which is deleted as section 1.7 describes. Questions sent through the form on the site (2.7) arrive in the same mailbox, which Zoho hosts for us (section 4), and are handled the same way. There is no product-news mailing and no place on the Site to opt in to one; if that ever changes, the opt-in and this section will be added first. We do not buy or sell mailing lists.

• Legal basis: legitimate interest (support).

1.6. Copies obtained through the Autodesk Design and Make Marketplace

If you obtain the Software through the Autodesk Design and Make Marketplace, Autodesk, Inc. collects your Autodesk account and download data under its own privacy statement (https://www.autodesk.com/company/legal-notices-trademarks/privacy-statement (opens in a new tab)) as an independent controller; we are not joint controllers. Autodesk may make available to us records of Marketplace downloads of the Software: name, email address, company and country as provided to Autodesk, and aggregate download statistics. We use these records only to support you, to tie a Marketplace copy to a license, and for security; we do not use them to re-identify anyone from aggregate data and do not pass them to anyone else. Autodesk-side records are stored on Autodesk’s systems in the United States (section 5).

• Legal basis: performance of a contract (support and licensing); legitimate interest (security).
• Retention: as for the license register (1.1); records we receive that match no license are deleted after 24 months.
• Your rights (section 6) apply to what we hold; for Autodesk’s own processing, contact Autodesk.

1.7. Educational licenses

Educational licenses are free (EULA, Section 3.6) and are not bought through Paddle, so we check eligibility ourselves.

How you apply. The Apply for a free license button on the pricing page opens a short application form. It opens only when you press it, stores nothing in your browser — no cookie, no local storage — and sends nothing until you press Send application. If the form does not work for you, you can write to us instead with the same details. Such an email reaches our mailbox directly rather than through the site: the site records nothing about it, its subject line is whatever you write, and the copy that Zoho keeps of emails the site sends (below) is not made. What we use, keep and delete (below) applies to it in the same way.

What we ask for. Your email address, whether you are a student or a teacher, your name, your school, college or university, and, if you wish, a short message. A student attaches a photo or scan of a current student card or an enrollment letter, showing only their name, the institution and that they are enrolled now, and confirms they are 18 or over. A teacher gives the address of their school: that is where we reply and where the license goes. A teacher whose address is not on the school’s own domain may instead attach a document showing only their name, the institution and their role there. We ask you to cover your photo, document numbers, date of birth and anything else on a document before you send it; if something we did not ask for is visible, we do not use it. The form takes at most two files, JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF or PDF, of up to 8 MB together, and checks from the contents of each file that it really is one of those types. A photo taken with a phone can also carry details you do not see, such as where and when it was taken. The form sends each file as it is and does not remove them; we do not use them, and you may remove them before you attach the photo.

What is sent, and where. Everything you enter, with the files attached and the address of the page you sent the form from, is delivered as one email to our own mailbox, through Zoho (section 4); your address is set as its reply address, so that our answer reaches you. The form itself sends nothing to that address — no confirmation and no copy. With the application, the form also sends how long it was open, so that the site can tell a person from a script; that number is checked on arrival and not kept.

What the site keeps. Not your application and not your files: the site passes them on to our mailbox and keeps no copy of them — not in our database, not in file storage and not in logs. To stop the form being used to flood our mailbox, the site records the time of each application it accepts and a SHA-256 hash of the address it came from — not the address itself — and limits how many applications can come from one address, and to the site as a whole, in a given period. Each record is used for 24 hours, and records older than that are deleted the next time anyone sends a question or an application, as for questions (2.7).

At Zoho. Zoho, which carries that email, keeps a copy of the whole of it — everything you entered and the files you attached — for up to 60 days after it was sent, as it does for every email the site sends (section 4). Deleting the email from our mailbox does not delete that copy. Zoho’s log of the email also shows its subject line, which reads “ValTerra education application”, a random reference number and whether you applied as a student or a teacher; it contains no name and no institution.

What we keep, and what we delete. We use any document you send only to decide whether you qualify. As soon as we have decided — whether we issue a license or not, and in any case within 7 days — we delete the email that carried it from our mailbox, including from its deleted-items folder; the rest of the conversation stays as support email (1.5). Zoho’s copy, described above, is not deleted with it and can stay until its 60 days are up. What we keep is the license register row for the key we issue (1.1): your name and email, the institution, the date we checked your status, the kind of license and its dates. Apart from Zoho’s copy while it lasts, no copy of the document is kept, and we do not record its number.

Renewal. An educational license runs for the term stated in the email that delivers it. To renew it, you show your status again in the same way, and the same deletion applies.

• Purpose: deciding whether you qualify for an educational license, issuing it and renewing it; keeping the application form from being used to flood our mailbox.
• Legal basis: steps taken at your request before entering into the license, and performance of it; for the time and the hash, legitimate interest in protecting our mailbox and the site from abuse.
• Retention: the document — deleted from our mailbox as described above, within 7 days; Zoho’s copy of the email that carried it, up to 60 days after it was sent (section 4); the time and the hash, used for 24 hours and deleted the next time anyone sends a question or an application after that, and then held only in Cloudflare’s restore history of our database, for a limited period (section 7); the register row — as for the license register (1.1).

2. The website (getvalterra.com)

getvalterra.com is a set of pre-built static HTML pages. A visitor who only reads them is not recognised between visits: no cookie is set, and what is measured — how often each page is opened, where the visit came from and from which country — is kept on our side as daily totals that do not tell one visitor from another (2.8). Six things on the site are not plain files: five are handled by small functions running on our host’s edge — the installer download and the update files (2.5 and 1.3), your account (2.6), the two license requests the Software makes (1.2), the question form (2.7) and the educational license application form (1.7) — and the sixth, the checkout on the pricing page, is Paddle’s (2.4). Most pages also pass, on their way to you, through one more small function on the same edge: it counts the visit (2.8), answers our short links, and does not change the page. The account is the only one of these that recognises your browser between visits, and only after you sign in.

2.1. Hosting and server logs

The site is served from Cloudflare Pages (Cloudflare, Inc., acting as our hosting processor, https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ (opens in a new tab)). Like any web host, Cloudflare records standard connection data — IP address, timestamp, requested URL, user agent, and connection metadata — in order to deliver the pages and to protect the site from attacks and abuse. We do not export those logs, do not enrich them, do not build profiles from them, and do not use them for advertising.

• Purpose: serving the site, security, abuse prevention.
• Legal basis: legitimate interest.
• Retention: as set by Cloudflare for its own edge logs. We do not keep a copy of those logs. Nothing we record ourselves — including the download count in 2.5, the records of the question form in 2.7 and of the application form in 1.7, and the visit counts in 2.8 — contains an IP address or a user agent.

2.2. Cookies, analytics, and browser storage

The site sets one cookie, and only when you sign in to your account: __Host-vt_session, described in 2.6. It exists to keep you signed in and for nothing else. There is no analytics script, no tag manager, no advertising or tracking pixel, no A/B testing, no session recording, and no fingerprinting. The one third-party script on the site is Paddle’s checkout on the home and pricing pages, described in 2.4. Opening a page is counted (2.8), but nothing you do within a page — where you scroll, how long you stay — is measured, apart from the one number described next, and nothing non-essential is placed on your device, so there is no cookie banner to click. When you send a question (2.7) or an educational license application (1.7) through a form on the site, it carries one measurement — how long the form was open — so that the site can tell a person from a script; that number is checked on arrival and not kept. Three things are counted, all on our side rather than in your browser: how many times the installer file is downloaded (2.5), how many times each page is opened, where the visit came from and from which country (2.8), and how many questions and applications the forms receive, from each address and in all, so that they cannot be used to flood our mailbox (2.7, 1.7). Neither the download count nor the visit count uses a cookie, local storage or a script in your browser.

One thing is written to your device, and we would rather name it than let you find it: if you use the light/dark switch in the header, the site saves your choice in your browser’s local storage under the key vt-theme, with the value light or dark. That is the whole contents. It is read once when a page opens so the site does not flash the wrong theme at you, it never leaves your browser, and it identifies nothing about you. If your browser blocks local storage, the switch still works — the choice just will not survive a reload. You can clear it with the rest of your site data at any time.

Your browser also caches static files (HTML, CSS, fonts, images) using ordinary HTTP cache headers so that pages load faster on the next visit. That cache lives on your device, contains no personal data, and can be cleared in your browser at any time.

2.3. The Founders list (closed)

Before checkout opened, the pricing page carried one form: the Founders list. It asked for an email address, which license the person was interested in, how many seats, and a tick confirming they agreed to be written to. The form has been taken down, and no new entries are accepted. This section describes the entries it collected while it ran.

What we store. The email address, the license and seat count picked, the Founders price per seat recorded for that entry, the two-letter country code Cloudflare derived from the connection, and the date and time. We do not store an IP address — the table has no column for it. Entries live in our own database on Cloudflare; no third-party form or newsletter service was involved, and no address has been handed to anyone.

What we use it for. One email, sent after checkout opened, saying that it is open and where to buy at the Founders price. Nothing else: no follow-up, no reminder, no other mailing. We do not send unrelated marketing and we do not pass the address on.

• Legal basis: consent, given by the tick on the form.
• Retention: up to 12 months from the day checkout opened (September 15, 2026), or until you ask to be removed — whichever comes first. After that the entry is deleted.
• How to be removed: use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the Founders email — one click, and the entry is deleted, not marked — or write to hello@getvalterra.com. (Emails that deliver a key or a sign-in link, or tell you that a key was ended, carry no unsubscribe link: they are not a mailing, and there is nothing to leave.) We action a request within 30 days and keep no shadow copy of the entry, apart from Cloudflare’s restore history of our database, which still holds a deleted entry for a limited period and which we never use to bring one back (section 7).

You type something about yourself on this site in three places: the sign-in box of your account (2.6), which asks for the email you used at checkout, the question form (2.7), and the educational license application form on the pricing page (1.7). Checkout itself runs in Paddle’s frame (2.4) and is covered by 1.1.

The contact page shows an email address; writing to it is an ordinary email, covered by “Support and email” (1.5).

2.4. Third-party code: Paddle’s checkout, and nothing else

No fonts, videos, maps, chat widgets, or social buttons are loaded from other domains. One exception exists, and it is the checkout. The home page and the pricing page — the two pages with Buy buttons — load Paddle’s checkout script from cdn.paddle.com, and pressing a Buy button opens Paddle’s checkout in a frame served from buy.paddle.com, on top of the page. What Paddle collects there — your name, email, billing country and payment details — it collects as the seller of record, under its own privacy policy (1.1), and it does not reach us. Paddle’s script and frame may also set their own cookies, which Paddle’s policy describes; we set none on those pages. The site’s Content-Security-Policy names Paddle’s domains and no others, so no further third-party script can be introduced by accident.

2.5. Downloading the installer

The Software is also listed on the Autodesk Design and Make Marketplace; a download there is counted by Autodesk, not by us (1.6), and does not write a row in our table.

The installer is served from getvalterra.com itself, from our own file storage. There is no gate in front of it: no account, no email address and no license key is asked for before you download.

We count downloads. Each completed download writes one row to our database, and the row holds four things: the hour it happened, the version and file name requested, a two-letter country code, and a flag saying whether the request was resuming an interrupted download. We do not store your IP address or your user agent — the table has no column for either — and no cookie, token or identifier is set, read, or attached to the request. A request that only asks how large the file is (an HTTP HEAD, which download managers send first) is not recorded at all.

About the country code. It is derived by Cloudflare from the network address your connection comes from, and is passed to us already reduced to two letters; we never see or keep the address itself. Where the country cannot be determined, or where you connect through an anonymising network, the code stored is XX. The time is recorded to the hour, not to the second, so a row cannot be lined up against any other log.

What it is for. Knowing how many people take each release, roughly from where, and whether a release is being downloaded twice because it failed the first time. It is not used to recognise you and cannot be: nothing in the row is unique to you or to your machine, and two people in the same country in the same hour produce two rows that are identical.

• Purpose: knowing how many copies of each release go out, and from which countries.
• Legal basis: legitimate interest in running and supporting our own product.
• Retention: 24 months, after which the rows are deleted.

2.6. Your account

Buying a license creates an account for the email address used at checkout; an educational license (1.7) gives you one for the address we sent its key to. There is no password: you sign in by asking for a one-time link, which we email to that address. The account lists your license keys, one per seat, lets you give each key a label, can send a key to you again, and lets you sign out — on this browser or everywhere. It holds no settings, no profile and no usage history.

What we store. Your email address and name (from the purchase, 1.1), the date the account was created and the date you last signed in. For each sign-in link we store a one-way hash of the link, the address it was for, and when it was created, used and expires; that record expires after 24 hours, and expired records are deleted the next time anyone asks for a link. For each signed-in session we store a one-way hash of the cookie value, when the session was created, when it was last used and when it expires. We do not store your IP address or your browser identification string for any of this — the tables have no columns for them.

Key labels. You can give each key a label of your choosing so that you can tell keys apart — a workstation or a project, for example: “Workstation 3”, “Render node”, “Project Riverside”. The label is stored with that key’s row in the license register (1.1) and is shown in your account and, when you ask the account to email a key to you again, as that key’s caption in the email; it is not written into the key itself, and it is used for nothing else. We do not ask for anyone’s name here, and a label need not contain one. If you nevertheless put a person’s name or other personal data in a label, you are the one placing it with us, and it is for you to make sure you may; we keep it as you typed it, for as long as you keep it there. You can change or clear a label at any time, and closing the account deletes every label you gave.

The sign-in box. Asking for a link writes the same short-lived record whether or not the address is on file, so that the box cannot be used to find out who has bought a license. The email itself goes only to addresses that hold a license, through Zoho (section 4).

The cookie. After you confirm a link, your browser receives one cookie, __Host-vt_session. It holds a random value that matches the session record above and nothing else — no email, no name. It travels only over HTTPS, only to getvalterra.com, is not readable by scripts, and measures nothing. It stops working 90 days after you last used the account, and in any case 180 days after it was set; signing out deletes it and the session record. It is strictly necessary to provide the account you asked for, which is why there is no consent banner for it.

Closing the account. There is no delete button. Write to hello@getvalterra.com from the address on the account and we delete the account, its sessions and its sign-in records (Cloudflare’s restore history of our database still holds them for a limited period, section 7, and Zoho keeps its copies of the sign-in emails for up to 60 days after each was sent, section 4). The license register (1.1) stays, because it is the accounting record of a sale, and a paid license is not ended by closing the account: the keys you were sent, and any machine already activated with them, keep working. The account is only where copies of the keys, and the labels you gave them, are kept, so keep the email that delivered them.

• Purpose: showing you your keys, telling them apart by label, sending them again, keeping you signed in.
• Legal basis: performance of a contract.
• Retention: sign-in records, 24 hours (expired records are purged with the next sign-in request); sessions, until they expire or you sign out; the account itself, until you ask us to close it.

2.7. Questions sent from the site

Pages of this site carry an Ask a question button in the corner. It opens a short form only when you press it, stores nothing in your browser — no cookie, no local storage — and sends nothing until you press Send question.

What is sent, and where. The email address you type, your question and the address of the page you were on are delivered as one email to our own mailbox, through Zoho (section 4), so that we can read the question and reply. Your address appears in that email and is set as its reply address, so that our answer reaches you. The form itself sends nothing to that address — no confirmation and no copy — and entering it does not put you on any list. Both fields are required: without an address we could not answer. With the question, the form also sends how long it was open, so that the site can tell a person from a script; that number is checked on arrival and not kept.

What the site keeps. Not the question and not your address. To stop the form being used to flood our mailbox, the site records the time of each question it accepts and a SHA-256 hash of the address it came from — not the address itself — and limits how many questions can come from one address, and to the site as a whole, in a given period. Each record is used for 24 hours, and records older than that are deleted the next time anyone sends a question or an educational license application (1.7): the two forms share these records. No IP address or browser identification string is stored for this; the request reaches us through Cloudflare, whose edge logs are described in 2.1.

At Zoho. Zoho, which carries that email, keeps a copy of the whole of it — your address, your question and the page you were on — for up to 60 days after it was sent, as it does for every email the site sends (section 4). Deleting the email from our mailbox does not delete that copy. The subject line, which Zoho’s log of the email also shows, does not contain your question: it reads “ValTerra question” followed by a random reference number.

In our mailbox the email is support correspondence, kept and handled as described in 1.5.

• Purpose: answering the question you sent; keeping the form from being used to flood our mailbox.
• Legal basis: legitimate interest — answering a question you chose to send us, and protecting our mailbox and the site from abuse; where your question is about buying a license, steps taken at your request before entering into a contract.
• Retention: the time and the hash, used for 24 hours and deleted the next time anyone sends a question or an application after that, and then held only in Cloudflare’s restore history of our database, for a limited period (section 7); the email in our mailbox, as for support email (1.5); Zoho’s copy of the email, up to 60 days after it was sent (section 4).

2.8. Counting visits

When you open a page of this site, the small function it passes through on its way to you (section 2) adds one to a counter in our database. Nothing runs in your browser for this and nothing is stored on your device: the counter is worked out on our side from the request your browser already sends to fetch the page, and it does not change the page you receive.

What a counter holds. A counter is a number: how many times, on one day (the UTC date, not the hour or minute), a page was opened with the same combination of:

• the page’s address, without anything after a question mark;
• where the visit came from, if your browser said so: only the host name of the referring site (for example youtube.com, never the full address of the page you came from), or the name an app gives itself, for a link opened from an app on Android; if you came from another page of this site, only a flag saying so;
• the two-letter country code described in 2.5;
• a yes/no flag saying whether the request came from an automated program we recognise, such as a search-engine crawler or a link-preview service. That flag is worked out from the user agent your browser sends, at the moment of the request; the user agent itself is not kept.

Campaign labels in the address (utm_source and the like) are not read by the counter, and neither is anything else after the question mark.

Some referring hosts would say where a person works or lives rather than which channel brought them, so for those no host is recorded for the visit:

• a network address instead of a name, or a name with a network address written into it;
• a name with an ending we treat as a private network, such as .local, .lan, .corp or .internal;
• a name that a dynamic-DNS or similar service we recognise gives to a home router or home server, such as one ending in duckdns.org or myfritz.net;
• a name that begins the way a company’s own mail, intranet or internal tools often do, such as mail., webmail., intranet., vpn., jira. or wiki., followed by the company’s own domain.

Where the referring host is a company’s own workspace on a shared online service we recognise, such as yourcompany.sharepoint.com or yourcompany.atlassian.net, only the name of the service (sharepoint.com, atlassian.net) is recorded, never the name of the workspace. A large webmail service that many people share, such as mail.google.com or outlook.office.com, is recorded as it is: it names the service and nobody’s workplace, and a link opened from an email is a channel we want to see. We tell all of these apart by fixed lists of names and patterns, so a host that matches none of them is recorded as it is. On a day when visits arrive from an unusually large number of different sites, the sites beyond that number are counted together under the label other instead of their own names; past a similar limit, further addresses of a large site we recognise, such as m.youtube.com, are counted together under that site’s main name, youtube.com.

Our short links. The short addresses we print on our social media profiles and under our videos, such as getvalterra.com/yt, are answered by the same function: it sends you on to the home page and adds nothing to the address. Each opening of a short link adds one to a counter of the same kind, which holds that short link instead of a page address. The home page you land on is then counted as a visit of its own.

What a counter does not hold. No IP address, no user agent, no cookie value, no identifier and no fingerprint of your browser or device; the counter neither sets nor reads a cookie, even if you are signed in to your account. A counter keeps only a total: it says how many openings shared the same values on the same day, so we cannot tell whether two of them came from one person or from two. It holds nothing meant to single you out, and we do not combine these counts with any other record we hold, such as purchases, accounts, downloads or questions, or try to work out whose visit a count includes. The request itself reaches us through Cloudflare, whose edge logs are described in 2.1.

Not counted at all:

• the pages of your account (2.6), the page shown after a purchase, and the confirmation page shown after a form;
• the installer download, which is counted separately (2.5), and the requests the Software makes (1.2, 1.3), of which only activation requests are counted, separately, as 1.2 describes;
• images, videos and other files, and any address that is not a page of this site;
• a page that your browser only loads in advance, before you choose to open it;
• any page or short link opened by a browser that sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal;
• during a sudden burst of traffic, the requests beyond a per-minute limit, so that a burst of automated requests takes less of the database capacity that license activation relies on.

What it is for. Knowing which pages people read, and which channels — our videos and social media profiles, forums, catalogues and search engines — bring visitors to the site.

Your rights. A count does not record who it came from, so we are not in a position to tell which counts include your visits, and cannot show or delete them as yours (GDPR Article 11). If you can give us details that pick one out — the day, the page, the site you came from and your country — write to us (section 6) and we will act on them. To stop your visits being counted, switch on Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track in your browser: from then on, the pages you open are not counted. Writing to us cannot do the same, because nothing in a visit tells us it is yours.

• Purpose: understanding how people find the site and which pages they read.
• Legal basis: legitimate interest in running and promoting our own product.
• Retention: 14 months. Counters older than that are deleted automatically, up to 200 at a time, the next time a visit is counted and on the visits after it. Each running copy of the function that counts visits deletes only a limited number of such batches in a day (UTC), so that deleting old counts takes less of the database capacity that license activation relies on. On an ordinary day that keeps up with the counters as they pass 14 months. But when no visit is counted for a while, nothing is deleted until the next one is; and a day that produced an unusually large number of counters (visits from very many different sites, for example) can take days, or in an extreme case weeks, to be cleared once it is older than 14 months. Separately, Cloudflare keeps a restore history of our whole database (section 7), which holds the counters as they were at any minute of the period it covers; we never use it to look at the counts in any finer detail than the day.

3. What we never process

• Map tiles, imagery, elevation data, or anything you import or render. This traffic goes directly from your machine to the provider (Google, OpenStreetMap, elevation tile hosts). We are not in that path and have no access to it.
• Your third-party API keys (kept locally on your machine only).
• Your Autodesk 3ds Max scenes, renders, captures, or camera data.
• Payment card details (handled by Paddle).
• How you use the Software: which features, how often, for how long (1.4).

4. Sharing

We share personal data only with the processors and independent controllers named above — Paddle; Autodesk, Inc., an independent controller for Marketplace downloads (1.6); Cloudflare, which hosts the site, our database and the license records; Zoho Corporation, which hosts our mailbox and, through its ZeptoMail service, delivers every email the site sends: the one Founders email, the license keys, the sign-in links, the notice if we end a key, the notes about orders to our own mailbox (1.1), and the questions and educational license applications, with their attached files, sent from the site’s forms to our own mailbox (2.7, 1.7); and GitHub, for the update feed that copies installed before the channel moved still read — and if required by law.

What Zoho keeps of the emails the site sends. For each of those emails Zoho keeps a log entry — who it was from and to, its subject line and whether it was delivered — and a copy of the whole email: its text, any license key or sign-in link in it, and any attached files. It keeps both for up to 60 days after the email was sent. The copy is kept because we have switched that on, so that we can see exactly how an email we sent looked and whether it arrived; we use it for nothing else. Deleting an email from our own mailbox does not delete Zoho’s copy of it. An email you write to our mailbox yourself does not pass through this service, and Zoho keeps no such copy of it; it is support email (1.5). There is no form provider and no newsletter provider on this list because we use neither: the Founders list and the license register are stored on Cloudflare with the rest of the site, and Zoho receives an address only to deliver a message that address asked for, a purchase paid for, or a notice about a license it holds, to carry a question or an application you sent us from the site, or because you wrote to our mailbox. If that ever changes, the provider will be named here before it can receive anything. We do not sell personal data and do not use it for advertising. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the California Consumer Privacy Act.

5. International transfers

We are located in Ukraine. Our processors are located in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States (Paddle: United Kingdom and United States; GitHub: United States; Cloudflare: United States; Autodesk: United States; Zoho: European Union, on its European node). Ukraine is not covered by an EU adequacy decision. Where GDPR or UK GDPR applies, transfers rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses contained in our processors’ data processing agreements; where you send us data directly so that we can enter into or perform a contract with you, Article 49(1)(b) GDPR applies.

6. Your rights

Depending on your jurisdiction (including GDPR and UK GDPR), you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal data, restrict or object to processing, and withdraw consent. Write to hello@getvalterra.com; we respond within one month. You may also lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

Your right to object. Where this policy names legitimate interest as the legal basis (1.2 for the record of refused activations and the daily totals, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 2.1, 2.5, 2.7, 2.8), you may object to that processing at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation, by writing to hello@getvalterra.com; for the visit count (2.8), the objection takes effect through a setting in your browser, described next.

That setting is Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track: if your browser sends either signal, the pages you open are not counted (2.8), and you do not need to write to us. A letter alone cannot stop the count, because nothing in a visit tells us it is yours.

If you object to the record of refused activations or to the daily totals (1.2), we delete what the record holds for your license and keep only a note, with its date, that you objected; from then on no refusal is recorded for that license, and its activation requests are left out of the daily totals. The note is kept for as long as the license record (1.1).

Note on license records: a license record is also the accounting record of a sale, so the part of it that tax law requires us to keep is kept for the statutory period. Everything else — the account, sessions, machine records and the record of refused activations — is deleted on request (section 7 describes the restore history in which a deleted record stays for a limited period). Copies of the emails the site sent you, or sent us on your behalf from its forms, stay with Zoho for up to 60 days after each was sent (section 4). Once the license record is gone, the key can no longer be activated on a new machine and your account no longer shows it; a machine already activated keeps working, because it verifies the key on its own. We will tell you this and confirm with you before deleting anything tied to a license that is still in use.

7. Security

The strongest security property here is architectural rather than procedural: we hold little, because the Software asks us for little. A license key is verified on your own machine; our server is asked once, at activation, and once more if you deactivate. There is no live record of who is running what, and nothing periodic to intercept.

What we hold is the license register (1.1), the machine records and the record of refused activations (1.2), the account records (2.6), the Founders list (2.3), the short-lived records of the question form and the application form (2.7, 1.7), and the daily activation totals, download counts and visit counts (1.2, 2.5, 2.8), which hold no identifier. Zoho, which sends the site’s emails, also holds a copy of each of them for up to 60 days after it was sent (section 4). Keys are not stored in our database: they are re-signed from the register when needed. Sign-in links and session cookies are stored there only as one-way hashes, so a copy of the database gives no one a sign-in. None of our tables holds an IP address or a browser identification string. The emails that carry keys and sign-in links are another matter: Zoho’s copy of each holds them in full. A sign-in link works once and only within 15 minutes of being requested, so a copy of it is of no use after that; a key in a copy is the key you hold, and works for as long as your license does.

Cloudflare’s restore history. Cloudflare, which hosts our database (2.1), keeps a restore history of the whole of it, from which the database can be put back as it was at any minute of the past 7 days (Cloudflare’s limit for the plan we use; 30 days on its paid plan). That history is always on, and it covers every table in the database. So a record we delete there — a Founders entry (2.3), an account with its sessions and sign-in records (2.6), the records of the question and application forms (2.7, 1.7), old visit counts (2.8), or anything else this policy says we delete — can stay in that history for up to 7 days after it was deleted. We use the history only to recover the database after a failure. We never use it to bring back a record that was deleted at someone’s request or because its time under this policy was up, and never to look at any record in more detail than this policy describes. If recovering from a failure means putting the database back to a moment before such a deletion, we delete that record again.

The key that signs licenses lives as a secret in our hosting environment and is used only on the production site; access to it, to the database and to the owner’s panel is restricted to us and authenticated. Transport is HTTPS everywhere, and the website is served over HTTPS only. No method is 100% secure, but the smallest attack surface is the data that was never collected.

8. Children

The Software and site are not directed at individuals under 18, and we do not knowingly process their data. Where you obtained the Software through the Autodesk Marketplace, the EULA (Section 14.4) requires you to be at least 18. Educational licenses are for students aged 18 or over (EULA, Section 3.6); if proof of status shows that an applicant is younger, we delete it from our mailbox and issue no license. Where it reached us through the site’s form, Zoho’s copy of that email is kept as section 1.7 describes.

9. Changes

We will post changes here with a new “Last updated” date; material changes affecting the Software’s data behavior will also be noted in release notes.

Contact: hello@getvalterra.com — Valerii Nikulin, sole proprietor (FOP) registered in Ukraine, trading as Shall We Art.