Privacy & Data Retention Policy
This policy sets out how we (Ben Software Ltd) use and protect any information that you give us when you use this website or purchase our software products.
We are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.
We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page periodically to ensure that you are happy with any changes.
What we collect when you purchase our software
We collect and retain the following information when you purchase one of our software products from our own online store:
- Name
- Email address
- Postal address
This allows us to keep a record of our customers, in order to verify your details if you ever need to contact us about the software you purchased (for example to obtain a lost license code).
We do not collect or retain any financial information, such as bank account or credit card details.
Conversely, when purchasing any of our software products from Apple's App Store, we do not receive any identifying customer information.
We do not sell or share customer purchase data with third parties for marketing purposes.
Data retention duration
We retain customer purchase records (name, email address and postal address) for as long as is necessary to support our ongoing relationship with you as a customer. In practice this means we may keep these records indefinitely, as they allow us to assist you with queries about software you have previously purchased — for example, verifying your purchase history when you contact our support team, or determining your eligibility for upgrade pricing on newer versions of our products.
You may ask us at any time to remove your personal data from our records, and we will be happy to comply with such a request (see "Your rights under UK GDPR" below). We periodically review the records we hold and remove information that is no longer needed for the purpose described above.
Security
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the personal information that we collect.
How we use cookies
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used and how users navigate through our website. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.
Cookies help us improve our website by allowing us to monitor which pages viewers find useful and which they do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any personal information about you.
You can choose to prevent this web site from storing cookies by turning this feature off in your web browser.
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide whilst visiting such sites, and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
Access to media on your computer
All video and audio footage that is captured by our various software products is saved locally on your Mac (unless you configure otherwise). Unless you allow it, we have no access whatsoever to these media files, nor to any live media streams generated by any of our software products.
AI helpdesk chatbot
We provide an AI-powered helpdesk chatbot on certain pages of our website (for example our contact and SecuritySpy support pages) so that visitors can ask questions about our products and receive automated answers.
Messages you submit via the chatbot are retained by us for a maximum of 90 days, for the sole purpose of monitoring and improving the quality of the bot's responses. After this period they are automatically deleted from our records.
In order to generate a reply to your question, the content of your message is transmitted to a third-party large language model (LLM) provider, which processes the query and returns a response. The specific provider we use for this may change over time as the technology evolves, and the geographic location of processing may vary accordingly. We have no direct control over how such third-party providers may handle data sent to them; however, we endeavour to use providers — and commercial service tiers — whose terms state that submitted data is not retained by them and is not used to train their models.
The infrastructure used by our LLM provider to process these messages may be located in various countries outside the United Kingdom, including the United States. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK in this way, we rely on the safeguards provided by Standard Contractual Clauses (or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum) as required by UK GDPR.
The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in providing an efficient automated customer support service. We recommend that you avoid including personal, sensitive or confidential information in messages sent to the chatbot.
Contacting you
We will only send you emails if you have signed up for the SecuritySpy mailing list. This is an opt-in list; you are not automatically added to it when you use this web site or purchase our products.
Your rights under UK GDPR
Ben Software Ltd is the data controller for any personal information collected through this website and our software products, and we comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Under UK GDPR you have the following rights in respect of the personal data we hold about you:
- The right to be informed about how your data is used (this policy).
- The right of access to a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- The right to rectification of inaccurate or incomplete data.
- The right to erasure (the "right to be forgotten").
- The right to restrict processing of your data.
- The right to data portability.
- The right to object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests.
To exercise any of these rights, please use the contact details in the section below. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), if you believe we have not handled your data in accordance with the law.
Our contact information
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal information, please contact us.
You have a right to ask us to remove any of your personal details from our records, and we will be happy to comply with this request if you ask us to.
You can email us at support@bensoftware.com.