MacGaze Privacy Policy
Last updated: 28 August 2026
The short version
Your face never leaves your Mac. Neither does your password. We never receive either one, and we could not hand them over if we were asked to, because we never have them.
MacGaze never sends your camera frames, faceprint or password over the internet. It connects for three things only: when you activate or recover a licence, when it checks for a signed software update, and once when your free trial first starts. Licence requests contain your licence key and a name for your computer. Update checks contain the ordinary technical information needed to request the update feed. The trial check sends a one-way fingerprint of your Mac and nothing else, described in section 3. Unlocking itself works offline, always.
0. The trial check
The 14-day free trial has to be remembered somewhere you cannot simply delete, or it would not be a trial: uninstalling the app, or making a second user account on the same Mac, would hand out another fourteen days indefinitely. When your trial first starts, MacGaze asks our server to record the date.
What is sent is a one-way fingerprint of your Mac's hardware identifier: it is put through a cryptographic hash, so what arrives is 64 characters of unreadable text that cannot be turned back into a serial number, a name, or anything else about you or your machine. We do not receive your IP-linked identity, your name, your email, or any information about how you use your Mac.
This happens once. The answer is stored on your Mac afterwards, so the app does not contact the server again on later launches. If the server cannot be reached, MacGaze grants a short provisional trial and tries again later, so a network problem or an outage never stops you using your Mac.
Alongside the fingerprint, we keep a running country and device-type total, for example, "40 trials started from Australia" or "12 from a Mac." The country comes from your network's approximate location, not a precise one, and the device type is a coarse category such as "Mac" or "iPhone," read from information your browser or the app already sends with any web request. Neither is ever linked to your fingerprint, your licence, or any other record: both exist only as running counts, the same shape as the download counter below, and neither can be traced back to an individual person or Mac.
Downloading MacGaze from our site is counted the same way: a running total of downloads, by day, by country, and by device type, with nothing that identifies who downloaded it.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The operator of macgaze.com is the data controller for the limited data described below. Contact: [email protected].
2. What stays on your device and never reaches us
The following is stored only on your Mac and is never transmitted anywhere:
| Data | Where it is stored | How it is protected |
|---|---|---|
| Your faceprints, which are numeric measurements describing your face | Inside MacGaze’s own folder in your Library | Encrypted with AES-GCM; key held in your macOS Keychain |
| Your macOS login password | your macOS Keychain | Encrypted before storage; key held in your Keychain |
| Your settings and trial dates | macOS preferences and Keychain | Standard macOS protection |
Camera images are never written to disk and never leave your device. Frames are held in memory only long enough to compute a faceprint, then discarded.
Faceprints are not photographs. They are lists of numbers. They cannot be turned back into a picture of your face.
Biometric data: a specific note
Your faceprint is biometric data, which is sensitive information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and special category data under the GDPR (Article 9). Because it is created and stored solely on your own device under your own control, and never transmitted to us, we do not collect, process or hold your biometric data at any point. Your consent to create it is given by choosing to enrol your face, and you can destroy it at any time (see section 6).
3. What we do receive
| Data | Why | Who handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Your name and email address | To sell you a licence and send you your key | Our payment provider, as merchant of record |
| Payment details | To take payment | Our payment provider only. We never see your card details |
| Your licence key, and a name for your computer | To activate your licence and enforce how many Macs it covers | Our payment provider |
| Software update request data, such as your app version and standard connection metadata | To tell you when a signed MacGaze update is available | Our website host and update service |
| Support emails you send us | To answer them | Our email provider |
Our payment provider is the merchant of record, meaning they are the legal seller and they handle payment data under their own privacy policy. We receive only the order and licence information needed to support you.
The MacGaze app does not use analytics or advertising identifiers. The MacGaze website and Lemon Squeezy storefront use Google Analytics 4 for limited measurement, including page views, traffic sources, product views, checkout starts and completed purchases. Google Analytics may use cookies or similar identifiers and may process device, browser and approximate region information. We do not intentionally send camera frames, faceprints, passwords or licence keys to Google Analytics.
The hosted checkout is operated by Lemon Squeezy, which may also use Google Analytics in accordance with the Measurement ID configured for our store. Lemon Squeezy remains the payment processor and merchant of record for checkout data. See the Lemon Squeezy Privacy Policy and Google Privacy Policy for their handling of data.
4. Legal basis for processing (GDPR)
Where the GDPR applies to you:
- Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) applies to your name, email, licence key and device name; we cannot sell or support a licence without them.
- Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) applies to licence activation records, to prevent one licence being used on unlimited machines.
- Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) applies to transaction records we are required to retain (see section 5).
We do not rely on consent for the licence and support processing described above. Where consent is required for analytics or cookies, we will request it through the relevant website or checkout experience. We do not process analytics data for marketing.
5. How long we keep things
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Order and transaction records | 7 years. Australian tax law requires this and we cannot delete them earlier |
| Your licence key and activation records | Until you ask us to delete them, or 2 years after your last activation, whichever is sooner |
| Support emails | 2 years from the last message in the thread |
| Website analytics events | Handled by Google Analytics and retained according to the property settings and Google’s policies; we do not use them to identify your face or password |
| Website server logs | Not retained by us |
| Your faceprint and password | We never have these. They stay on your Mac until you delete them |
6. Deleting your data
Deleting your face and password (immediate, entirely in your control)
Choose "Forget my face" from the MacGaze menu bar icon. This deletes your faceprints and your stored password from your Mac immediately. Use this command before deleting the app if you want those items removed. Deleting the app alone may leave Keychain and trial records on your Mac.
Because we never had this data, there is nothing for us to delete and nothing to request from us.
Asking us to delete what we do hold
Email [email protected]. We will delete your name, email, licence key and activation records within 30 days and confirm when it is done.
We cannot delete transaction records within the 7-year window required by Australian tax law. We will tell you exactly what we retained and why.
Deleting your licence record means we can no longer reissue your key if you lose it, and your licence may stop being reactivatable on new machines. We will warn you before proceeding.
7. Your other rights
Where the GDPR, the UK GDPR, or the Australian Privacy Principles apply, you may ask us to:
- access the data we hold about you, and receive a copy;
- correct anything inaccurate;
- delete it (subject to section 6);
- restrict or object to our processing of it;
- port it to you in a machine-readable format.
Email [email protected]. We respond within 30 days. There is no charge.
If you are in the EU or UK and are unhappy with our response, you may complain to your local data protection authority. In Australia, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
8. International transfers
Our payment provider processes data outside Australia, including in the United States and the EU, under their own safeguards and standard contractual clauses. Because your face and password never leave your Mac, no biometric data is ever transferred anywhere.
9. Children
MacGaze is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, email us and we will delete it.
10. Data breaches
If a breach of the data we hold occurs and it is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify affected people and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required by the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, and supervisory authorities within 72 hours where the GDPR applies.
Because your faceprint and password are never in our possession, they cannot be exposed by a breach of ours.
11. Changes
We will post changes here and update the date above. If a change materially affects how we handle your data, we will say so prominently on macgaze.com.