Privacy
Privacy policy
Your video files never leave your machine. We value protecting your privacy
Last updated: 05/10/26
01
Your files stay local
FileVerdict reads and writes video files on your own computer. Files, filenames and stream contents are never uploaded. There is no cloud processing, no telemetry on what you scan, and no account to sign in to.
The application and this website are separate. Everything above describes the app, which sends no analytics of any kind. This website does count page views, using Plausible, which is cookieless and collects no personal data. Details in section 05.
02
What leaves your machine
Five things, and only these.
Metadata lookups. When Organise matches a filename, a search term is looked up on OMDb, or on TMDB if you have added your own key. That is a title and sometimes a year, never the file. OMDb lookups go through our own server, which asks OMDb for you, so that our OMDb key is not inside the app. The lookup carries the search term and a short-lived lookup pass, and nothing else: not your licence key, your email or your device. The pass is handed to the app when it checks its licence, and nothing we store can link it back to a licence. We do not log lookups, and OMDb does not see your IP address. We keep a rough daily count of lookups per pass, deleted after a week, to stop one licence using up the lookups everyone shares, and OMDb's answer is cached for a day with nothing about who asked. TMDB lookups go straight from your computer to TMDB. If poster artwork is switched on, the matching poster image is then fetched from TMDB's or IMDb's image servers.
Licence checks. When you activate, the app sends your licence key, a device ID, your computer's name and its operating system to our own licence server. The device ID is a one-way hash of your machine's ID, never the ID itself. After that, the app checks in at most once a day, when it starts or while it is open, sending the key, the device ID and the app version, to confirm the licence is still valid and within its device limit. Deactivating a device sends the key and device ID once more. No licensing company sees your key. When a device first activates, our licence server also adds one to a monthly count for the country the connection comes from. Only that count is kept, not linked to your key, device or email, so we can see where FileVerdict is used.
Subtitle search. When the app offers subtitle search and you use it, a title query goes to OpenSubtitles, followed by a one-time download link. This only happens when you actively search. We never send a hash of your video file. That is a far stronger identifier than a title, and we deliberately don't use it.
Update checks. About three seconds after launch, and whenever you press Check for Updates, the app asks GitHub whether a newer version exists. GitHub sees your IP address and your current version.
Installing, once. The app draws its interface using WebView2, a component built into Windows. Virtually every machine already has it. On the rare machine that does not, the installer downloads it from Microsoft. This happens at most once, and never again.
Turning all of it off. Settings has a Work Offline switch that stops every one of the above except licence validation. It is enforced deep in the application, not just in the interface, and an automated test fails the build if any new network call is added that skips it. Licence validation is the one exception, because the device limit is enforced on our server, and a switch that disabled it would be a licence bypass rather than a privacy feature. Once a machine has activated, it keeps working without a connection for up to 14 days, so an air-gapped install can go that long without contacting anything. But "no network at all, ever" is not a claim this switch can make, and we would rather say so here.
03
What we store
When you buy a licence, we keep your email address, the licence key issued against it, and the date of purchase. This lets us send you the key again if you lose it, and lets support find your purchase. Your country is held by our payment provider, not by us.
For each device a licence is activated on, we keep the device ID, the computer's name, its operating system, the app version and when it last checked in. This is how support can tell your devices apart and free one you no longer use.
There is no account with a password. This record is the only way we can match a key back to you. Payment card details are handled entirely by our payment provider and never reach us.
Your licence page. At licensing.fileverdict.com/account you can see your licences and free a device. You enter the email address you bought with, and we email you a six-digit code. We keep only a scrambled (hashed) copy of the code, and it stops working after 10 minutes, one use or five wrong guesses. Signing in sets one cookie that keeps you signed in. We keep a hash of it alongside your email address, the session ends after 30 minutes idle or 4 hours, and it is deleted when you sign out. To limit how often codes can be requested, we keep a count of requests, as hashes of the email address and IP address, for up to two days. The cookie is needed for the page to work, so there is no banner to click.
Your email address is used to deliver your licence key, to send sign-in codes for your licence page, and to answer support. It is not added to a marketing list.
If you email support, we keep that correspondence so we have the history next time you write in.
We keep purchase records for as long as we are selling the software, plus the period UK tax law requires us to keep transaction records.
04
Logs and diagnostics
Logs are written to your machine as plain text and stay there. Nothing is sent automatically. File paths in the log are reduced to filenames only, so a log attached to a support email is not an index of your media library. If you do attach one, you are choosing to send it, and you can read it first to see exactly what it contains.
05
Third parties
Paddle handles checkout and is the merchant of record, meaning they are the legal seller. They collect your country and, in some places, a postcode, because tax rates vary by jurisdiction and the seller is required to charge the correct one. Card details go to them and never to us.
Once Paddle confirms a purchase, our own licence server receives your email address from Paddle, issues your licence key, and keeps the purchase and device records described in section 03. It runs on Cloudflare, which stores those records on our behalf.
Brevo delivers your licence key email, the sign-in codes for your licence page, and support correspondence.
OMDb receives the search terms described in section 02 from our server, not from your computer, and TMDB receives them directly if you use your own key. TMDB's and IMDb's image servers supply poster artwork. OpenSubtitles receives subtitle search queries when you search.
GitHub hosts application downloads and update checks.
Plausible provides analytics for this website, and only for the website. It is cookieless, uses no persistent identifiers, and does not build a profile of you or follow you across sites. It records aggregate figures only: page views, referring sites, countries, browsers and devices. Your data never leaves the EU, and because none of it is personal data, there is no consent banner to click. We chose it specifically so that visiting this site doesn't cost you anything in privacy. The application itself sends no analytics at all.
Each is governed by its own privacy policy.
06
International transfers
Some of the third parties above, including our payment, licensing, hosting, email and metadata providers, may process data outside the UK. Where that happens, we rely on the safeguards those providers have in place, such as standard contractual clauses, to keep your data protected to UK standards.
07
Your rights
Under UK data protection law, you have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you (access), to ask us to correct it if it is wrong (rectification), to ask us to delete it (erasure), and to ask us to restrict or object to how we use it in some circumstances.
To exercise any of these, fill out the form on our support page. You can also delete your email address yourself, at any time, from your licence page at licensing.fileverdict.com/account. Erasing your record removes your email address and device names. Your licence key keeps working, but we can no longer resend it or match it back to you. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
08
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects how your data is handled, we will update this page and change the date below.
A person reads every message
Anything here that is unclear, ask, and it gets rewritten.