Privacy Policy
SiftMac (“we”) is made by Mohit Nippanikar, based in India. This policy explains what happens to your data when you use the SiftMac app and the siftmac.com website.
- SiftMac scans your Mac on your Mac. Your files, file names, sizes and scan results never leave it.
- There is no account and no ads, and the app sends no usage data. The website uses Google Analytics and PostHog, which you can turn off any time; in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland they run only if you allow them (section 3).
- Only two things go over the internet: checking for updates, and checking your licence key with our payment provider.
1. What SiftMac reads on your Mac, and keeps there
To find space you can free, SiftMac reads information about files and apps on your Mac. All of this is processed locally and is never sent to us or anyone else:
- Names, sizes, dates and locations of files and folders in your home folder, Library, temporary folders and Applications, and Spotlight’s record of when files and apps were last opened.
- The list of running apps and programs, so SiftMac never touches anything in use.
- If you give SiftMac Full Disk Access: the Trash, and the names, sizes and dates of Mail and Messages attachments. SiftMac never reads the text of an email or a message. To tell server mail accounts from POP accounts, it reads the account type from macOS’s accounts list, read-only.
- If you allow it: the list of apps that open at login, from System Events.
- For Similar photos: your photos outside the Photos library are compared using Apple’s Vision framework on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.
- For Search: your words become a Spotlight search that runs on your Mac.
SiftMac stores on your Mac: your settings and choices, the Undo Shelf (items you removed, kept for the number of days you choose), a history of how much free space your disk had (dates and numbers only, used for the disk-full forecast), and your licence key with its activation ID. Uninstalling SiftMac and deleting ~/Library/Application Support/SiftMac and SiftMac’s settings file in ~/Library/Preferences removes all of it.
2. What leaves your Mac
| When | What is sent | To whom, and why |
|---|---|---|
| Checking for updates (automatically, about once a day, or when you choose Check for Updates) | A request for siftmac.com/appcast.xml, which includes your IP address and SiftMac’s version number. No information about your Mac or its files is sent. We count update checks per day, with the version and country only | Our website, hosted by Cloudflare, to tell you about new versions. Cloudflare processes your IP address to deliver and protect the site. |
| Activating a licence key | The licence key and your Mac’s name (as set in System Settings › General › Sharing) | Dodo Payments, to register the activation, so the key works on up to 2 Macs and you can see and remove activations |
| Checking the licence (about once a week) | The licence key and its activation ID | Dodo Payments, to confirm the key is still valid (for example, not refunded) |
| Buying SiftMac | What you enter at checkout: name, email, billing country and payment details | Dodo Payments, our Merchant of Record, which processes the payment under its own privacy policy. We receive your name, email, country, the order and your licence key, to deliver and support your licence. |
| Emailing support | Your message and email address | Mail to support@siftmac.com is forwarded by Cloudflare Email Routing to our mailbox, hosted by Google (Gmail) |
We do not sell, rent or share your personal data for advertising. We don’t use it for anything other than the reasons above.
3. The website
siftmac.com is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes visitors’ IP addresses to deliver and protect the site. The page loads its fonts from Google Fonts.
Analytics. We use Google Analytics (Google) and PostHog (PostHog Inc., US) to understand how people use the site: pages viewed, where visitors come from, device, browser, approximate location, clicks, scrolling and time on the site. Both set cookies (Google’s _ga cookies; PostHog’s ph_… cookie and local storage) to recognise a returning browser. PostHog may also record your visit (what is shown on the page, mouse movements and clicks) so we can see where the site is confusing; anything typed into a field is hidden in recordings. Google Analytics is set to shorten IP addresses.
When they run. In most countries they start when you open the site. In the EU, the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, a banner asks first and they run only if you choose Allow. Anywhere, you can turn them off with “Analytics settings” at the bottom of each page and choosing No thanks, and they stay off if your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track. When they’re off, Google Analytics is not loaded, and PostHog only counts page views without cookies, without remembering you and without recordings. None of this runs inside the SiftMac app.
Separately, and for everyone, our own small script and server keep daily totals of:
- pages viewed, the website that linked to us, and campaign tags in the link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign);
- the type of device and browser (for example “Mac, Safari”), a rough screen size, and the browser’s language;
- which buttons and links are clicked, which FAQ questions are opened, which sections are seen, how far down the page people scroll, and roughly how long they stay;
- downloads of SiftMac, and update checks from the app with its version.
Each total is stored only with the day and the visitor’s country. To count unique visitors, we combine your IP address and browser with a random value that changes every day, keep only a one-way hash of that, and delete the hashes and the random value the next day, so a visit can’t be traced back to you or linked across days. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, the website doesn’t count you at all.
4. How long we keep it
- Licence and order records: for as long as your licence is active, and afterwards for as long as tax and accounting law requires (Dodo Payments keeps its own records as the seller).
- Support emails: until your request is resolved and for up to 24 months after, then deleted.
- Website analytics: Google Analytics keeps data for up to 14 months; PostHog keeps events for up to 12 months and recordings for up to 30 days. Our own daily totals are kept as totals.
- Data on your Mac: until you delete it, as described in section 1.
5. Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you (your order, licence and support emails), to correct it, or to delete it, and you can withdraw your consent where we rely on it. Email support@siftmac.com; we reply within 30 days. Deleting your data ends your licence, since the licence is tied to your order.
India (Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023): our grievance contact is Mohit Nippanikar at support@siftmac.com. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
EU and UK: we process this data to perform our contract with you (licence and updates) and for our legitimate interests (keeping the software and website secure). You may complain to your local data protection authority.
Our service providers (Dodo Payments, Cloudflare, Google, PostHog) may process data outside your country, under their own safeguards.
6. Children
SiftMac isn’t aimed at children and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. Purchases should be made by an adult.
7. Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update the date at the top and, for important changes, mention it in the app’s update notes.