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: [email protected].

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 on our own side, without cookies, identifiers or your IP address (2.2, 2.5, 2.6).
• We process what it takes to sell licenses, deliver keys, hold one seat to one machine, serve updates, and know how many copies go out.

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). The key itself is not stored: it is re-signed from these fields whenever your account shows it or sends it again. Your name is used to address the key email and appears nowhere public.

• 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.

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.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

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 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. 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.

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 nothing is measured. Four things on the site are not plain files: three 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), and the two license requests the Software makes (1.2) — and the fourth, the checkout on the pricing page, is Paddle’s (2.4). The account is the only one of these that recognises you 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. The one record we keep ourselves is the download count in 2.5, which contains neither an IP address nor 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. Nothing you do on a page is measured, and nothing non-essential is placed on your device, so there is no cookie banner to click. One thing is counted, and it is counted on our side rather than in your browser: how many times the installer file is downloaded. That is described in 2.5.

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 [email protected]. (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.

The only place on this site where you type something about yourself is now the sign-in box of your account (2.6), which asks for the email you used at checkout. Checkout itself runs in Paddle’s frame (2.4) and is covered by 1.1.

There is no contact form anywhere on this site. The contact page shows an email address and nothing more, so writing to us is an ordinary email — covered by “Support and email” below.

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. 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 [email protected] from the address on the account and we delete the account, its sessions and its sign-in records. 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.

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 delivers the emails we send (the one Founders email, the license key, the sign-in link, and the notice if we end a key); and GitHub, for the update feed that copies installed before the channel moved still read — and if required by law. 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. 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 [email protected]; we respond within one month. You may also lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

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 — is deleted on request. 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 (1.2), the account records (2.6) and the Founders list (2.3). Keys are not stored: they are re-signed from the register when needed. Sign-in links and session cookies are stored 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 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.

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: [email protected] — Valerii Nikulin, sole proprietor (FOP) registered in Ukraine, trading as Shall We Art.