Privacy policy: what Biffer collects, and above all what it does not

The Biffer software sends no documents

Biffer is desktop software designed to work offline. It opens a connection to biffer.fr in only two cases: the first use on a computer, when the software sends your email address and the machine's technical ID to receive its key; and the license check, described below, which presents that key to the server at most once a day. Nothing else is sent: that is how the product is built.

• Your documents do not leave your computer. Analysis, detection of personal data, replacement with aliases and rewriting of the file all run locally. No file, no excerpt and no detected name is sent to our servers or to any third party.
• No usage telemetry. The software sends no usage statistics, no crash reports and no list of processed documents.
• The local account stays on the machine. Your preferences, the policies chosen for each data type, your custom fields, the free plan's monthly file counter and your key are stored in a folder in your user library, and nowhere else. The counter is never sent.
• The key is verified locally. If the check with biffer.fr fails, nothing is blocked: Biffer works on a computer cut off from the network, and only you can read your mapping tables.

Turn off the network, launch Biffer, process a document: everything works. The offline software page explains what this choice means under the GDPR, in particular that there is no processor for your documents.

Data collected by the website and its purposes

The website biffer.fr processes six categories of data, each for a specific purpose, without combining them with outside sources.

The machine ID is a technical code specific to your computer, shown in Biffer; it describes neither your hardware nor your documents. The monthly counter is kept locally and never sent back to us: we know neither how many files you process nor which ones. For a purchase of several licenses, the account holder sees the email addresses of the assignees and the IDs of the activated computers, nothing more.

Card payments are processed by Stripe: card details are entered on its pages and never pass through biffer.fr. We receive only your email address, the amount, the date, the transaction ID, the invoice number and the last four digits of the card. The purchase confirmation email contains your license key, when your computer is already known to us, and links to the invoice hosted by Stripe (online view and PDF). Stripe's processing of your data is described in its own privacy policy.

Only with your consent, we measure the website's traffic with Google Analytics (see "Cookies and trackers"). We use no advertising pixel and we sell no data. The report form does not require an email address.

Retention periods and recipients

We keep each piece of data for as long as its purpose requires, then delete it.

• Account data (email, machine IDs, history of keys and licenses): as long as the account is active, then three years after the last sign-in, so that we can respond to a key transfer request. An account with no purchased license is deleted on simple request.
• License check log (machine ID, key, version, operating system, IP address, country, date, result): twenty-four months from each check, to detect abnormal use of a key and document a suspension.
• Payment data and invoices (transaction ID, amount, date, invoice issued): ten years under accounting obligations.
• Reports: two years from receipt, long enough to fix the reported defect and check that it does not come back.
• Technical logs: for the period set by the host for security purposes, with no extended retention on our side.

Three service providers are involved in running the website:

• Cloudflare, Inc. (San Francisco, United States), a processor within the meaning of Article 28 of the GDPR, hosts the website, the customer account and the software distribution. Transfers outside the European Union are governed by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
• Brevo (Sendinblue SAS, Paris, France), a processor, sends the transactional emails: sign-in link, purchase confirmation, license assignment, reply to a report.
• Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland) processes card payments as data controller for card data, which it collects directly and which we never see.

No other recipient has access to your data, except where required by law. Within OPCADIA, only Romain Rissoan views accounts, payments, license checks and reports, as part of the support described on the contact page.

Your rights and how to exercise them

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights over the data the website processes about you:

• right of access: obtain a copy of the data we hold about you;
• right to rectification: correct an email address or billing information;
• right to erasure: ask for your account to be deleted, subject to the payment data and invoices the law requires us to keep;
• right to restriction and right to object, for processing based on our legitimate interest;
• right to portability of your account data, in a readable format.

To exercise these rights, write to contact@biffer.fr from your account's email address, which lets us identify you without asking for proof of identity. We reply within one month. If you believe your rights have not been respected, you can lodge a complaint with the CNIL, the French data protection authority.

These rights concern the website's data. The documents you process with Biffer are never sent to us; we can therefore neither access nor erase them.

Cookies and trackers

With your consent, biffer.fr uses Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Limited) to measure its traffic: pages viewed, visit duration, referrer, device type, approximate country and city. These measurements tell us which pages are useful to you. The cookies involved (_ga and _ga_*) are kept for 13 months at most; the data may be processed in the United States by Google LLC, which participates in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Nothing is loaded or set until you click "Accept" in the banner; "Decline" is just as easy and has no effect on your use of the website. Your choice is kept for six months, and you can change it at any time through the "Cookie settings" link at the bottom of every page. Audience measurement concerns the website only: the Biffer software sends no browsing data, and your documents never leave your computer.

One other cookie is used, on the administration area reserved for the publisher: a technical session cookie that keeps you signed in after you click the link received by email. It is strictly necessary for the service to work, contains no readable personal information, is not shared with any third party and expires at the end of the session or when you sign out. Under the CNIL's guidelines (in French), this type of cookie is exempt from consent.

If this policy changes, we will update this page with the date of the change, without ever touching the founding principle: no document leaves your computer.

License checks and updates

Once its key is installed, the software can check its validity with biffer.fr. This check happens when Biffer is opened, at most once a day, and when you click the button to check the license and updates in the software's account settings. Without a connection, it is skipped. Here is what is exchanged during this check, and nothing else:

• sent by the software: your computer's technical ID, your license key, the Biffer version number and the operating system (macOS or Windows);
• recorded by the server: the IP address of the request, the country deduced from it, the date and the result of the check (key valid, revoked or presented from another computer);
• never sent: your documents, their names, their content, the detected data, your settings, your mapping table and the free plan's monthly counter.

This processing has three purposes: fraud prevention (spotting a key shared between several computers or presented from an abnormal number of addresses, since each key is valid for one computer only, as provided in our terms of use and sale); delivering an updated key after a purchase, with nothing to enter; and informing you of new versions, with the server indicating the latest published version and the download page, without installing anything.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in protecting the software against fraudulent use (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR) and the performance of the license contract for delivering the key (Article 6(1)(b)). The check log is kept for twenty-four months, then deleted. You can object to this processing by writing to us; we may nevertheless refuse the objection where fraud is suspected, in accordance with Article 21 of the GDPR.