Privacy Policy.

Your audio

Offline analysis (free, default)

GhostMode's built-in analysis engine runs entirely on your machine. Nothing leaves your computer. No audio, no fingerprint, no metadata.

AI analysis (optional, credit-metered)

When you enable the optional AI layer and click Analyze, a request is sent to the GhostWare service. What is in that request depends on the mode you have chosen:

• Fingerprint mode (default): a compact set of numeric measurements — spectral, dynamic, and transient characteristics of your capture. These numbers describe the sound; they cannot be turned back into audio. Your actual recording stays on your machine.
• Full-audio mode (opt-in per request): the capture itself is included in the request when you explicitly choose this option. Use it when you want the model to hear the actual material rather than rely on measurements alone.

In both modes:

• Never stored, never written to disk: the fingerprint or audio is held in memory only for the seconds it takes to analyze it, then discarded. It is never written to a database, never logged to a file, and never retained past the lifetime of the request.
• Never used to train AI models: GhostWare runs no AI training pipeline of any kind. Whatever you send for analysis is processed and discarded. It is never used to train or fine-tune any model — ours or our AI provider's.
• Optional text prompt, sanitized: if you type a prompt in the optional prompt field, it is clamped to 100 plain characters before it travels. Nothing else from your DAW session is included.
• Kill switch: the AI toggle lives in Advanced settings. Off means offline, period — no network calls of any kind are made.

See the analysis engine page and the FAQ for more detail on how each mode works.

Account & payment data

A GhostWare account is created when you purchase the Full License. Trial users have no account. Account data includes:

• Email address — used to log in, recover your key, and receive optional update notifications.
• License key — a GW-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX string that identifies your license and activated machine.
• Credit balance — the number of AI credits on your account.
• Activated machine fingerprint — an opaque hardware identifier used to enforce the one-machine-at-a-time activation limit. This is stored only as a hash and cannot be used to identify or locate your device.

Payment processing

All purchases are processed by Stripe. GhostWare never sees or stores your card number, expiry, or CVV — those are entered directly on Stripe's hosted checkout page and handled entirely by Stripe. GhostWare receives a confirmation of a completed payment and the associated order details (product purchased, amount, Stripe customer ID).

Receipts for your purchases are available through the billing portal link in your account dashboard (powered by Stripe).

Download and mailing list

When you download the plugin, you may optionally provide an email address. If you do, it is added to a mailing list for update announcements. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email we send — or by simply not providing an email at download time (the download works either way, subject to the gate mode displayed on the download page).

Site analytics

GhostWare uses a lightweight first-party analytics system, built into the site server, to understand how visitors find and use the marketing site. No third-party analytics scripts are loaded.

What is collected per page view

• Page path — the URL path you visited (e.g. /analysis).
• Referrer — the URL of the page you came from, if your browser sends one (truncated to 300 characters).
• User agent — your browser and operating system string.
• Hashed IP address — your IP address is immediately passed through SHA-256 before it is written anywhere. The raw IP address is never stored. The hash is used only for coarse geographic and abuse-detection purposes.
• Session ID — a random 16-byte hex token, set in the gw_sid first-party cookie (see below), used to stitch a sequence of page views from the same visit into an ordered journey.
• Visit source — a coarse category derived from the referrer: direct, search, social, or referral. No individual search terms are stored.
• UTM parameters — if your arrival URL includes utm_source, utm_medium, or utm_campaign query parameters (set by advertising or link-tracking systems), those values are recorded (truncated to 120 characters each).

The session cookie (gw_sid)

When you view a page on this site, a first-party cookie named gw_sid is set. It contains a randomly generated identifier with no personal information. It is used solely to associate a sequence of page views from the same browser visit. The cookie is:

• First-party — set by ghostwareaudio.com, not a third-party advertising network.
• Secure and SameSite=Lax — sent only over HTTPS and not on cross-site requests.
• Valid for 30 days from your most recent visit, then it expires automatically.
• Not shared with any third party.

Analytics data is used only internally, for understanding which pages visitors find useful and where traffic originates. It is never sold, never shared with advertisers, and never used for behavioral profiling or ad targeting. The GhostWare admin dashboard is the only place this data is read, and it is accessible only to GhostWare staff.

Third-party services

• Stripe — payment processing. See Stripe's privacy policy.
• Google (Gemini API) — the AI analysis service. Audio fingerprints or captures sent for AI analysis are processed by Google's Gemini API under GhostWare's enterprise agreement. GhostWare's agreement with Google ensures submitted data is not used to train or improve Google's models. See Google's Gemini API terms.
• GitHub — plugin releases and update packages are hosted on GitHub Releases. When you download an update, your request goes to GitHub's servers and is subject to GitHub's privacy policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Open an issue on GitHub and the GhostWare team will respond.