Privacy Statement

Thornsoft Development Inc., will not engage in the selling or dissemination of any information collected from this website (www.thornsoft.com, www.clipmate.com, www.clipboardextender.com or other Thornsoft sites) to third parties. All information collected from www.thornsoft.com shall be for the sole use of THORNSOFT Development to improve our level of service.

About our cookies

You may have noticed that our site gave you a cookie, or asked for a cookie.  There is nothing sinister going on here.  We are simply using the cookie facility built into most browsers, to track advertising effectiveness.  We're trying to find out if our advertising dollars are being well spent, so we're trying to correlate clicking on a banner ad, with an eventual sale (which could happen weeks later).   We're using cookies to help us track this. So, as you travel our site, your browser may be asked to store a cookie or two. 

In the interests of disclosure, here is what we're storing:

• The nickname of the page where  you first entered the site.
• The referring URL (who sent you?)
• How many times you've visited.
• Whether or not you've visited the download page.

As you see, there is nothing sneaky, underhanded, or even very interesting here.  We do not have any way of correlating to who you are, how much you spend, etc..  And even if we could, it is our policy to never sell any information about you to anyone.

So, relax and have a cookie on us!

If you are interested in learning more about cookies, here is an excellent resource.

No Adware

No matter what your stance is on the current adware controversy, rest assured, we use no adware technology in ClipMate.  We don't collect any click-through information, we don't show banner ads in the product, nothing like that.  And when you uninstall ClipMate, it leaves no program files or DLLs behind.  

"Calling Home"

If ClipMate detects that you are using a forged or otherwise illegally obtained registration key, then it may "call home" to report the theft.  It uses standard HTTP communication to launch a web page that records the illegal name/key combination, as well as the IP address that you happen to be using when it reports.  Since it launches to a web page, it's obvious that it's "called home", and nothing at all is going on behind your back.  There is nothing covert about it, and no personal information is being recorded.  We use this information to keep tabs on the level of piracy, to track unauthorized dealers, and to make life a bit more miserable for those who would rather steal from us than pay us our $35 license fee.  This should not be an issue for most users.  But in the interest of full disclosure, we needed to let you know that this technology does exist in ClipMate.

Technical:  A simple URL call on port 80, including the stolen key information and the program version.  No personal data is involved.  The program does not phone home to check anything. It does not, for example, phone home to a server to check for blacklisted keys.  It only phones home AFTER piracy has been detected, by using logic that is already in the program to start with.

This feature will NOT activate during the 30 -day evaluation - even if you exceed the evaluation period.  This only activates if you are attempting to use a stolen/pirated registration key.

To summarize:  If you have a pirated/cracked/stolen/fraudulent registration key, then ClipMate may "call home", on port 80, to report it.  Otherwise, it won't.

Network Licensing

ClipMate  does a network check to see if the current registration key is in use on other stations on the same local area network.  It does not go out on the internet, check our severs, phone home, or otherwise cause internet traffic.  It uses a protocol known as "mail slots", which only travels on the local network, and will not route onto the internet or other networks within your site.

Bottom Line

Honest ClipMate users have nothing to fear from doing online business with Thornsoft Development, Inc.

Thank You,
Chris Thornton, President
Thornsoft Development Inc.