Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Stride ("we", "us", "our") makes the Stride plugin and runs the website at stridehub.io. Stride is a sound design engine. It runs on your own computer as a plugin in your DAW (VST3 and AU), and as Max for Live components in Ableton Live.

Stride is run by Yossi Bozo, an independent developer based in Israel, who is responsible for your personal data (its "controller").

For anything about your data, email home@stridehub.io.

2. What Data We Collect

Data you give us:

• Your email address, when you register for a Discovery Pass, enter it in the buy form, buy Stride, book a session, join the waitlist, or write to us
• Your name, if you give it at checkout or in a message
• What you write to us, through the contact form or by email
• Your answers to the optional two-question survey after a purchase
• Payment details, which Paddle collects as merchant of record. We receive your name, email, country, postcode and what you bought, never your card details

Data the plugin sends us:

• When you activate or check a license: your license key, a label made from your computer's name ("Stride on" followed by the name) and an installation ID
• When you start or extend a Discovery Pass: the email you enter, a device ID, your computer's name and your Stride version. The device ID is a one-way hash of your computer's system identifier, so a pass works on one machine
• During a Discovery Pass: a few named moments in how you use Stride, for example the first time a motion lands on several lanes, or a demo chain is picked or heard. Each one carries the name of your DAW, your Stride version, the number of lanes and the time since your pass started
• When it checks for updates: your license key and your operating system
• Every request reaches our server with your IP address and a technical user agent

Data the website collects:

• The pages you visit, clicks, scrolling, your device and browser, and your IP address
• If you arrive from one of our ads: that ad's click identifier (gclid, wbraid, gbraid or fbclid), and which ad, ad set and campaign it was
• A random visitor ID we create, which ties your visits and a later sign-up or purchase to the ad that brought you

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, the website collects the ad and analytics data above only after you press Accept in the cookie banner. See Section 11.

Data we do NOT collect:

• Your projects, racks, presets, MIDI clips, automation curves, audio, or anything else you make in Stride. All of that stays on your computer
• We do not buy data about you from anyone

3. How We Use Your Data

• To give you what you asked for: your license and downloads, license checks, your Discovery Pass (one per machine), and support
• Order emails: your license key, receipt and download links
• Discovery Pass emails: your download link and how to start, then a few short emails while your pass runs and one after it ends, which may include an offer
• A checkout reminder: if you enter your email in the buy form and don't finish, we may send you one reminder
• News and offers: occasional emails about Stride to customers and pass users
• How our emails do: our emails carry a small image and tracked links, so we learn whether each one was delivered, opened and clicked, and stop sending the ones that don't help
• To improve Stride: the Discovery Pass moments in Section 2 show us where new users get stuck
• To measure and improve our ads: we tell Meta and Google Ads about page views, checkout starts, Discovery Pass sign-ups, downloads and activations, and purchases. Some of this goes from our server, identified by a hashed email address. We also give Meta hashed email addresses of customers, pass users and people who started a checkout, so Meta can leave customers out of our ads and show our ads again to people who showed interest
• To understand the website: which pages work, through Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity (heatmaps and session recordings). Clarity masks the text you type into forms before it leaves your browser. We also count page views ourselves, whatever you answer in the cookie banner: each view adds one to a daily count for that page and the kind of link it came from (such as an ad, an email or Instagram). Nothing is stored on your device and nothing in the count identifies you
• Referral links: when you buy Stride we give you a link of your own to send friends, and pay you 15% of each sale it brings in. Our partners have links too. When you arrive through someone's link, we record that visit so the sale that follows is credited to them. Affonso runs this for us (Section 6)
• To keep our team informed: when someone registers, buys, activates a pass or writes to us, a notice with those details goes to our private team chat
• To prevent fraud and abuse: limits on activations per license and one pass per machine. To link a pass to the email it was registered with, we may match it to a recent sign-up from the same network

Reply STOP to any of our emails, or write to home@stridehub.io, and we stop sending you anything but what your purchase needs.

4. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK, we rely on these legal bases:

• Contract: your order, license and downloads, license checks, the Discovery Pass you asked for, and support
• Legitimate interests: preventing fraud and abuse, improving Stride from the pass moments, emails about the pass you registered for, one checkout reminder, measuring our ads from our server and with hashed customer lists, counting page views without cookies, learning which of our emails are opened and clicked, and team notices. You can object to any of these at any time
• Consent: ad and analytics cookies and similar technologies on the website, given in the cookie banner, and marketing emails where the law requires your consent
• Legal obligation: tax and accounting records

5. Local-First Processing

Stride runs on your own computer, as a plugin inside your DAW and as Max for Live components inside Ableton Live. All sound design work happens entirely on your local machine: scanning the devices you host or map, drawing automation curves, and writing the motion back into your session. Your project files, MIDI data, instrument presets, and canvas state never leave your computer.

The plugin talks to our server only for what Section 2 lists: license checks, starting or extending a Discovery Pass, the pass moments, and update checks.

Whatever you create in Stride is yours. Stride does not claim any ownership over content you produce with the software.

6. Who Receives Your Data

We do not sell your personal data. We share it with ad platforms only as this section describes.

7. International Data Transfers

We are based in Israel, which the European Commission recognizes as giving adequate protection. The services in Section 6 process data in the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU. Transfers to the United States rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, and on Standard Contractual Clauses otherwise.

8. Data Retention

We keep personal data only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, to meet legal requirements and to resolve disputes. After that we delete it or make it anonymous.

• Purchase records (email, order, license key): for the life of your license, and as long as tax law requires, up to 7 years
• Discovery Pass, sign-up and checkout records: while they are useful for your pass, for support and for the emails in Section 3
• Discovery Pass moments from the plugin: while we use them to improve Stride
• Your messages to us: while we help you, and afterwards as a record of that help
• The STOP list: as long as needed to keep honoring it
• Website analytics: as set in Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity

If you ask us to delete your data, we delete it within one month, except what tax law requires us to keep.

9. Your Rights

Everyone can ask us to:

• Access: send you a copy of the data we hold about you
• Correct: fix data that is wrong
• Delete: erase your data
• Export: give you your data in a common machine-readable format
• Stop emails: reply STOP to any of them

If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK (GDPR), you can also:

• Restrict how we use your data
• Object to anything we do on legitimate interests, including ad measurement from our server and customer lists
• Withdraw consent at any time, as easily as you gave it (see Section 11)
• Complain to your local data protection authority

To use any of these rights, email home@stridehub.io. We answer within one month.

10. Data Security

• Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest (Google Cloud and Supabase default encryption)
• Passwords for the older web app are handled by Firebase Authentication; we never see or store them
• Only the people who run Stride can access production data

11. Cookies and Local Storage

Stride's plugin keeps your license status, settings and sessions in a folder on your own computer, only so it works between launches.

On our website:

• Always, because the site needs them: your cookie choice (stride_consent_ads, 6 months), your language, the email you registered a Discovery Pass with (so the site does not ask you twice), an offer you opened, and the progress of a checkout, which lasts only until you close the tab. When a checkout loads, Paddle and its payment partners may set their own cookies to prevent fraud
• Ads and analytics: the Meta Pixel (_fbp, and _fbc after a Meta ad, 90 days), our visitor ID (stride_xid, 180 days), the ad you came from (stride_ad, stride_ad_id, stride_fbclid, 180 days; stride_gclid, 90 days), a hashed copy of an email you typed (stride_emh), Microsoft Clarity (_clck, _clsk, and Microsoft may set MUID), Google Analytics (_ga) and Google Ads (_gcl_au, _gcl_aw)
• Referral links: only if you arrive through a customer's or partner's link, Affonso's affonso_referral and affonso_data (up to 12 months), so a purchase you make is credited to them. Where we ask first (below), they wait for Accept like the ads and analytics group

In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland we ask first. Nothing in the ads and analytics group is stored, and the Meta Pixel and Clarity do not load, until you press Accept. Before that, Google's tags send only limited signals without cookies (Google Consent Mode). If you press Decline, the Meta Pixel and Clarity never load, Google's tags stay in that limited mode, and we delete the ad data our site stored on earlier visits. Everywhere else they run by default, and you can opt out with the links in Section 6 or a tracker-blocking extension.

Before you answer, three things still reach Meta from our server, on our legitimate interest in knowing which ads work (Section 4): a purchase, a Discovery Pass sign-up and the activation of that pass in Stride. Each carries only a hashed copy of your email address, the ad click ID from the link you arrived on, your IP address and the type of browser or app you used. It uses nothing stored on your device. Once you press Decline, nothing about you goes to Meta at all, from the website or from our server, and you can object to this at any time (Section 9).

Change your cookie choice

12. Children's Privacy

Stride is not directed at children. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If we learn that we have, we delete it promptly.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy. Changes are posted on this page with a new date above, and where the law requires it we will also tell you about significant changes by email or on the website.

Previous versions are available on request.

14. Contact

For any question or request about your data:

Email: home@stridehub.io

Controller: Yossi Bozo, Israel