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Privacy Policy
Effective 4 August 2026 · Williams Instruments · Côte Saint-Luc, Quebec, Canada
The short version. Your audio never leaves your computer. SHAPR does all of its measuring and repairing locally and has no facility for uploading your files — not to us, not to anyone. The only personal information we hold is what you give us when you buy a license or email for support.
Who we are
Williams Instruments ("we", "us") makes SHAPR, a drum shaper plug-in for macOS, and WI MASTRD, a macOS application for audio delivery quality control. Where a section below says "the app", it means WI MASTRD; SHAPR has its own section under "What the app does send". We are based in Quebec, Canada. For anything in this policy, or to exercise any of the rights described below, write to support@williamsinstruments.com.
Postal address: 5555 Av. Westminster, Côte Saint-Luc, Quebec H4W 2J2, Canada.
What the app does not do
This is the part that matters most to the people who use this software, so it is stated first and plainly:
- Your audio is never uploaded. Every sample is processed on your own machine. There is no server-side processing and no code in the software that transmits audio.
- File names and paths are never transmitted.
- There is no account. Licenses are signed files verified offline. The app does not log in, check in, or validate a license over the network.
- There is no advertising, profiling, or tracking of any kind, and we do not sell or share personal information with anyone for their own purposes.
What the app does send
Update checks
When you check for updates — from the menu, or automatically if you switch that on in
Settings — the app requests an update feed from
williamsinstruments.com. Like any web request, this necessarily reveals
your IP address and the app and system version to the server that answers it. That is
the only network request the WI MASTRD app makes on its own, and you can avoid it entirely by
leaving automatic checks off and not using "Check for Updates".
WI MASTRD usage statistics — off unless you turn them on
The app keeps a private count of which features you use, stored only in
~/Library/Application Support/BounceCheck/ on your own machine.
Nothing is sent anywhere unless you explicitly opt in in
Settings ▸ Privacy, and the setting is off by default.
These counters are structurally incapable of recording anything about your files: the app can only increment a fixed list of named events such as "files checked" or "reports exported". There is no mechanism for a file name, path, or measurement to be included. Settings ▸ Privacy shows you the exact contents at any time, lets you copy them, and lets you erase them and start over with a new random identifier.
SHAPR — anonymous usage numbers
SHAPR (from version 1.1.0) sends anonymous usage information so we can see which parts of the plug-in people actually use, and which setups have trouble. This is the same wording the plug-in shows you under Privacy.
What is sent:
- A random installation number, made on your Mac. It is not linked to you, your order or your email.
- Whether the copy is free or paid. Never a licence key, an order number, a name or an address.
- The SHAPR version, and whether it is the AU, the VST3 or the app.
- Your macOS version, whether the Mac is Apple silicon or Intel, the name and version of the music app, the sample rate and the buffer size.
- Which modes, settings and controls you use, and roughly where you set a control — as a ten per cent band, never the exact value.
- Which factory preset was loaded. A preset you saved yourself is only ever reported as “your own”; its name is never sent.
- If a session ends without the plug-in shutting down properly, the technical details above.
What is never sent: audio, not a sample of it, ever; MIDI notes or controller data; your name, email address, licence key, order number or payment details; project, song, track or file names; file paths, folder names, your username or your computer’s name; anything typed into the plug-in.
Turning it off. A paid copy can switch this off completely: the switch is in the plug-in, under Privacy, and it stays off. Free copies keep sending anonymous usage numbers, and that is disclosed here and in the plug-in. The numbers go to PostHog, Inc. (United States), who process them for us and nothing else.
What we collect when you buy
| Information | Why | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | To send you your license file and support you | Our database; our email provider |
| Name | Printed on the license file | Our database; the license itself |
| Payment record — amount, currency, date, and our payment processor's transaction reference | To issue the right license, honour refunds, and meet tax and accounting obligations | Our database |
| Country, where our processor supplies it | Sales tax | Our database |
We never receive or store your card details. Payment is handled entirely by our payment processor on their own systems; we see only that a payment succeeded and a reference number for it.
If you email us, we keep that correspondence so we can help you and remember the context if you write again.
If you join the mailing list
The mailing list is entirely separate from buying: you can buy without joining, and join without buying. We ask only for your email address.
Nothing is added to the list until you click the confirmation link we email you. When you do, we record the date you confirmed, the IP address the signup came from, and which page it came from. We keep that record because Canadian anti-spam law requires us to be able to show that you asked to be on the list — not to profile you.
We send occasional email about SHAPR: releases, delivery-spec changes, and the occasional guide. Every message carries a one-click unsubscribe, and we act on it immediately. We keep the consent record after you unsubscribe, because it is the proof that we were entitled to email you in the first place; ask us and we will delete it too.
The list itself lives with our email provider. We never sell, rent or share your address, and the list is never used to target advertising anywhere.
Who else processes this information
We keep the list of third parties as short as we can. Each one only receives what it needs to do its job:
- Our payment processor — takes the payment and holds the card details we never see. They are an independent controller of that data under their own privacy policy.
- Our email provider — delivers your license file and our replies. Receives your email address and the message.
- Our database and hosting providers — store the records above and serve this website.
Some of these providers operate servers outside Canada, including in the United States and the European Union, so your information may be processed there under contractual safeguards.
How long we keep it
Purchase and payment records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires us to — currently seven years in Canada — because we are obliged to be able to produce them. Support correspondence is kept for up to three years. Anything you have asked us to erase, and which we are not legally required to keep, is deleted.
Your rights
Whatever country you are in, you may ask us to show you the personal information we hold about you, correct it if it is wrong, or delete it. If you are in the UK, the EU, or another jurisdiction with comparable law, you additionally have the right to receive a copy in a portable form, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to complain to your data protection authority. Residents of Quebec may complain to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec; other Canadian residents may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Email support@williamsinstruments.com and we will respond within 30 days. We will not charge you for this or make you jump through hoops.
Note that deleting your purchase record does not disable a license file you already hold — the file works offline and we have no way to reach into your machine — but it does mean we can no longer re-send it to you or verify your purchase for support or a refund.
This website
This site sets no cookies and runs no tracking scripts. We do count page visits and
downloads on our own server, so we know which pages people find useful and whether an
advert worked. Here is exactly what that means: each page loads a 1×1 invisible
image, and we record the page address, whether you are on a phone or a computer, and any
utm_ campaign tag in the link you followed. Nothing is written to your
device, no third party is involved, and we never build a profile of you.
To count how many different people visited on a given day without knowing who they are, we take your IP address and browser type, mix them with a secret and with today’s date, and store only the scrambled result. It cannot be turned back into an IP address, and because the date is part of the mix, the same visitor produces a different value tomorrow — so nobody can be followed from one day to the next. The IP address itself is never stored.
Our host also records standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security and to keep the site running. Following a purchase link takes you to our payment processor, whose own privacy policy and cookies apply from that point.
Children
SHAPR is a professional audio tool and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects what we do with information we already hold, we will email everyone who has bought a license rather than quietly amending the page.
