Privacy Policy

This privacy policy explains how SoundHive Ltd, registered in England and Wales with company number 16244113 and registered office at 1 Dellwood Park, Caversham, Reading, RG4 7NX ("SoundHive", "we", "us"), collects and uses your personal data when you visit soundhiveplugins.com, register a customer account on portal.soundhiveplugins.com, or purchase and use our audio plugins.

For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, SoundHive is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, please contact us at contact@soundhiveplugins.com.

The data we collect depends on how you interact with us:

• Website visitors: IP address, browser type, pages viewed, and basic analytics. Cookies and similar technologies set by our hosting and analytics providers (see "Cookies" below).
• Newsletter subscribers: email address, optional name, the date you opted in, and the source of the subscription (e.g. footer signup, post-purchase opt-in).
• Customer-portal account holders: name, email address, hashed password, your stored multi-factor authentication factors (if you enable 2FA), and your account preferences.
• Customers: order history, the products you have licensed, license keys, machine activations associated with those licenses, marketing consent records, and any refund or support history. Payment-card details are never seen or stored by us. They are handled directly by Stripe.
• Plugin users: when you activate a SoundHive plugin on a machine, our licensing service receives a hardware fingerprint derived from non-identifying device attributes and the activation timestamp, linked to your license. We use this only to enforce the per-license machine limit.
• Support correspondence: any messages you send us, attachments you provide, and the email addresses involved in the thread.

Under UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for each use of your personal data. We rely on:

• Performance of a contract: to sell you a license, deliver the plugin, manage your activations, provide updates and respond to support requests.
• Legal obligation: to keep records required by UK tax, accounting and consumer-protection law.
• Legitimate interests: to operate the website, detect fraud and license abuse, maintain security, and improve our products. We only rely on this basis where your interests and fundamental rights do not override ours.
• Consent: for marketing emails, non-essential cookies, and any other use where consent is required. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting prior processing.

We use a small number of trusted providers ("sub-processors") to run our service. They process your data only on our instructions and under written data-processing terms:

• Stripe Payments Europe Ltd: payment processing. Stripe is an independent controller for fraud-prevention purposes and a processor for purchase data. See stripe.com/privacy.
• Keygen: license-key generation and activation enforcement. Receives your license ID, email address, and the hardware fingerprints of the machines you have activated.
• Brevo (Sendinblue SAS): newsletter and marketing emails. Receives your email address, optional name, and consent metadata only if you have opted in.
• Google LLC (Google Analytics): website analytics. If you consent to analytics cookies, Google may receive page views and interaction events to help us understand how the site is used. If you also allow advertising, and we enable Google Signals, Google may provide aggregate demographics and interests reporting. Google acts as an independent controller for its use of this data.
• Meta Platforms, Inc. (Facebook): advertising measurement and optimization. If you consent to advertising cookies, Meta may receive page and purchase information together with browser and click identifiers so it can attribute sales to ads and improve campaign performance. Meta acts as an independent controller for its use of this data.
• Infrastructure & transactional email providers: we use third-party providers for server hosting (for soundhiveplugins.com, portal.soundhiveplugins.com and api.soundhiveplugins.com) and for transactional emails such as order confirmations, password resets and license delivery. Current providers are listed in our latest sub-processor register, available on request from contact@soundhiveplugins.com.

Some of these providers are located outside the UK. Where personal data is transferred internationally we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or on adequacy regulations made by the UK government.

We keep personal data only for as long as we need it:

• Account & license data: for as long as your account is active and your license is in use, plus a reasonable period afterwards for support and audit purposes.
• Order & invoice records: six years from the end of the relevant tax year, as required by HMRC.
• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete your address.
• Support correspondence: up to three years from the last contact, to help us reference previous issues.
• Website analytics: in aggregate, for up to 26 months.

You have a number of rights under UK GDPR. You can ask us to:

• Provide a copy of the personal data we hold about you (right of access).
• Correct anything that is inaccurate (right to rectification).
• Delete your data where it is no longer needed (right to erasure).
• Restrict or object to certain uses of your data.
• Receive a portable copy of data you have provided us (right to data portability).
• Withdraw consent for any processing that relies on it.

Please note that some rights are not absolute. For example, we may need to keep invoice records for tax purposes even if you ask us to delete them. To make any of these requests, email contact@soundhiveplugins.com. We will respond within one month.

If you are not happy with our response you have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies:

• Strictly necessary: to keep you signed in to the customer portal and to remember your basket/checkout state. These cannot be switched off.
• Analytics: to measure how the site is used. We use Google Analytics 4 only with your consent.
• Advertising: to understand which ads lead to visits and purchases and to improve our advertising. We currently use technology supplied by Meta Platforms, Inc. and may enable Google advertising features. For UK and EEA visitors these technologies are not loaded unless you accept. You can withdraw or change your choice at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer; withdrawal stops future advertising events.
• Referral and affiliate links: if you arrive through a customer referral link (?ref=) or an affiliate link (?aff=), we note the code and the time of the click so the referrer can be credited and any referral discount applied. The code is passed to our checkout and account-registration pages with your request. We only keep it in your browser (local storage key soundhive.referral.v1, for 90 days from the click) if you allow advertising; otherwise it is forgotten when you leave or reload the page. A newer referral or affiliate link replaces an older one, and declining or withdrawing advertising consent deletes the stored code.
• Payment: Stripe sets its own cookies during checkout to detect fraud and complete payments.

We use industry-standard measures including TLS (HTTPS) for all traffic, hashed passwords, two-factor authentication options, access controls on internal systems, and routine backups. No system is perfectly secure, but we take our responsibility for your data seriously and will notify you and the ICO of any breach that affects your rights, in line with our legal obligations.

Our products and services are not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top of the page will always reflect the latest version. Material changes will be announced by email to account holders before they take effect.

For any questions about this policy, or to exercise any of your rights, email contact@soundhiveplugins.com or write to us at 1 Dellwood Park, Caversham, Reading, RG4 7NX.