SpotCheck Privacy Policy

Version 1.0, effective 28 September 2026.

SpotCheck is made by Highland Park Electric Co, Inc., a California corporation that operates under the trade name Vault Buddy ("we", "us"). This policy covers the SpotCheck application for macOS. The vaultbuddy.co website, including SpotCheck's download page, is covered by the Vault Buddy Privacy Policy, which is a separate document about a separate product.

The short version

SpotCheck has no account, no sign-in and no telemetry. The files you check, their names, their contents, the results, your notes and your sign-offs stay on your computer. We never receive them. The only thing SpotCheck sends us is a check for a new version.

1. What stays on your computer

Everything you work with:

• The video and caption files you open, and everything measured from them.
• Every result, report, still and export. Exports are written only where you choose to put them.
• Your notes, drawings and sign-offs, stored in SpotCheck's own storage on your computer and keyed to a file's content so they survive a rename. They are not written beside your media.
• The picture of a slate frame, read on your computer using the macOS Vision framework.
• Caption spelling, checked with the macOS spell checker, which may use the languages and learned words you have configured in macOS.

None of this is uploaded, and there is no setting that would upload it. For anyone checking unreleased work under an NDA, this is the point of the product.

2. The update check, which is the only network activity

SpotCheck checks for a new version when it launches and about every six hours while it runs. Section 3 of the End User License Agreement describes that behaviour and your consent to it.

The check is an ordinary HTTPS request to vaultbuddy.co. It carries the version of SpotCheck and the version of macOS you are running, so the server can answer with an update that fits. Like every request to every website, it also reveals the IP address you are connecting from.

When we answer it, we record:

• Which product asked, and the SpotCheck and macOS versions.
• The request's user agent string, which is where those versions come from.
• A short install hash, not your IP address. It is a salted SHA-256 of your IP address, the user agent and the current calendar month, truncated. Your IP address is used to compute it and is never written down. The hash changes by itself each month, so it cannot follow a machine from one month to the next.

We use this to count how many installs exist and which versions and macOS releases are in use, so we know what to keep working. We do not use it to identify you, we do not combine it with anything else, and there is nothing in it that names you or your work.

We do not sell or share this information, we run no advertising or cross-site tracking of any kind, and we do not use anything here to train machine learning models.

3. What we never collect

No account, no email address, no name, no payment details. No file names, file contents, measurements, verdicts, reports, notes or sign-offs. No crash reports, and no usage analytics from inside the application.

If that ever changes it will be opt-in, you will be asked before anything is sent, and the End User License Agreement will say so before the version that does it ships.

4. Your rights

Because we hold no account and nothing that identifies you, there is usually nothing for us to look up, correct or delete. If you are in California, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland and you want to exercise a right over personal data, or you simply want to know what we hold, write to hello@vaultbuddy.co and we will answer.

The lawful basis for recording the update check is our legitimate interest in knowing which versions are in use so we can support them. You may object to that at any time by writing to us. You can also stop the checks by quitting SpotCheck or removing it, and you have the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.

5. Children

SpotCheck is a professional tool, is not directed to anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

6. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If we make a material change we will show it in the app, on the download page, or both, before or when the version it applies to is installed. The version and date at the top of this page reflect the current revision.

7. Contact

Questions about this policy or about SpotCheck's data handling: hello@vaultbuddy.co

Highland Park Electric Co, Inc., doing business as Vault Buddy.