Privacy Policy | AdFender

The short version

AdFender doesn’t track what you browse. Filtering happens on your PC, and the app never sends us the sites you visit, the pages you read or what you type into them. What you enter into AdFender itself — an email address and code to activate — and what you enter on our recover page are described below.

The app does contact our servers to check for updates, fetch filter lists and verify your license. Those requests carry your product and Windows version, which filter lists you use, running totals of ads and trackers blocked, your license status and a device identifier — and, when you activate a license, your email address and activation code. Nothing about your browsing.
Buying a license goes through Fungies, our reseller and the merchant of record for our orders. The payment provider tells us your email address, your country and the order details, and usually your name. We never see card or bank numbers.
Our website sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from third parties. Like every web server, ours keeps access logs, which are rotated automatically.
We don’t sell or share your information with advertisers or data brokers, and we never have.

Who we are

AdFender is made by AdFender Inc, a company based in California, United States. We are the “controller” of the information described here, which means we decide why and how it is used. For anything in this policy, write to info@adfender.com.

This policy covers the AdFender application for Windows and the adfender.com website, including the servers the app talks to. The license agreement you accept when you install AdFender refers to this policy in its Section 7. That section lists what the app itself sends; this policy also covers what our servers record when it does, and what you give us when you buy a license, recover one, or write to us.

What stays on your PC

AdFender works by sitting between your browsers and the internet on your own computer and filtering traffic there. Because of that design, the things an ad blocker inevitably sees are things only your PC sees:

Your browsing. The addresses you visit, the pages and their content, search terms, logins — all of it passes through AdFender on your PC and none of it is sent to us. (The sites you visit receive your requests, as they would without AdFender.) AdFender keeps no browsing history.
The activity log. AdFender can keep a log of what it blocked and allowed, so you can see which rule matched and why. It is off by default, held in memory only and discarded when you close AdFender, and it is included in nothing we receive unless you choose to put part of it in a diagnostic report (see Diagnostic reports).
A certificate cache. To filter a secure site, AdFender makes a certificate for it on your PC and keeps it for up to seven days so it can be reused. The site names in that cache are encrypted; each entry also holds a fingerprint of the site’s own certificate and the date. It stays on your PC.
An error log. AdFender writes its errors and warnings to a size-limited log file on your PC. An error about a request that failed can name the site. It stays on your PC unless you include it in a diagnostic report.
Blocked counts. The numbers on the dashboard are counted on your PC. Only running totals of ads and trackers blocked are ever reported to us (see the next section), never what was blocked or where.
Your settings, custom rules and filter lists, including any lists you subscribe to by URL. They are stored on your PC. Sensitive settings are encrypted at rest with Windows’ own data-protection API.
The certificate AdFender uses to filter HTTPS. To filter encrypted pages, AdFender creates a unique root certificate on your PC during setup and installs it in your PC’s trust store. Its private key is generated on your PC and never leaves it. We do not have it and cannot decrypt your traffic.
AdFender’s privacy features — the Do Not Sell or Share signal, stripping tracking parameters, trimming cross-site referrers — act on the requests your browser sends to websites. They are applied locally and tell us nothing.

What the app sends to us

AdFender contacts our servers when it starts, periodically while it runs, and when you ask it to check for updates. The server may suggest how soon to check again, which the app honors only within limits it sets itself (no sooner than every fifteen minutes and no later than every seven days). Each check-in carries:

About the software: the AdFender version and build, the installer edition it came from, and the display language it is set to.
About your PC: the Windows version and whether it is 32-bit, 64-bit or ARM. Not your PC’s name, your Windows user name, or any hardware details beyond the device identifier described below.
About filtering: which filter lists are enabled and which version of each you have, and how long ago they were last updated, so the server can tell you whether newer lists exist.
Counts: the running totals of ads and trackers AdFender has blocked on your PC. Two numbers, nothing about what they were.
About your license: whether you are on a trial, licensed, or expired; the device identifier; and, if you hold a license, your activation code.

When you activate a license, the app also sends the activation code and the email address you enter. Until it is licensed, the app also checks on its own whether this PC already holds a license, so a reinstalled PC recovers its license without you doing anything: for that it adds only a recovery flag to its usual check-in, with no email address. When you start a trial, it sends the device identifier and product version so the trial runs for the same period if you reinstall.

AdFender also downloads filter lists and, when there is one, a notice from us (a new version, or filter lists out of date) from our servers. Those are ordinary web requests and leave the same server-log entry any web request does (see Our website and server logs); they carry no identifier beyond that.

The exact fields, for the technically minded

Every check-in is a single request to our update server carrying these fields. Some are omitted when empty.

Field	What it is
schema	Version of the request format itself.
prdver, filever	AdFender product and file version.
oem	Which installer edition AdFender came from.
lang	The app’s display language.
osver, osarch	Windows version; x86, x64 or arm64.
request_type	Whether this is a routine check-in, a manual check, or an activation.
filter_lang, filter_state, last_update_secs	Which filter lists are on, their versions, and time since the last update.
ads_blocked, trackers_blocked	Running totals of items blocked on your PC.
license_state	Trial, licensed, or expired.
fp	The device identifier (next section).
ac	Your activation code, sent only when you hold a license.
email, renew_ac, recover	The email you enter and the code being renewed are sent only when you activate or renew a license; the recovery flag only until the app has checked whether this PC already holds a license.

The request identifies itself with the user agent AdFender/3.0. It is sent over HTTPS.

The device identifier

A license is good for a limited number of PCs, and a trial should last the same 14 days whether you reinstall or not. To make either work, AdFender needs a way to recognize the same PC again. It does this with a device identifier: a fixed-length code, made by a one-way hash, that identifies the PC and cannot be turned back into what it was made from. We store only that code.

It identifies a PC, not a person. On its own it tells us nothing about who you are; it becomes personal information only once it sits beside your email address in a license record, which is why we treat it as such and why it appears in the rights below. A significant hardware change can change the identifier, which AdFender then sees as a new PC.

Buying a license

Your payment details go to the payment provider, not to us. We do not receive, and never store, your card number, bank details or any password. Which provider handled your order depends on how and when you bought, and your receipt says which:

Orders placed through Fungies. Fungies is our online reseller and the merchant of record for these orders: it sells the license to you, takes the payment, and calculates and remits any tax due where you live — our terms and conditions set that arrangement out. When a payment completes, Fungies notifies us and we record what it sends: the email address you bought with and, where you gave it, your name; your country; the order number; the date, the item, quantity and amount, the currency and tax; and the payment status. Fungies’ own handling of your information is described in its privacy notice, linked from its checkout and your receipt.
Orders paid through PayPal, which include every order placed before Fungies. For these we are the seller and PayPal processes the payment. PayPal sends us your name, the email address you paid with, your country, a PayPal payer ID, the transaction ID, the date, the item, quantity and amount, the currency and fees, the payment status and any note left at checkout. If you pay by card without a PayPal account, PayPal’s card form also asks for a mobile phone number; PayPal collects it, and we do not store it. Its handling of your information is described in PayPal’s privacy statement.

Either way, we use that record to issue your activation code, to send the order-confirmation email — in the language suggested by the country on your receipt — to support you, to process refunds under our 30-day money-back guarantee, to handle payment disputes, and to keep the accounting and tax records businesses are required to keep. The provider that took an order stays involved in refunds and disputes on it.

If you open our activate page with an activation code and email address in the web address, our web server’s log records them like any other request; the page itself stores nothing.

Activation, trial and recovery records

For each activation code we keep: the code, the email address it was issued to, the order it came from, how many PCs it covers, and when its term started and ends. For each PC it has been activated on we keep a record holding that PC’s device identifier, when it was first activated on the code, when it last checked in, and, if it no longer holds one of the code’s places, when it was released. This is what enforces how many PCs a license covers and what lets us find your license when you have lost the email.

For each installation that checks in, our update server keeps one record per device identifier holding the most recent values of the fields listed above — version, Windows version, language, filter-list state, the two running totals — along with when the installation first and last contacted us. We use these in aggregate: how many installs are on which version, which Windows versions we must keep supporting, how much the product blocks across everyone. For a trial we keep the device identifier, the product version and the trial start date.

License recovery works two ways. Inside the app it is automatic: a PC that has held a license is found by its device identifier, and the license comes back to the app. On therecover page you give the email address and order number from your receipt, we look you up in the purchase records above, and the code is emailed to the address on the purchase. The recover page shows the same response whether or not a match was found, so it cannot be used to test whether an address has bought AdFender.

Email we send and receive

We send transactional email only: your order confirmation and license recovery from orders@adfender.com, and replies to you from support@adfender.com. We do not send newsletters or marketing email, and we do not give your address to anyone else, apart from the service providers named in Who we share it with that host our email and process orders for us.

When you email us, the conversation — your address, what you wrote and what we replied — stays in our mailbox as part of our support records. Our mailboxes are hosted by our hosting provider (see Who we share it with).

Diagnostic reports

If something is not working, AdFender can generate a diagnostic report for support. It never sends one on its own. You choose to create it, it is saved to a file you pick, and you decide whether to attach it to an email to us. Before you do, you can open it: it is plain text.

A report contains:

the AdFender version and your settings, including which filter lists are on and the list of apps you have chosen to filter;
your Windows version and edition, the install location (which can include your Windows user name), and whether AdFender runs with administrator rights;
the state of AdFender’s parts: filter lists loaded and their versions, the root certificate’s validity, whether the update server was reachable, your license status;
the names of web browsers and security software installed on your PC, and which browsers are running;
the most recent errors and warnings from AdFender’s own log, which can mention the addresses of websites where an error occurred;
optionally, if you run the live filter test, the result of that test;
optionally, if the activity log is on and you name a website that is misbehaving, the requests AdFender blocked or allowed on that site only, including their addresses and which rule matched.

We use a report only to answer your request, and it stays with the support conversation it arrived in.

Our website and server logs

adfender.com is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, uses no analytics or advertising services, and loads no fonts, scripts or images from anyone else, so no third party learns that you visited. The only form on the site, license recovery, sends the email address and order number you type to our server for the lookup described above; the server may keep a short-lived count of requests to stop abuse.

Every web server keeps an access log, and ours do: for each request to adfender.com, our download server and our update server, the log records the IP address it came from, the date and time, the address requested, the browser or app that requested it, the page that linked to it if any, and the response. The app’s check-ins, filter-list downloads and installer downloads all appear there. We use these logs to keep the servers secure and running and to count traffic in aggregate. They are rotated automatically and older logs are deleted. We do not combine them with anything else to build a picture of you.

Because the site does not track you or sell information, a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal from your browser has nothing to switch off; we treat every visitor as if they had sent one.

Why we process it, and the legal bases

Where a law such as the EU or UK GDPR asks us to name a legal basis, these are they:

To provide what you asked for (performance of a contract): delivering updates and filter lists, issuing and verifying licenses, enforcing how many PCs a license covers, processing your purchase and refunds, recovering a lost license, and answering support requests.
Our legitimate interests, balanced against yours: keeping our servers secure and detecting abuse (server logs, request limits); understanding in aggregate which versions and Windows releases are in use so we know what to support; and preventing license fraud.
Legal obligations: keeping transaction records for tax and accounting, and answering lawful requests.
Your consent, which you can withdraw: sending us a diagnostic report, and any optional information you choose to include in an email.

We do not make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not profile you.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers, ad networks or data brokers. The companies that handle it on our behalf are:

Fungies, our reseller and the merchant of record for orders placed through it, which takes those payments, handles their refunds and tax, and sends us the purchase details described above.
PayPal, which processes payments and refunds on orders paid through it, and sends us the purchase details described above.
IONOS, which hosts our servers, our databases and our email. Our servers run in the United States.

Beyond those, we disclose information only if the law requires it, to protect our rights or the safety of others, or as part of a sale or merger of the business, in which case the new owner would be bound by this policy. Microsoft’s WebView2 runtime, which AdFender uses to draw its interface and which setup downloads from Microsoft if your PC lacks it, is Microsoft software covered by Microsoft’s privacy statement.

Where it is processed

We are in California and our servers are in the United States. If you use AdFender from elsewhere, the information in this policy is transferred to and processed in the United States, whose data-protection laws differ from those where you live. We keep the information itself to the minimum described here, and we apply the same protections to it wherever you are.

How long we keep it

We do not run deletion schedules. Apart from server logs, which rotate on their own, what we hold is kept as our business records. In practice:

Information	Kept
Purchase and license records	As our sales and license records, for as long as we operate. A license can be renewed or recovered from them years later, and tax and accounting rules require transaction records to be kept.
Check-in and trial records	Kept; not deleted on a schedule.
Server access logs	Rotated automatically; older logs are deleted.
Support email and diagnostic reports	Kept in our mailboxes as support records; not deleted on a schedule.
Everything on your PC	Until you remove it. The uninstaller offers to delete AdFender’s settings, rules, counters and root certificate along with the program; your license stays on the PC either way. The activity log is held in memory only and is gone when AdFender closes. Files you save yourself, such as a diagnostic report, stay where you saved them.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, the law gives you rights over your personal information: to know what we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, and to object to how it is used. To exercise them, email info@adfender.com from the address you used with us, or include the order number from your receipt, so that we can be sure the request is yours. We will not treat you differently for asking.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, those rights also include restricting processing, receiving the information you gave us in a portable form, withdrawing consent where consent is the basis, and complaining to your data-protection authority. Note that deleting a license record deletes the license: AdFender on that PC would return to an unlicensed state.

Someone authorized to act for you may make a request on your behalf if they can show that authority and we can verify the request with you.

California and other US state notices

The California Consumer Privacy Act, and similar laws in other states, ask businesses to say which categories of personal information they have collected in the past twelve months, from where, and why. For AdFender that is:

Category	What, and from where	Used for
Identifiers	Name, email address and order number (from Fungies or PayPal, depending on how you paid); device identifier and activation code (from the app); IP address (in server logs).	Issuing and verifying licenses, receipts, support, security.
Commercial information	Purchase, refund and license records (from Fungies or PayPal, depending on how you paid, and from the app).	Providing the license, refunds, disputes, accounting.
Internet or network activity	Requests to our own websites and servers, in server logs; the app’s version, filter-list state and blocked totals. Not your browsing on other sites.	Updates, security, aggregate statistics.
Geolocation	Country of residence (from the payment provider). An IP address in a log can suggest a general area; we do not derive location from it.	Choosing the language of your receipt; tax rules.

We do not collect sensitive personal information, biometric data, precise location, or characteristics of protected classifications, and we draw no inferences about you. We have not sold or shared personal information, as those laws define it, and we do not. Because we do not sell or share, there is no opt-out to offer; we honor Global Privacy Control signals as described above. Your rights to know, delete and correct, and how to use them, are in Your rights.

Children

AdFender is not directed at children, and the license agreement requires you to be an adult where you live to accept it. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under sixteen. If you believe a child has given us information, tell us and we will delete it.

Security

Every connection between AdFender and our servers, and to our website, is encrypted. Payment details never pass through us. Settings on your PC that matter are encrypted with Windows’ own data-protection API, most of them for your Windows account and a few shared ones for the PC as a whole. With Install for me only, the key AdFender uses for HTTPS filtering is locked to your Windows account; with Install for all users, it is protected for the PC instead, so every account on it can use it. Access to our servers and records is limited to the people who run AdFender. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your information we will tell you as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

When we change what we collect or how we use it, we update this page and the date at the top. The date is the record: if it has not moved, neither has the substance.

Contact

Questions, requests and complaints about privacy: info@adfender.com. Help with the product: support@adfender.com. AdFender Inc, California, United States.