Application Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 25, 2026
Who we are: KB Imaging Solutions LLC, a New York limited liability company, which publishes BiggSky.
Contact: support@biggsky.com
Postal address: Loomis, California — the full postal address is in the Privacy Policy

1. The short version

BiggSky processes your images on your own computer and transmits nothing on its own initiative. There is no background telemetry, no analytics inside the application, and no automatic upload of anything you are working on.

Two things do leave your machine, and only these two:

• A license check, which happens automatically. It carries your license details and three identifiers for the computer. It does not carry anything about your work.
• Whatever you deliberately send us — an error report you accept, or files you pick from the File menu. Nothing here happens without you choosing it.

2. The license check

When BiggSky activates, and roughly once a week thereafter when you close it, the application contacts our license server. It sends:

• your registered email address and license key;
• your operating system, the BiggSky version and the MATLAB release that build uses;
• three identifiers for the computer — a one-way hash of the network adapter address, a one-way hash of the system board identifier, and a random identifier generated when BiggSky was installed.

The first two are hashes. We store the hash, not the underlying hardware value, and it cannot be reversed to recover the original. Together the three let us recognize a computer we have seen before, which is how the limit on simultaneous machines is enforced. They tell us nothing about what is on the computer, who is using it, or where it is.

These values join the license record created when you requested or bought the license. What is in that record, and how long it is kept, is in the Website Privacy Policy, section 3.

We do not receive your IP address through the license check — the platform it runs on does not make it available to us. Our diagnostic log automatically masks email addresses and license keys before writing them.

3. What BiggSky never sends by itself

The application does not transmit, and has no mechanism to transmit without your action:

• your images, video, or captured frames;
• your file names, folder names, or project contents;
• processing results, measurements, or exported files;
• your settings or processing parameters;
• any record of what you are working on, when, or for how long.

There is no usage tracking of any kind. We cannot tell which features you use.

4. The error report

If BiggSky encounters an internal error, closing the application asks whether you want to send a report. It is a question with a No, and nothing is sent if you decline.

The report contains the exceptions only: the error identifier, the message, and the list of code locations that produced it. File paths are stripped out before the report is even written to disk, leaving only the file type. A failure opening D:\Astro\2026-03-14 M31\lights\M31_L_0042.fit is recorded as a failure opening <file removed.fit>.

Your images are not in it, your file names are not in it, and your settings are not in it. The full session log stays on your computer and is never sent automatically — the error log and the session log are separate files, and only the first is offered.

5. Sending us files yourself

The File menu has two items for when you are asking us for help with a specific dataset:

• Upload Images to Cloud — sends the image files you select.
• Upload Logs to Cloud — sends the session log. Unlike the error report, the session log does contain the names of files you have opened.

Both open a file picker. Both send only the files you pick. Neither does anything until you choose the menu item.

6. What happens to what you send

Error reports and uploaded files go to our own cloud storage, filed under your license email address so we can match them to your request. Answering that request is what they are for.

Logs and error reports are deleted after one year. That covers the automatic error report, the session logs you send from the File menu, and the diagnostic log on the license server.

Images may be kept longer, as test data. A real capture that exposed a problem is usually the only thing that can prove the problem is fixed, and two releases later there is no way to re-create it. So images you send us may be kept and used to test and improve BiggSky. When an image is kept for that reason it is separated from your email address, it stays inside the company, and it is not published, shown publicly, or used in anything we sell or advertise unless we ask you first.

You can have any of it deleted at any time, including images kept as test data. One email to support@biggsky.com is enough, and you do not have to explain why. If you would rather we did not keep your images at all, say so when you send them and we will delete them once your question is answered.

7. Working offline

Once activated, BiggSky does not need the internet. It re-checks the license roughly weekly, and it does so when you close the application rather than when you start it. If the network is unavailable it keeps running on the stored license token and shows an offline indicator. A perpetual license can stay offline for as long as the version does not change, and an annual or trial license until its expiry date. A new version needs validating once, online or through offline activation.

A machine that is never connected can be activated entirely by hand at biggsky.com/activate/validate.html. Nothing is transmitted from that machine at all.

8. Legal basis, and where your data goes

Where the UK or EU GDPR applies, our lawful basis for the license check is performance of a contract — it is how we deliver the license you asked for — and legitimate interests in preventing unlicensed use. For anything you deliberately send us, the basis is your consent, given at the moment you accept the prompt or choose the menu item, and withdrawable by asking us to delete it.

We are a United States company and your data is processed in the United States.

The hashed machine identifiers are stored against your email address. We therefore treat them as personal data and do not claim otherwise.

9. Your rights, children, and changes

You may ask us what we hold about you, correct it, receive a copy, or have it deleted — including anything covered by this page. The full statement of those rights, and the specific UK, EEA and California provisions, is in the Website Privacy Policy, section 7, and applies equally here. It is kept in one place so the two documents cannot drift apart.

The same applies to our position on children and to how we handle changes to either policy.

One point specific to this page: if the application ever begins transmitting something new, or the redaction described in section 4 is relaxed, this page changes with it and the change appears in the release notes.

10. Contact

Questions, requests and complaints: support@biggsky.com. A real person reads it.

See also the Website Privacy Policy, the Terms of Service, and the End User License Agreement.