Privacy Policy

1. Responsible Party

The party responsible for data processing on this website is Marc Schiller, Nächstmatten 50, 79232 March, Germany. Email: contact@deskora.de

2. Collection and Storage of Personal Data

When you visit our website, information is automatically collected by the server log file (e.g., IP address, browser type, time of access). This data is not merged with other data sources.

3. Cookies

This website uses cookies solely to store your language preference. No tracking or advertising cookies are used. You can opt out of cookies via the cookie banner.

4. Contact Form

When you send us a message via the contact form, your details (name, email, message) are stored to process your inquiry and forwarded by email. No data is shared with third parties.

5. Your Rights

You have the right to access, rectify, delete, and restrict the processing of your personal data. Please contact us at contact@deskora.de.

Activity recording in the application

Deskora's Timeline tab shows what you worked on and when. That needs a record, and a record of your work is exactly the kind of data that deserves a clear answer to four questions: what is recorded, where does it go, how long does it stay, and how do you stop it. All four are answered here, and all four are under your control inside the application.

What is recorded

Files you open, create, change, download or delete – with their path, the time, and the program that touched them – and how long programs were in the foreground. Temporary files, caches, log files, build intermediates and system folders are deliberately excluded: they would drown out everything you actually did. Deskora records no keystrokes, no window contents, no screenshots, no browsing history and no clipboard.

Where the data is stored

In a single readable text file on your own PC: %APPDATA%\Deskora\activity.tsv. It is never transmitted, never uploaded, never shared, and it is not part of a crash report. It is plain text on purpose – a promise that data stays local is one you should be able to check by simply opening the file.

How long it is kept

90 days by default. You can set 7, 30, 90, 180 or 365 days under Settings > Activity. Anything older is deleted automatically; there is also a hard upper limit on the number of entries, so the file cannot grow without bound.

How to switch it off or delete it

Directly in the Timeline tab: one switch stops the recording entirely, one button deletes the whole history, another deletes just the period you are looking at. Deleting removes the file from your PC – it is not merely hidden from the view. Under Settings > Activity you can additionally name folders and programs that are never recorded; that rule takes effect immediately and also removes what was already recorded from those folders.

What Deskora does not do with it

The activity record is used for one thing: showing you your own timeline on your own PC. It is not analysed, not scored, not sent to us, not sold, and not used for advertising or profiling. Deskora has no user accounts and no analytics service that this data could feed.

Assigning unknown file types and programs with AI

Deskora assigns files and installed programs to a group locally, using Windows metadata. When a file type or a program remains unknown, Deskora asks a server once, and that server determines the group with the help of an AI language model. What is transmitted, who processes it and how long it is stored is set out here in full.

What is transmitted

For file types: the file extension and the details stored for it in the Windows registry – the associated program, the type description and the icon file. For programs: the name of the installed application and the file name of its executable, for example firefox.exe. For technical reasons your device also sends its IP address to our server when the connection is established; it is not used for the classification and is not stored together with the request.

Who processes the data

The request goes to our server at www.deskora.de and is forwarded from there to the programming interface of OpenAI (OpenAI, L.L.C., San Francisco, USA), which operates the language model. This involves a transfer of data to the USA. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a usable automatic classification of previously unknown file types and programs, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.

How long it is stored

Request and answer are cached in a database on our server so that the same file extension or the same program does not have to be looked up again. This cache contains no reference to you, your device or your installation: it holds only the details named above and the group name that was returned. You can request deletion of individual entries at any time by email to contact@deskora.de.

What is never transmitted

No file names, no file or folder paths, no file contents, no version numbers, no user name, no email address, no device or hardware identifier. File search, full-text search in documents and the activity recording never send anything to a server – they work solely on your own PC.

When this happens and how to prevent it

Only what Deskora does not already know is looked up – in practice mainly shortly after installation and when you set up new software. There is currently no separate setting to switch off this request alone. Without an internet connection it does not happen at all: the entries concerned are placed in the group Others, and everything else continues to work unchanged.

No administrator rights required

Deskora runs at the normal Windows integrity level. Starting it does not show a User Account Control prompt, and a program you launch from Deskora runs with your ordinary user account - not as administrator.

Why elevated rights are involved at all

Deskora finds files instantly because it reads the NTFS master file table and the USN change journal directly instead of walking every folder. Windows only permits that for members of the Administrators group. This is the single reason Deskora ever needed elevated rights.

A small service does that work - and nothing else

That one task runs in a separate, deliberately minimal Windows service called DeskoraIndexService. It reads the master file table and the change journal, keeps the file index current and hands the finished index to the user interface.

What the service explicitly does not do

It has no user interface. It performs no network access of any kind. It starts no programs. It opens no file and no path on request from the user interface - it never accepts a path from it at all. It parses no file contents. This boundary is documented in the source code and enforced by an automated test.

On a shared computer

The service indexes every fixed drive, but it only shares the entries your own account is allowed to see. It checks that against your Windows permissions before handing anything over. File names belonging to other user accounts stay invisible.

Works without administrator rights

If the service is not installed or not running - on a managed company computer, for example - Deskora scans the folders directly instead. The search keeps working. Building the index takes longer and live updates are unavailable; Deskora says so instead of leaving the search silently empty.

Running something as administrator on purpose

Right-click an entry in the Software view and choose Run as administrator. Windows asks for confirmation, exactly as it does everywhere else.