Screenshot 42
Privacy policy
As of November 2026. The German version is binding.
In short: this website loads nothing from third-party servers – even fonts and videos are on our own server. Only if you choose “Accept” in the cookie notice do we use Google Analytics to count how the website is used. The Screenshot 42 program works on your computer: screenshots, recognised text and translations are never uploaded.
1. Controller
André Lucas, Epic Art and Sound
Hopfenmarkt 3, 06449 Aschersleben, Germany
Email: info@screenshot42.de
2. Visiting this website and downloads
The website is hosted by STRATO AG, Otto-Ostrowski-Straße 7, 10249 Berlin, Germany, on our behalf (data processing under Art. 28 GDPR). Whenever a page or file is requested – including downloading the program and its updates – the server automatically logs: IP address, date and time, requested address, amount of data transferred, status code, the previously visited page (referrer) as well as browser and operating system.
Purpose: delivering the site, keeping it secure (e.g. detecting attacks) and finding errors. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a secure, working service (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR). The data is not combined with other data. Strato anonymises IP addresses in the logs and keeps the logs for six weeks; after that they are deleted.
3. Visitor statistics with Google Analytics – only with your consent
If you choose “Accept” in the cookie notice, we use Google Analytics 4, a service of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (“Google”). This shows us how the website is used – for example which page or search engine visitors come from, which sections and guides they look at and whether they click “Download” or “Buy” – so that we can improve it.
For this, Google stores cookies in your browser (_ga and _ga_…, lifetime up to two years) and processes: pages viewed and clicks, time and duration of the visit, the previously visited page, device, browser, operating system, screen size and language, and the approximate location (country, region) that Google derives from your IP address. According to Google, Google Analytics does not store the IP address itself. Google signals and advertising features are turned off.
The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR, § 25 (1) TDDDG). We have a data processing agreement with Google. Google may also process the data in the USA (Google LLC); Google LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for which an adequacy decision of the European Commission applies. The data is deleted after 2 months. More in Google’s privacy policy.
Without your consent the website loads nothing from Google. Only your browser remembers your choice (in local storage) so that the notice does not appear on every visit. You can change or withdraw it at any time via “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page .
4. Contact by email or contact form
If you write to us, we process your address and the content of your message in order to answer it. With the contact form, this is your email address, the message and – if you give it – your name; the form sends them to us as an email via our web space at Strato (see 2.) and does not store them there. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR if it concerns a purchase or the use of Screenshot 42, otherwise Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR. We delete messages once the request has been dealt with, unless statutory retention obligations (e.g. under commercial or tax law) apply.
5. Buying a licence via Freemius
“Buy” leads to the Freemius checkout (checkout.freemius.com), operated by Freemius, Inc., 4023 Kennett Pike, Wilmington, DE 19807, USA. Freemius sells the licence as authorised reseller (merchant of record) and processes the purchase details for this: name, email address, billing address, country, payment details and IP address. Payment is handled by Stripe or PayPal. For transfers outside the EU, Freemius relies on the EU Commission’s standard contractual clauses. Details are in the Freemius privacy policy.
From Freemius we receive name, email address, country as well as order and licence details. We use them to provide the licence, to help with questions and to meet legal obligations (Art. 6 (1) (b) and (c) GDPR), and keep them as long as commercial and tax law requires.
6. What Screenshot 42 transmits
- Screenshots, drawings, recognised text and translations: stay on your computer. The program only captures the screen when you start it, and only saves when you tell it to, and only to your folders. There is no account and no cloud.
- Text recognition: runs on your computer with the text recognition built into Windows or macOS.
- Translation: runs on your computer. The first time you translate in each direction, the program downloads a language model once, first from our copy at Hugging Face (huggingface.co, Hugging Face, Inc., USA) and, if that is not reachable, from Mozilla’s source (firefox-settings-attachments.cdn.mozilla.net, Mozilla Corporation, USA). The respective provider receives your IP address and the names of the files downloaded, never your text (Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR).
- Keyboard and permissions: if you set a Win key combination or the Print Screen key to start the program, it watches the keyboard to recognise exactly that key; it does not remember anything you type. On the Mac it uses the “Screen & System Audio Recording” permission only for your captures and “Accessibility” only to turn the mouse wheel when capturing long pages.
- Trial period: the program sends no licence data.
- Licence: on activation the program sends the licence key, a device label, a device ID and its version number to the Freemius licence interface (api.freemius.com); in addition, and after every update, the operating system with its version and the selected language, so that we can see which version runs on which computer when you contact us. The device label consists of the computer name and a short code; code and device ID are derived from the Windows or macOS device ID and do not allow it to be reconstructed. After that the program checks the licence at start-up and once a day with licence key, device ID and activation ID. On Freemius and the transfer to the USA see 5. Purpose: checking the licence (Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR). Note: you can change the computer name in the system settings if it contains your name.
- Updates: the program asks screenshot42.de for new versions and downloads them from there. This creates the server logs described in section 2.
- Error reports – only with your consent: if the program runs into an error, by default it asks whether it may send us an error report; “Show details” shows exactly what would be sent. In the settings under “Error reports” you can choose “Automatic” or “Never” instead. The report contains the program version, operating system, language and the error message with the place in the program; file paths, user and computer names are made unrecognisable. Screenshots, recognised text, clipboard contents and folder names are never included. The recipient is the Sentry service (Functional Software, Inc., USA); reports are stored in Sentry’s data centre in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, without the IP address, and deleted after 90 days at the latest. For any access from the USA, Sentry is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for which an adequacy decision of the European Commission applies. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR); you can withdraw it at any time by choosing “Never”.
- No statistics: Screenshot 42 does not track how you use it.
7. Your rights
You have the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18) and data portability (Art. 20). You may object at any time to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21). You can withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7 (3)). An email to info@screenshot42.de is enough.
You can also lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, for example the authority responsible for us, the Landesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz Sachsen-Anhalt, Otto-von-Guericke-Straße 34a, 39104 Magdeburg, Germany (Art. 77 GDPR).
No automated decision-making within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR takes place.