Horizon: devices and licences

The general Privacy Policy covers visitors to vascend.it and users of the customer area. Horizon is an application that runs on your computer and, for licensing to work, it must recognise which machines it is installed on. Here you find exactly what it reads, what reaches us, and what never does. It applies to Horizon only: no other Vascend product collects anything described on this page.

Each Horizon subscription allows use on a defined number of devices at the same time, normally two per licence. Without a way to tell one machine from another that limit would not exist, and the price would have to account for it for everyone — including those who comply. Legal basis: performance of the contract (Art. 6.1.b GDPR) to enforce the limit you accepted when activating the product, and legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f) to prevent unauthorised licence use.

Horizon reads technical identifiers already present in the system: TPM chip identifier, system UUID and motherboard serial (SMBIOS), Windows installation identifier, serial numbers of disk, graphics card, monitor and memory, network adapter addresses, component models and manufacturers. Horizon does not read: the contents of your files, your project source code, browsing history, credentials of other programs, GPS location, contacts, or any personal document.

Values never leave your computer in clear text. Before being sent they are turned into irreversible cryptographic fingerprints (salted hashes): the original serial number cannot be derived from what we receive. No list of your hardware serial numbers exists on our servers, and none can. What exists are fingerprints that let us say «this machine is the same as yesterday» without knowing which machine it is. Values manufacturers leave as placeholders — strings such as «Default string» or sequences of zeros, identical across thousands of computers — are discarded on your computer and never sent.

Fingerprints are not compared as a single block but signal by signal, producing a similarity score. This serves you before it serves us: if you replace a disk, add memory or plug in a new monitor, your computer is still recognised as the same one and does not consume a second seat. If you switch machines, the system notices. The calculation happens on our servers: your computer sends fingerprints, not the verdict.

So you can work without a connection — travelling, on a plane, at a site with no network — Horizon stores locally a proof of entitlement signed by our servers, valid for a limited period and renewed whenever you connect. The proof contains your email address, active plan, expiry date and device fingerprint. It is cryptographically signed: the application can verify it but not alter it. It stays on your computer and is shared with no one.

The IP address you connect from is not part of the device fingerprint and is not used to identify your machine: it changes on its own as you move, and using it that way would be technically wrong as well as intrusive. It is recorded in access logs for security purposes: recognising unusual sign-ins and alerting you, as in the emails you receive when you sign in from a new device. Approximate location (country and city) is derived from the IP address using the DB-IP database, with no third-party lookup.

Device fingerprints are visible to you in your personal area, where you find the list of active machines and can disconnect one at any time. If the licence belongs to an organisation, its administrator can see how many devices are active for each team account: that is what they need to manage the seats they purchased. They see nothing of your work. This data is not shared with third parties, not sold, and feeds no commercial or advertising profiling.

The fingerprint of an active device remains while that device is linked to the licence. When you disconnect it, or when the subscription ends, it is deleted within thirty days. Access logs (date, time, IP address, outcome) are kept for twelve months for security purposes, then deleted.

Device recognition cannot be switched off: it is what makes the installation limit of your subscription enforceable, and without it we could not distinguish compliant use from use that is not. If this processing does not suit you, you may choose not to activate the product, or to cancel your subscription. All rights under Articles 15-22 GDPR — access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection — remain available and can be exercised as described in the general Privacy Policy.

If we change the identifiers collected or the purposes of processing, we will update this page and tell you inside the application before the change takes effect. The date at the top shows the last update.