Privacy

1. The daily version check — all of it

This is the only outbound request an installed copy makes on its own. When you start the app — and at most once every 24 hours — it fetches a public file, updates/feed.json, from balancedsum.com, so the Settings screen can tell you whether a newer version has been released. It is the same list of versions the release notes page shows you, published at its own address for a reason given below, and it is identical for everyone who asks for it.

What the request contains: nothing but the request. No query string, no identifier, no cookie, no headers we add. The code hands its HTTP client a plain address and a five-second timeout, and that is the entire call. In particular it does not send your version number, an install ID, a machine name, a company name, a license key (there isn't one), or a single figure, account, or word from your books. The comparison happens on your side: your computer downloads the public list of versions and compares it against the one it's running, so which version you're on never leaves your machine either.

What it necessarily reveals: the things any web request reveals, which we can't make disappear by wishing. The server that hosts the file sees an IP address, the time, and the fact that the version list was asked for — the same as if you had typed the address into a browser. The only other thing traveling with it is the generic identification Node's own HTTP client attaches to every request it makes; it identifies the software as node, not as you.

And we count it — here is precisely what that means. The version list has its own address, /updates/feed.json, separate from the releases.json the release notes page reads, and the two serve the identical document. The split exists so that a person browsing this website isn't counted as a copy of the software: checks arriving at that address are installed copies asking, and that number is the only thing we know about how much this is used. Each check adds 1 to a running total and 1 to that day's total, alongside the version this site was advertising at the time. It is not the version you are running — your copy never says, exactly as the paragraph above describes, and we would rather have a less useful number than change that. Nothing else is stored. Not your IP address, not your machine, not the time of your particular check, and nothing that could separate your check from anyone else's, or from your own yesterday. There is no row with your name on it because there are no rows.

The check itself downloads nothing and installs nothing. It produces a sentence in Settings and stops there. If a new version exists, going and getting it is a button you press — described next — and installing it is a second, separate button.

How to switch it off, permanently: open Settings → Updates and untick "Check for new versions once a day." No network call is then attempted at all — the feature isn't "unreachable," it's off, no request is ever made, and so there is nothing to count either. With it off, Balanced Sum makes no outbound requests whatsoever: it works exactly the same with no internet connection, forever. Your choice is kept in a small file outside the program folder, so it survives every update. If the check is left on and the request fails — you're offline, the site is down — the app carries on silently and never retries at you.

You do not have to take our word for any of this. It is one plain HTTPS request to one fixed address, so any firewall or network monitor on your machine will show you exactly what leaves and where it goes — and you can open the file it asks for, the same list of versions, in your own browser right now.

2. Downloading an update — only when you press the button

If the check finds a newer version, Settings offers to fetch it. Nothing happens until you click. When you do, Balanced Sum downloads the installer from balancedsum.com, checks what arrived against the checksum published with that release, and refuses to run anything that doesn't match. It is then still not installed: applying it is a separate button, and the installer only opens after you close Balanced Sum — with the same accept, next, next, done wizard you saw the first time, which you can still cancel. Nothing installs itself here, at any point.

What the request contains: nothing but the request. Exactly the same bare shape as the version check above — no query string, no identifier, no cookie, no headers we add, and nothing from your books. It is a plain download of a fixed, public file: the identical file everyone who updates gets, and the identical file you would get by clicking the button on the download page. Nothing about these downloads is counted; the only two things counted anywhere are named further up this page, and this isn't one of them.

You can ignore all of it and update by hand instead — download the installer from this website and run it — or switch the check off and never be told. Your books are not in the program folder, so no update of either kind can reach them.

3. One more, only if you run Balanced Sum from its source code

This one does not apply to the installer and can be skipped by almost everybody. The installed program carries PostgreSQL inside it. A source checkout — a developer running the code from the repository or the release source zip — doesn't, so the first time it starts it downloads the database: a single file of about 25 MB, from balancedsum.com. It checks what arrived against a checksum written into the code before unpacking a byte of it, and refuses to use anything that doesn't match.

Same bare request as the other two, and it happens once — the copy is kept and reused on every launch afterwards. Nothing about these downloads is counted either. You do not have to take our word for it: the source you're running contains the code that does this, in server/src/localdb/, including the exact address and checksum it will accept, written down in manifest.ts before you ever run it.