Privacy Policy — PixelForge by Refora Technologies

Table of Contents

1.Overview & Summary
2.What Data We Collect
3.How Your Images Are Processed
4.Third-Party Open Source Components
5.Network Activity
6.Children's Privacy
7.Changes to This Policy
8.Contact Us

1. Overview & Summary

Bottom line: PixelForge collects absolutely no personal data, no usage statistics, and no images. Everything runs locally on your machine. We have no servers receiving your data because we built the app to work entirely offline.

This Privacy Policy describes how Refora Technologies ("we", "us", or "our") handles information in connection with PixelForge, a Windows desktop application for AI-powered image upscaling and compression.

PixelForge is designed as a fully offline, standalone Windows application. It does not require an internet connection to function and does not transmit any user data or image data to external servers.

2. What Data We Collect

We collect no personal data whatsoever. The following is an explicit list of what PixelForge does not collect:

No images or image metadata — your photos, files, and folders are never read by us and never transmitted anywhere
No usage analytics or telemetry — crash reports, feature usage, or session length are not tracked
No device identifiers — we do not collect hardware IDs, IP addresses, OS version, or machine fingerprints
No account information — PixelForge requires no registration, no login, and stores no user credentials
No location or system data — no geolocation, no system profiling, no advertising identifiers

The app stores only your selected preferences (such as output folder path and chosen AI model) locally in your Windows user profile using Electron Store. This data never leaves your device.

3. How Your Images Are Processed

All image processing in PixelForge is performed 100% locally on your computer. Here is the exact pipeline:

AI Upscaling: Your images are processed by upscayl-ncnn, which runs entirely on your local GPU using Vulkan. The model weights are bundled inside the installer. No internet connection is used during upscaling.
Compression: Upscaled images are compressed using caesium-clt, a local command-line tool bundled with the installer. Again, entirely offline.
Output: Processed images are saved to a folder you select on your own machine. We have no access to output files.

At no point in the pipeline does any image data, file path, or result leave your local machine.

4. Third-Party Open Source Components

PixelForge is built on top of the following open-source tools, each with their own license. Links to full license texts are included in the installer:

upscayl-ncnn (AGPL-3.0) — AI upscaling engine by the Upscayl team
upscayl-custom-models (MIT) — AI model weights for 7 upscaling models
caesium-clt (GPL-3.0) — Image compression CLI by Matteo Paonessa
Electron (MIT) — Cross-platform desktop app framework by OpenJS Foundation

None of these components send data to external servers during normal operation within PixelForge. They operate as local executables processing files on your machine.

5. Network Activity

PixelForge does not initiate any network connections during its normal operation. The only network-related activity associated with PixelForge is:

No auto-update checks — PixelForge does not check for updates automatically. Updates are distributed manually via GitHub Releases.
No crash reporting — There is no crash reporting or diagnostic data service connected to PixelForge.
No license validation — PixelForge is free software. No license server communication occurs.

You can verify this by running PixelForge with your firewall set to block all outbound traffic — the application will continue to work perfectly, because it never needs to connect to the internet.

6. Children's Privacy

PixelForge is a general-purpose desktop tool and does not target children. Since we collect no personal data from anyone, there is no special handling required for users under 13 (COPPA) or under 16 (GDPR). No data is collected regardless of age.

7. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to the application's functionality. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and publish the updated version to our website.

Significant changes will be noted in the PixelForge GitHub Releases changelog. We encourage you to review this page periodically. Continued use of PixelForge after a policy update constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

As long as PixelForge remains an offline tool, our core promise — zero data collection — will not change.

8. Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or the PixelForge application, please contact us:

Refora Technologies

Questions about privacy, licensing, or the application

reforatech@gmail.com