Building Information Researchers and Developers OÜ Privacy Statement

Last Updated on 2024-05-22

Your privacy is sacred at Building Information Researchers and Developers OÜ (hereafter referred to as BIRD OÜ), an Autodesk Authorized software development company based in Estonia (and in turn in the European Union since Estonia is a member of the EU) that is behind the development, maintenance, marketing and sales of the Bird Tools package of Autodesk Revit Add-Ins, and that is responsible of the maintenance and operation of the website https://www.birdtools-developers.com. This Privacy Statement explains if, when, and how personal data is collected, stored, and used by any of the services and apps provided by BIRD OÜ.

We’ve kept the following privacy statement as simple as possible to be completely transparent, not to do what companies that base their revenue on personal data collection and sales do (one example would be Meta), which consists of actually mentioning all their privacy breaches in their privacy statements and making sure to make these statements as complicated and long as possible so that no one actually reads them when agreeing to their policies.

Our apps can be classified into two categories:

Free Apps

No user data is gathered at all by any of our Free Apps. Some of our free apps use Autodesk APS (a.k.a Forge) web APIs to achieve some advanced functionalities related to BIM 360/ACC, so any internet connection required by some of our free apps is to solely communicate with Autodesk services that the user would already be using. If you have concerns about these Autodesk services, please refer to Autodesk’s privacy statements.

We do ask for and store the email addresses of the downloading users for both our free and subscription-based apps, only to send them the download links to the latest version of our installers (which are all digitally signed by the way) as soon as they submit the download request, whether that request is submitted on the Autodesk App Store or on our own App Store. Those email addresses may only be used again in case there are critical updates or news that may affect our users that we must send over (ex: a scheduled interruption of service, notifications about trial or subscription status change such as expiry, an update to this privacy statement…). We do not use them to send advertising emails or spam mail at all and don’t have plans to use them for email marketing. In case that changes in the future, which is very unlikely as that is a marketing method that we do not believe in, this privacy statement will be updated. The most important part is that you can rest assured that the data that we access and store, which solely consists of your email address, will never be sold nor leaked.

Subscription Based Apps

Subscription Based Apps need to check the user's email address once per session to make sure he/she has valid access. The app in question would retrieve the logged in email address using the APS (a.k.a Autodesk Forge) Authentication APIs, and then would check whether it has valid access against a database hosted on our servers, which contains information about the user that he/she willingly submits when he/she subscribes. This solely consists of the user's email address and his/her subscription end date. The same, strict, no spam, no data sales policy that is applicable to our free apps is also applicable to our subscription-based apps.

Then...How is my personal data handled?

It is important to know that any piece of information involved is temporarily collected for the purpose of the entitlement check and based on the user's own approval, and that it is never used, neither by BIRD OÜ, nor by any third-party server hosting the entitlement system, except for the purpose of the entitlement check. All data related to any user can be irreversibly destroyed at any time upon the user’s request.

One Exception – Raven

All aspects related to the installer download requests and entitlement checks that were enumerated throughout the sections above are also applicable to Raven. However, some additional communication and storage processes are also required for the operation of Raven.

Raven, which is in essence an instant messenger used to allow users to monitor worksharing activity for cloud services such as BIM 360/ACC and Revit Server that aren’t supported by the built-in Revit worksharing monitor, would send, store, and receive data related to its subscribers’ worksharing activity (synchronize with central/reload latest/user opening a cloud model/user closing a cloud model), and any custom messages that the user may send over to the project members.

Storing these messages on our servers is crucial for the operation of the app. If there were a different technical way, we’d be the first in line.

These messages are, however, strongly encrypted when sent and received, anonymously stored on our own servers, never accessed by any person or process other than Raven’s backend servers which handle them automatically based on received requests that originate out of Raven’s desktop counterpart, and can be completely and irreversibly eliminated from our database at any time based on the user’s request, and of course, are never leaked, sent nor sold to any third-party entity.

Finally, does this website use cookies?

As of this date, this website doesn’t use any cookies. If that changes in the future due to any technical requirements, this privacy statement will be updated.

As a final note, please always remember: any concerns, requests, questions, or thoughts you may have, feel free to contact us at info@birdtools-developers.com.