FAQ Answer:
What about privacy and security?

Being paranoid in this age of viruses and ransomware is a good idea, which is why this page exists. The good news is that none of its many users have reported any security or privacy problems to me. Still, here are some things that may lessen your concerns if you are worried about security or privacy (although the usual no guarantees caveat applies).

Positives

  1. Timelapse executables downloaded from this web site are:
    • located on my (reasonably secure https) university web site;
    • based on source code that only I wrote and have access to;
    • personally compiled on my own reasonably secure machine;
    • zipped and placed on the web site by me;
    • not placed on any external mirrors.
  2. When run:
    • Timelapse does not do anything requiring elevated security, i.e., it runs under the standard user level.
    • It creates, reads and writes files only in a folder (and its sub-folders) as directed by the user, i.e., to save tagged image into an SQL database file, to create backup files in a sub-folder, etc. No files are written outside that folder or its subfolders, and no images or data is shared.
    • It stores benign user settings in the registry so it can restore settings when the user opens timelapse again (e.g., window location).
    • It only attempts one external network connection (aside from web page links). Timelapse reads a file on my website to see if a software update is available. If so, you are informed via a dialog box. However, downloading any updates is a completely manual process done at your discretion after visiting the web site’s download page.
    • Timelapse does not request, store or look up any personal information about the user, domain, organization etc.

Possible concerns (just to be completely transparent)

  1. Timelapes is unsigned, simply because getting a yearly license is too expensive for free software.
  2. Timelapse uses zip files instead of an install package as this (normally) allows users to install it on locked down machines.
  3. Timelapse incorporates several 3rd party dlls (e.g., Xceed WPF Toolkit), and executables (e.g., ffmpeg, Exiftool). I have checked to ensure that the authors are reputable and that there are no reported problems.
  4. Timelapse includes a link to install and run EcoAssist / MegaDetector image recognition system (I have collaborated with their creators). This just points to the EcoAssist web site, where it is totally under your discretion to install its software.