Terms of Service

Cyclone Fortress aka Cyclone is professional-grade data-security software for macOS — a complete privacy and security toolkit. It performs genuine low-level operations: military-standard secure erasure with forensic-resistant overwrite patterns, free-space and full-drive wiping, and cryptographic file shredding. It also hardens your whole system — scanning for malware, monitoring and blocking network connections with a built-in firewall, auditing your privacy exposure, revealing exactly which apps, browser extensions, and AI assistants and agents can access your files and system, and creating AES-256-encrypted vaults for your most sensitive data. This is powerful, privilege-level software, not a casual utility, and that power is precisely why the terms below matter. Please read them carefully before use.

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a legal agreement between you and Stingray International FZ-LLC, a Free Zone Limited Liability Company registered in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates and the publisher of Cyclone Fortress aka Cyclone (“we,” “us,” or “the Company”), governing your download, installation and use of the Cyclone Fortress application for macOS (the “App”). By installing or using the App you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not install or use the App.

Cyclone Fortress is a powerful security utility. Some of its operations permanently destroy data and cannot be undone. Please read the “Irreversible operations and your responsibility” and “Encrypted vaults and passwords” sections carefully — they describe the most important risks of using the App.

1. Licence to use the App

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, revocable licence to install and use the App on one Mac at a time per licence key, for your own personal or internal business purposes. You may move your licence to a different Mac that you own or control — see clause 4. The licence is personal to you and may not be transferred or assigned to another person. We retain all ownership of the App.

You agree that you will not:

• Copy, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, redistribute or otherwise make the App available to others, except as expressly permitted here.
• Reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the App, or attempt to derive its source code, except to the limited extent applicable law expressly permits despite this restriction.
• Circumvent, disable or tamper with the App's licensing, activation, trial limits or security mechanisms, or use a licence key you are not entitled to.
• Remove or alter any proprietary notices, or use the App in any way not permitted by these Terms or applicable law.

2. Eligibility and system requirements

The App runs on macOS 13 (Ventura) or later. It is distributed only as a notarized direct download signed with an Apple Developer ID, and is not available through the Mac App Store. You are responsible for meeting the system requirements and for the security and administration of your own Mac, including any administrator password the App asks for to perform privileged operations.

3. Free trial, pricing and payment

Cyclone Fortress offers a 7-day free trial with full access. After the trial, continued use of the paid features requires a $45 licence valid for 12 months. This is a one-time purchase, not an automatically-recurring subscription — we do not store your card to charge you again, and there is no surprise auto-renewal.

Renewal is optional. Renewing for a further 12 months keeps product updates and the latest malware-detection signatures coming; you may choose not to renew at any time. Prices are stated exclusive of any taxes that may apply in your jurisdiction. We may change our prices for future purchases, but a change will not affect a licence you have already bought during its term.

4. Licence keys and activation

When you purchase, you receive a licence key that is cryptographically signed and bound to the Mac on which it is activated. One Mac may be active at a time. You may move your licence to a different Mac by deactivating it on the Mac you are leaving — click the Settings gear in the App's dock, or open Settings > About > License, and choose Deactivate License — up to a limit of 3 activations within the 12-month term. Returning to a Mac that the licence has already activated does not use up another activation.

Activation and periodic validation require internet access. The App registers your device with our server when you activate, and a new activation must receive one confirmation within 72 hours. After that the App re-confirms roughly every 45 days, so it continues to work offline between checks. If it cannot reach our server within that period, the App switches to a limited, view-only mode until it can re-confirm; full access is restored automatically on reconnection, and no new purchase is needed.

Your licence key is personal to you — keep it confidential and do not share or publish it. We may suspend or revoke a licence that we reasonably believe has been obtained or used fraudulently, shared in breach of these Terms, or charged back.

5. When a trial or licence ends

If your 7-day trial ends without a purchase, or a purchased licence reaches the end of its 12-month term without renewal, the App enters a limited mode: it still opens and you retain view-only access, but destructive and premium actions are unavailable, and malware-signature updates pause. You will still be able to mount and open encrypted vaults you previously created; creating new vaults requires an active licence. Buying or renewing a licence restores full access.

6. Refunds

Because a free 7-day trial lets you fully evaluate the App before paying, we encourage you to use it. Where a refund is required by applicable consumer-protection law, we will honour it. For other refund requests, please contact support and we will consider them in good faith.

7. Irreversible operations and your responsibility

Cyclone Fortress can permanently and irreversibly destroy data. Secure erasure, file shredding, free-space wiping, full-drive wiping, disk formatting and cloning over a destination are designed so the affected data cannot be recovered by us, by you, or by any recovery tool. Once you confirm such an operation, the data is gone.

You are solely responsible for:

• Selecting the correct files, folders, drives or volumes before confirming any destructive action, and for keeping current backups of anything you may want to keep.
• Ensuring you own, or are authorized to erase, every device and every piece of data you act on, and that doing so is lawful.
• Any loss of data, downtime or other consequences arising from your use of the App's destructive features.

The App includes safeguards — for example, your boot drive is protected from full-drive wipes and destination cloning, and certain risky areas are report-only. These safeguards are aids, not guarantees, and do not relieve you of the responsibility to verify your selection.

8. Encrypted vaults and passwords

Vault and drive encryption happens entirely on your Mac. Your vault passwords are held only in volatile, encrypted memory for the duration of a session and are never written to disk, saved to your Keychain, or sent anywhere. We do not hold your passwords or encryption keys.

This means that if you lose or forget a vault password we cannot recover it, and the encrypted data will be permanently inaccessible. Deniable “stealth” volumes appear as random noise and reveal nothing without the correct password. You are responsible for safely storing your passwords. There is no password reset or recovery for encrypted data.

9. Security tools are provided on a best-effort basis

Malware scanning, privacy checks, forensic analysis, the firewall controls, health scoring and similar features are provided to assist you and operate on a best-effort basis. No security tool can detect or remove every threat, and a clean result does not guarantee your Mac is free of malware or that your privacy is fully protected. The App is not a substitute for safe computing practices, keeping macOS and your software up to date, or your own judgement. Cleaning, repair and formatting operations may, like any system maintenance, affect other software; you should review what an operation will do before running it.

10. Acceptable and lawful use

You agree to use Cyclone Fortress only for lawful purposes and only on devices and data you own or are authorized to act on. In particular, you must not use the App to:

• Destroy, conceal or alter data you are under a legal obligation to preserve, or to obstruct an investigation or legal process.
• Access, erase, scan or recover data on devices you do not own or have permission to use.
• Infringe the rights of others, or violate any applicable law, regulation or export control.

11. Optional online features

The core of Cyclone Fortress works offline. A small number of optional, clearly-purposed online features exist — licence validation, malware signature updates, usage analytics (which the offline switch turns off), software-update checks, the AI features (Cyclone Help and the Cyclone AI Agent) and translation, support requests, and optional cloud malware intelligence (off unless you enable it and supply your own third-party API keys). What these send, and what they never send, is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

12. Third-party services and payments

Purchases are processed by a third-party payment provider, subject to its own terms; we never see or store your full card details. Optional cloud malware-intelligence lookups, if you enable them, rely on third-party threat feeds under their own terms. We are not responsible for third-party services, and your use of them is at your own risk.

13. Intellectual property

The App, including its software, design, text, graphics, and the Cyclone Fortress name and logo, is owned by us and protected by intellectual property laws. Except for the licence granted in these Terms, no rights are transferred to you.

14. Updates

We may release updates that add, change or remove features, fix problems, or update malware signatures. Some updates may be necessary for continued secure operation. We are not obligated to provide any particular update or to support older versions indefinitely.

15. Disclaimer of warranties

The App is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the App will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that it will detect every threat, recover every file, or meet your requirements. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of these exclusions may not apply to you.

16. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, loss of profits, or business interruption, arising out of or relating to your use of (or inability to use) the App — including, without limitation, any loss resulting from secure erasure, shredding, wiping, formatting, cloning, recovery, or a lost vault password. To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability for all claims relating to the App will not exceed the amount you paid for your current licence. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

17. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claims, damages, losses and expenses arising out of your misuse of the App, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party.

18. Termination

These Terms apply for as long as you use the App. Your licence terminates automatically if you breach these Terms. You may stop using the App at any time; uninstalling it removes its local data from your Mac. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability and indemnification — continue to apply.

19. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by the “last updated” date above, and your continued use of the App after a change takes effect means you accept the revised Terms.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Reach us via the support page.