Security and privacy
What leaves your PC and where it goes, how sets are encrypted and checked, where secrets live, and when the app asks for administrator rights.
On this page
A backup program can read everything you keep. This page says what GBM AI does with that, and what it never does.
What leaves your PC#
| Feature | What is sent, and where |
|---|---|
| Backups, restores, Find, schedules | Nothing to Genie9. They talk only to the destinations you chose: your drives, your NAS, your own bucket. |
| Ask Genie | Only when you press Send, and only while signed in. Your prompt and the conversation, your drives, top-level folder names on internal drives, and a summary of your jobs go to Genie9's server, which passes them to OpenAI, the model provider. The full list is in What is sent to Genie, and what never is. |
| Sign-in and licence checks | Your email, this PC's device ID, the app version, and Windows and its processor type, to Genie9. Activating a licence also sends its key and this PC's name, so your account can list your PCs. |
| Update checks | The app version, update channel, platform, edition, the date your updates run until, and this PC's device ID, to Genie9. |
| Email alerts sent by Genie9 | The PC's name, the job name, the result, the counts, how long it took, the destination, and the paths of skipped files with their reasons (the first 50). The run log only if Attach the run log is on (off by default). They go only to the address you signed in with. See Email alerts. |
No telemetry. The app sends no usage statistics and no crash reports; a crash is written to a file on this PC only. Nothing listens on the network. The agent talks to the window over a local named pipe. In normal use only your Windows account can open it. In service mode only the account that turned service mode on, the PC's administrators (from a program run as administrator) and Windows itself can. On other accounts GBM AI says This PC's backups are managed by another account.
Genie9's privacy notice for GBM AI covers the same ground in legal terms.
Encryption#
A job with Encrypt this job with AES-256 on writes every file's contents as AES-256 ciphertext, with a SHA-256 checksum per file that is checked on restore, so a damaged file is found rather than restored wrong.
Two limits to know:
- The file list is not encrypted. Without the password anyone with the destination can read the job's name and every file's name, folder, size and date. Only the contents are encrypted.
- A lost password cannot be recovered, by Genie9 or anyone. Every set of the job needs it.
Encryption is part of Home and Pro. See Compression and encryption.
Verification#
Verify files after each run reads every stored file back and compares it with the set's manifest before the run counts as complete. It is on by default, in every edition, on every kind of destination, S3 buckets included.
Where secrets live#
| Secret | Where it is kept |
|---|---|
| Job encryption passwords, network share credentials, S3 keys, SMTP, webhook and proxy passwords | the agent's sealed store on this PC |
| Your sign-in | Windows Credential Manager |
| Your licence | license.json, signed by Genie9; the agent checks the signature |
The sealed store (secrets.enc, s3-profiles.enc, network-credentials.enc) is encrypted with Windows Data Protection for your Windows account. In service mode it is encrypted for this PC and kept in a folder only Windows and administrators can open. No secret is ever written into a job file, an exported job, a draft or a support bundle.
The sealed store cannot be read on another PC or by another Windows account. A job copied or imported from elsewhere needs its password typed again; until then its runs stop with This job is encrypted, but its password isn't stored on this PC. (E-ENC-003).
Administrator rights#
The app and the agent run with your normal rights. Administrator rights are asked for:
- when you switch service mode on or off (a Windows prompt);
- to take a snapshot for open files (VSS) in normal use. The job's Settings step shows a Needs administrator banner, and Restart as administrator restarts the agent with the rights for the rest of the session.
Say no and nothing fails silently: files that are open are skipped and listed in the run report. A source folder Windows will not let the agent read ends in Access to a source was denied. (E-SRC-002), with Restart as administrator. Service mode already has the rights and never asks. See Needs administrator.
The installer and updates#
Setup and every update are signed by Genie9 LTD. An update is installed only if its checksum matches the one Genie9 published and its signature chains to Genie9's certificate. Otherwise the file is deleted and the app says so (E-UPD-003).
Support bundles#
A support bundle is made on your PC and never uploaded by itself. It holds file and folder paths, your signed-in email and this PC's device ID, so read it before you send it. See Getting help: diagnostics and the support bundle.