Last updated: 12 August 2026
These terms cover your purchase and use of Nocturn, a Windows application published by Swordwright, the trading name of Ian Mills, a sole trader based in England ("we", "us"). Our trading address is on the Contact page. By buying or using Nocturn you agree to them. We've kept them in plain English on purpose.
Your licence. Your purchase grants you a single-user, perpetual licence to use Nocturn on the V1 line (all V1.x versions). It's for your own use and is non-transferable — you can't resell, rent, or reassign it. One seat per licence: Nocturn activates on one machine at a time, and you can move it to a new machine by deactivating the old one first.
What's included in your £29. Every update on the V1 line, for life — bug fixes, improvements, and new V1 features at no extra cost. A future major version (V2) may be a separate, optional paid upgrade; your V1 licence keeps working regardless, and you're never forced to upgrade. If we ever introduce a subscription tier, existing perpetual licence holders keep what they bought — we'll be clear about any change before it happens.
Refunds. If Nocturn is faulty or not as described, you have the remedies given by law. In addition, we offer a 14-day money-back guarantee from the date of purchase, processed via our Merchant of Record at checkout — on top of, not instead of, your statutory rights. If something's wrong, email [email protected] and we'll try to make it right.
Intellectual property. Nocturn, its name, branding, and all its code remain the property of Swordwright. Your licence lets you use the software; it doesn't transfer any ownership. You may not copy, decompile, reverse-engineer, or redistribute Nocturn except where the law expressly permits. "Swordwright" and "Nocturn" are trademarks of Swordwright, used here under common-law rights pending any formal registration.
Payment & delivery. Checkout is handled by our payment provider (Freemius), who acts as merchant of record and handles applicable tax. Your licence key and download link are delivered by email after payment.
No warranty beyond the law. Nocturn is provided "as is". No security product can detect or prevent every threat — Nocturn is a supplementary protective layer, not a guarantee against malware, unauthorised AI, or data loss, and not a substitute for Windows Defender, regular backups, or safe computing practices. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we make no warranties that it will be uninterrupted or error-free. Nothing in these terms limits any rights you have under mandatory consumer law that cannot be excluded — including, in the UK, the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
Liability. Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or anything else the law doesn't let us limit — including your statutory consumer rights. Subject to that, we're not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss/damage to files (including files quarantined, deleted, or made inaccessible by Nocturn, whether a genuine threat or a false positive), a process being terminated, a drive taken offline, or Nocturn failing to detect or prevent a threat. Our total liability is capped at the greater of what you paid for Nocturn in the past 12 months, or £25. Keep current backups of your data — don't rely on Nocturn as your only protection. (This is the plain-English summary of the fuller liability clause in Nocturn's formal End User Licence Agreement, shown during installation.)
Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have non-exclusive jurisdiction — if you're a consumer resident elsewhere in the UK, you can also bring proceedings in your home jurisdiction.
Short version: we collect about as little as a piece of paid software can. Here's exactly what happens, in both directions.
The app itself. Nocturn never phones home. It doesn't send usage data, telemetry, process lists, or file contents to us or anyone else. Everything AI Watch, Clipboard Guard, and the file scanner do happens locally, on your machine.
Buying Nocturn. Checkout is handled by Freemius, our payment provider and merchant of record. They collect what's needed to process payment and issue a receipt (name, email, payment details, billing country for tax). We receive your email address so we can deliver your licence key and provide support — that's it. We don't sell, rent, or share your details with anyone else. See Freemius's own privacy policy for how they handle payment data.
This website. The site is static — there's no tracking pixel, no analytics script, and no advertising cookie set by us. If you email [email protected], we keep that correspondence only as long as needed to help you and for basic record-keeping.
Your rights. Under UK GDPR you can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or raise a concern with the ICO. For a one-person software studio that's usually just: your email address, your licence key, and any support emails. Contact [email protected] for any of this.
Nocturn is a lightweight personal-security tool. It's genuinely useful, and we've been careful about what it does — but honesty matters more than hype in security, so here's exactly what it is and isn't.
A complement, not a fortress. Nocturn is a complement to Windows Defender — not a replacement, and it is not a substitute for enterprise-grade security software, managed detection, or good security habits. Keep Windows Defender (or your existing antivirus) running alongside it.
Clipboard Guard — scope. Clipboard Guard protects against commodity clipboard-hijacking malware — the kind that swaps a copied wallet address for an attacker's. It defeats 99%+ of these real-world attacks, but sophisticated kernel-level or highly obfuscated attacks can bypass any user-mode guard. Always double-check a wallet address before sending funds.
AI Watch — scope. AI Watch reports on processes and network connections that are visible to a standard Windows user account. Processes running in kernel mode, or ones deliberately hidden or heavily obfuscated, may not be visible to it. AI Watch shows you what's observable — it can't guarantee it sees everything.
Your decisions are yours. Nocturn gives you information and controls; you decide what to allow, block, or quarantine. You are responsible for the decisions you make based on Nocturn's output. Blocking or terminating a process you actually need may affect other software — review before you act.
No guarantee. No security tool can promise to stop all malware or guarantee your machine is safe. Nocturn reduces risk and gives you visibility and control; it does not eliminate risk. Use it as one layer of a sensible, multi-layer approach.