The bandwidth exchange

This is how DataTray stays free, and given what this app is for, it is the one thing worth reading in full before you decide whether it belongs on your machine.

DataTray never uploads your files. It is free because it shares a small amount of your computer's unused internet bandwidth. Those are two separate things and neither one touches your data.

You'll see this same explanation again inside Clean & Anonymize, next to the personal-data findings — the capability that raises the question answers it in place.

While DataTray is installed and running, it shares a slice of your device's idle internet bandwidth through Massive, a bundled sharing component. You agreed to this on the first page of the installer, before anything else was asked.

What is shared: a small amount of your device's free network resources and your IP address, to download public web data.

What is never shared: your files, your rows, your column names, your queries, your browsing history, your credentials, or anything you process in the utilities. The exchange has no access to any of it, and it is not a channel your data could travel down even in principle — the utilities read and write local files and the exchange fetches public web pages, and the two never meet.

Why the utilities stop when it does. Sharing is what pays for the utilities, so they only run while it is on. Turning sharing off disables them — the switch, the tray menu, and the panel notice all say so plainly, rather than letting you fill in a form that is guaranteed to be refused. Jobs already running when sharing stops are allowed to finish; new work is not accepted.

Only one Clearware tray app shares at a time. If you also run another Clearware product on this machine, DataTray shares a slice of idle bandwidth when it can — the two do not stack.

On a work machine. If DataTray is going onto a computer your employer manages, treat the bandwidth exchange as something to clear with whoever manages it, exactly as you would any other app that uses the network in the background. The disclosure above is what to show them.

The status indicator

The sidebar footer and Settings ▸ Bandwidth exchange both show the live state:

Turning it off

Use Share idle bandwidth, either in Settings ▸ Bandwidth exchange or in the tray menu. The utilities are disabled while it is off. Quitting DataTray from the tray stops sharing for as long as the app is closed, and uninstalling ends participation entirely.

If something goes wrong here

• "Sharing could not be started." The engine refused to start. Check that Massive is installed and running on this machine, then toggle Share idle bandwidth again.
• "Off · stopped in Massive". You (or something else) stopped sharing from Massive's own tray icon. DataTray will not silently override that — restart it there, or use the switch in Settings.
• "Unavailable" and a full-window screen with a Retry button. No sharing backend works on this machine, so nothing in the app can run. Press Retry after checking that Massive is installed; if it keeps failing, reinstall.