Privacy Policy
What AYChat collects, why, how long it is kept — and what we could not hand over even if someone demanded it.
Direct messages are end-to-end encrypted — our servers store ciphertext they cannot read. We never upload your phone's address book. Your location is only ever stored as a ~1.2 km area, never exact coordinates. There are no advertising or third-party analytics SDKs in the app. We do not sell your data to anyone, ever.
1Who we are
AYChat (“we”, “us”) operates the AYChat mobile application and the service at aychat.pro. For any privacy question or request, write to privacy@aychat.pro.
[Fill in: registered legal entity name, postal address, and the country whose data-protection law applies. Every app store asks for this.]
2What we collect and why
| Data | Why we need it | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Username, display name, email, and phone number if you add one | To create your account, sign you in, and let friends find you | Until you delete your account |
| Profile photo, bio, country | Shown on your profile, as much or as little as you choose | Until you change or remove it |
| Password (Argon2id hash — never the password itself) and, if enabled, an encrypted two-factor secret | To keep your account yours | Until you delete your account |
| Devices and sessions: device id, app build, IP address, approximate login location, last-active time | So you can see and revoke your own sessions, and so we can spot account takeover | Until the session is revoked; login history is pruned periodically |
| Messages and their media | To deliver your conversations and sync them across your devices | Until you delete them — or automatically, for disappearing messages |
| Presence (online / last seen) | To show availability, subject to your privacy settings | Expires from cache within 60 seconds of going offline |
| Approximate location — only if you use Nearby | To show people near you as distance bands | Deleted when you turn Nearby off |
| Call records: who was in a call, when it started and ended | Call history and abuse prevention | Until you delete your account |
| Push token | To wake your phone for notifications | Until you sign out or disable notifications |
| Reports you submit or that name you, and moderation actions | Keeping people safe, and being able to review our own decisions | Retained in our audit log |
3End-to-end encryption
Direct chats are end-to-end encrypted. Messages are encrypted on your device and decrypted only on the recipients' devices. What our servers hold is opaque ciphertext — we cannot read the contents, and we cannot hand over something we do not have.
Metadata is a different matter, and honesty here matters more than marketing. To route a message we necessarily process who sent it, which conversation it belongs to, when it was sent, its approximate size, and whether it carries an attachment. Group and channel messages are stored server-side so new members and new devices can load history.
4Location and the Nearby feature
Nearby is off until you turn it on. When it is on, your coordinates are converted on the server into a geohash cell of roughly 1.2 km × 0.6 km — we store the cell, never the precise point. Other people only ever see a distance band such as “within 2 km”, never a number precise enough to triangulate where you are. Turning Nearby off deletes the stored cell.
5Calls
Calls use WebRTC and connect device-to-device wherever the network allows. Our server relays only the signalling needed to set the call up, and issues time-limited TURN credentials. When a direct connection is impossible — restrictive mobile NAT, corporate firewalls — media is relayed through our TURN server, which forwards encrypted packets without storing them.
Recording is consent-first: everyone is notified when it starts, a single objection stops it for everyone, and every consent decision is written to an audit log.
6Media and files
Photos, videos, voice notes and documents are stored in our object storage. The links handed to the app are short-lived and signed, and object keys are unguessable random values. Deleting a message removes its media.
7What we never do
- We never upload your address book. Your AYChat contacts are the people you follow inside the app — we do not read your phone's contacts.
- No advertising, no third-party analytics. The app ships with no ad network, no tracking pixel and no analytics SDK. Not one.
- We never sell, rent or trade your data.
- We do not profile you for advertising or engagement manipulation.
8Third parties we rely on
| Service | What it receives |
|---|---|
| Google Firebase Cloud Messaging | Your push token and the notification payload, so your phone can be woken. Notification previews can be switched off in Settings. |
| JioSaavn (music catalog) | Search terms and track identifiers when you use the Music tab. Your identity is not sent. |
| GitHub | Serves the app download and update files, and therefore sees the download request. |
| Our own servers — translation, search, media, TURN | Run on infrastructure we control. Translation is self-hosted: your text is never sent to a third-party translation provider. |
9Security
- All traffic is encrypted in transit with TLS.
- Passwords are hashed with Argon2id. Two-factor secrets are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, under keys derived separately per purpose so one compromise cannot unlock everything.
- A replayed refresh token revokes the entire session family — a stolen credential becomes a contained, detectable event rather than a silent one.
- Long-lived connections re-verify your credentials periodically, so a session cannot outlive its authorisation.
No system is perfectly secure. If you find a vulnerability, please write to security@aychat.pro before disclosing it publicly — we will work with you.
10Your rights
At any time you can:
- Access and correct your profile data in the app.
- Delete your account, which removes your profile, the messages you own and your media. Copies already delivered to other people's devices are outside our control.
- Export a copy of your data — email privacy@aychat.pro.
- Control visibility of last-seen, profile photo and who may contact you, under Settings → Privacy.
- Withdraw consent for location or notifications simply by turning them off.
We answer requests within 30 days.
11Children
AYChat is not for anyone under 13. If we learn an account belongs to a child under 13, we delete it. [If you distribute in the EU, raise this to 16 for the countries that require it.]
12Where your data lives
[Fill in: the country your servers run in. If people outside that country will sign up, say that data is transferred there and on what legal basis.]
13Changes to this policy
If we make a material change we will update the date at the top and tell you in the app before it takes effect. No quiet rewrites.
14Contact
Privacy requests — privacy@aychat.pro
Security reports — security@aychat.pro
General support — support@aychat.pro