Terms & Privacy Policy.

Terms of Service

DevTheFool (“we”, “us”) provides the Private Call app, the website at privatecall.devthefool.com, and the servers that connect calls (together, the “Services”). By installing or using the Services, you agree to these Terms of Service (“Terms”).

About our services

Minimum age. You must be at least 13 years old to use the Services. If your country sets a higher age for using services like ours without a parent’s permission, you must be that age.

No account. You do not sign up with a name, email address, or phone number. The app creates a key on your phone that identifies your installation to us and to the people you add. Uninstalling the app or clearing its data deletes that key, and we cannot restore it.

Privacy of user data. We do not sell, rent, or use your personal data for advertising. Our Privacy Policy explains what we process to run the Services.

Software. The app updates through the app store you installed it from. Some updates are needed for the Services to keep working.

Fees. You pay for your own mobile data. Extra relay data, if you buy it, is sold through Google Play or Apple’s App Store, and that store’s payment terms apply.

Using Private Call

These Terms. You must use the Services according to these Terms. If we disable your access for breaking them, you may not use the Services again without our permission.

Legal and acceptable use. Use the Services only for legal, authorized, and acceptable purposes. Do not use them, or help others use them, to: (a) break the law or anyone’s rights, including privacy, publicity, or intellectual property rights; (b) harass, threaten, or harm anyone; or (c) send spam or other unwanted bulk messages.

Harm to the Services. Do not access, use, change, or exploit the Services in ways we have not allowed, or in ways that harm us, our users, or our systems. For example, do not (a) try to get unauthorized access; (b) disrupt the Services; (c) create installations or traffic by automated means; (d) collect information about other users without permission; or (e) sell, rent, or charge for the Services.

Your device. You are responsible for keeping your phone safe. Your contacts, photos, and relay credit belong to the app installation on that phone. If you lose the phone, uninstall the app, or clear its data, we cannot get them back. To be sure no one can listen in, compare safety numbers with your contacts (see Calls and chat).

No emergency services. Private Call cannot reach the police, fire department, hospitals, or other emergency services. Keep another way to contact them.

Third-party services. The Services rely on Cloudflare, Google Play, and Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android, and on Apple’s App Store, push notification, and App Attest services on iPhone. When you use them, their own terms and privacy policies also apply.

Your rights and license

Your rights. You own the names, photos, calls, and chat you create. Names and photos stay on your phone.

Our rights. We own the app, the website, the Private Call name, and our other intellectual property. You may use them only as these Terms allow.

License to you. We give you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Services according to these Terms.

Purchases

Calls try to connect directly between the two phones. If that is not possible, the encrypted call is passed through a relay. Each installation gets a small free relay allowance every day. You can buy extra relay data through Google Play or the App Store. Bought data belongs to the installation that bought it and cannot be moved or restored. We keep no record of who bought what, so if you uninstall the app or clear its data, you get a new installation and unused data is lost. Refunds, if any, follow the store’s rules and the law; if a purchase is refunded, its data is taken back.

Disclaimers and limitations

YOU USE THE SERVICES AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE PROVIDE THEM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT PROMISE THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT OTHER USERS OR THIRD PARTIES DO OR SAY.

AS FAR AS THE LAW ALLOWS, WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ABOUT THE SERVICES IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF FIVE US DOLLARS ($5) OR WHAT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICES IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM. SOME PLACES DO NOT ALLOW THESE LIMITS, SO THEY MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. THERE, OUR LIABILITY IS LIMITED AS FAR AS THE LAW ALLOWS.

Availability. The Services may stop for maintenance, upgrades, or failures. We may change or end features or device support at any time.

Ending these Terms

You can end these Terms at any time by deleting the app and no longer using the Services. We may suspend or end your access if you break these Terms or put us or other users at risk. The parts about licenses, disclaimers, limits of liability, availability, ending these Terms, and general terms still apply afterwards.

If you have a dispute with us, please email us first so we can try to solve it. These Terms are governed by applicable law. If a court finds any part of them unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.

General

We may update these Terms. When we do, we change the date at the top. If you keep using the Services, you accept the updated Terms. These Terms are the whole agreement between you and us about the Services. If you do not agree, stop using the Services. You must follow the export laws that apply to you. We may limit the Services in some countries. Questions: privatecall@devthefool.com.

Privacy Policy

This policy explains, in plain words, what Private Call processes, why, and for how long. It describes what the app and our servers actually do.

The short version.

• No sign-up: we never ask for your name, phone number, or email address.
• Calls and chat are encrypted between the two phones. We cannot listen to your calls or read your chat, and we do not record or store them.
• Contact names and photos stay on your phone.
• Our servers keep only what they need to connect calls, ring phones, and count relay data, and delete it on a fixed schedule.
• We do not sell your data and show no ads. The app and the website have no analytics or tracking.

What we never collect

• Your name, phone number, email address, or any account.
• Your phone’s address book.
• The audio, video, screen share, text, photos, or videos of your calls and chat.
• Your contacts’ names or photos.
• A list of your calls (call history).
• Your location, apart from what an internet (IP) address reveals.
• Advertising IDs or analytics data.

What stays on your phone

Contact names, photos, and per-contact settings are stored encrypted on your phone. The app’s keys are kept in your phone’s secure hardware (the Secure Enclave on iPhone) and never leave it. On Android, the app’s data is excluded from phone backups. On iPhone, contacts, photos, and diagnostics are excluded from backups too, and the keys can never move to another device; only a few small app settings, such as an invite code you have not used yet and the IDs of calls from the last few minutes, are kept in standard app settings, which iCloud backups can include. To help with problems, the app keeps the last five minutes of its own activity log in private storage, with addresses, codes, keys, and similar details filtered out. After a crash, the app keeps a crash report for at most 7 days and only sends it if you choose to. Uninstalling the app deletes all of this.

Calls and chat

Encrypted between the two phones. Audio, video, screen share, and chat travel directly between the two phones, encrypted with keys that only those phones have. If a direct connection is not possible, the encrypted call passes through a relay run by Cloudflare. The relay cannot decrypt it.

Checked against your contact’s key. Our server helps the two phones find each other, so in theory it could try to put itself in the middle. To stop that, each phone signs the call’s encryption keys with its own key, and the other phone checks that signature against the key it saved for that contact. If the check fails, the call screen warns “Call may be intercepted”.

Safety numbers. When you add a contact, our server passes the two phones’ keys to each other. Each contact page shows a safety number made from both keys. If the number is the same on both phones, the keys are the right ones and no one, including us, can listen in. Compare it in person or on a video call where you can see and hear each other.

Chat. In-call messages, photos, and videos are never saved. They stay in the app’s memory (videos briefly in temporary files while they are prepared or recorded) and disappear when the call ends. Saving a photo or copying text needs the other person’s permission. On Android, the app asks your phone to block screenshots and screen recording; on iPhone, it hides its content from screenshots, screen recording, and screen mirroring. It cannot stop someone from filming the screen with another device.

Your phone’s call screen. Calls use your phone’s system call screen, which shows the name you saved for the contact; so can connected devices such as a car or a watch. On iPhone, calls are not added to the Phone app’s Recents.

What our servers handle

Our servers run on Cloudflare. We have turned off request logging for them, so we do not keep logs of your requests, addresses, or links.

Your installation. Requests from the app are signed with your installation’s key. For relay credit, we store a scrambled ID made from that key (not the key itself), your free data used today, the data you bought, whether you have ever bought data, and when the installation was created and last active.

Ringing your phone. So contacts can ring you, we store a scrambled device ID, your installation’s public key, your push address (encrypted: a Firebase Installation ID on Android, or two Apple push tokens on iPhone), and when it was last renewed. For each contact, we store a random ring address and a scrambled form of the one key allowed to ring it. This lets us check that only your contacts can ring you. It also means our server can tell which installations are contacts of each other, but not who the people are.

Invites. When you create an invite, we store a scrambled form of its code and a card holding your installation’s public keys and a ring address, encrypted with a key on our server. When someone uses the code, we store their card too, then pass each card to the other phone.

Calls in progress. While a call is set up and running, we keep a temporary room with its room code, scrambled call passwords, the two installations’ scrambled IDs, and ringing state. We pass connection setup messages between the phones, including network addresses, and small status updates such as camera or microphone on or off and battery level. We do not store those messages.

Relay data. When a call uses the relay, Cloudflare measures the data under a random tag for that call. We read the total to subtract it from relay credit and keep a short receipt with both installations’ scrambled IDs and the amount.

Purchases. When you buy relay data, Google Play or the App Store confirms that the purchase is real and was made from your installation, and we add the data to it. We keep no purchase records. To stop one purchase from being used twice, we keep only a scrambled form of the purchase’s ID and whether it was refunded, with no link to your installation, no date, and no amount. When a store tells us a purchase was refunded, we find the installation that made it and take the data back: on Android we ask Google, and on iPhone the installation keeps the purchase code Apple attaches to its purchases, which is made from the installation’s scrambled ID. We never get your Google or Apple account or your payment details.

Peer check. During a call, each phone may send our server a proof from its secure hardware (a hardware certificate on Android, an Apple App Attest proof on iPhone), plus its device model and app version. We check it and tell the other person a short result: whether the app looks genuine, whether the phone’s system is unmodified, what kind of secure hardware it has, a fingerprint of its key, its device model, and its app version. We do not keep the proof after the call. On iPhone, we keep the App Attest key ID, its public key, and a counter with your installation, and delete them with it.

Reports you choose to send. A bug report is sent only when you send one. It contains your description, app and device details, network type, call status, connection statistics, and the last five minutes of the app’s log with addresses, codes, and keys removed. A crash report may also contain technical crash data from the app’s memory. Reports never contain audio, video, chat, contact names, or photos. We store a scrambled ID with each report so one installation cannot flood us.

Report and block. Reporting a contact sends only scrambled forms of your key and theirs. No names, messages, or other content.

Internet addresses. Every connection reveals your IP address to the server you connect to. We use a scrambled form of it to limit abuse; Cloudflare’s rate limiter keeps that for about a minute, and we do not store it. During a direct call, the other person’s phone also sees your IP address; turn on “Hide IP” for a contact to always use the relay instead.

This website. It uses no cookies and no analytics. An invite page shows its code. If you tap “Install from Google Play”, the code is passed to Google Play so the app can open the invite after you install it.

How long we keep it

• Calls in progress: deleted when the call ends, and after 24 hours at most. Call receipts: 15 minutes.
• Unused invites: 7 days. Used invites: 7 days after both phones received their cards, and 30 days at most.
• Ring addresses: deleted when you remove or block the contact. Device registrations: 180 days after the app last renewed them; the app renews them about once a month while you have contacts.
• Installations without bought data: 35 days after their last use. Installations with bought data: as long as data is left.
• Scrambled IDs of used purchases: kept for good, because a store purchase stays valid for good. They cannot be linked to you or your installation.
• Bug and crash reports: 30 days.
• Report-and-block records: 90 days.
• Request records that stop replay attacks: a few minutes.

Cleanup runs at least once a day, so something can stay up to a day longer than listed. Our hosting provider keeps database backups for up to 30 days, after which deleted data is gone from them as well.

Who else is involved

We do not sell your data. We share it only with the companies that help us run the Services, and only what they need:

• Cloudflare hosts the website, our servers and database, and the call relay. It processes connection data such as IP addresses.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) on Android, and Apple Push Notification service on iPhone, deliver rings and invite notices to your phone. A ring holds only a random call ID and encrypted data: they learn that your phone got a notification and when, not who called. On iPhone, the invite notice shows “Contact connected”.
• Google Play distributes the Android app and handles its purchases. We send Google the purchase token to verify a purchase or a refund.
• Apple distributes the iPhone app and handles its purchases (the App Store), checks that the app is genuine (App Attest), and delivers rings and notices (Apple Push Notification service).

We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect the safety of people or the Services. We can only share what we have, which is what this policy describes.

Your choices

• Turn on “Hide IP” for a contact to keep your IP address from them.
• Remove or block a contact to stop them from ringing you.
• Bug and crash reports are always your choice.
• Uninstall the app to delete everything on your phone. What our servers keep is deleted on the schedule above.
• For questions or requests about your data, email us. Because we have no accounts, we may only be able to find data that the app on your phone can prove is yours.

Children

The Services are not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly process their data.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we do, we change the date at the top. Please also read our Terms of Service.

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