Privacy, in plain language
No accounts. No ads. No trackers. Below we explain exactly what that means, and where the limits of that promise are.
What lives where
| What | Where it lives | What our server sees |
|---|---|---|
| Your lists, list names, and members | Only on your own devices | Encrypted gibberish only, unreadable |
| The key everything is encrypted with | Securely stored on your device; briefly visible in an invite link | Never, invites themselves are encrypted too |
| Location, store reminders, saved stores | Only on your device | Nothing, our server has no endpoint that even accepts coordinates |
| Who you are | A random device ID and a keypair, no name, no email, no account | Just that random ID and a push token |
| Unavoidable residual metadata | — | Which (random) devices belong to which (random) group, roughly when something was sent, and how much data, plus your IP address at the connection level (not logged or stored) |
What we do
- No accounts, no ad SDKs, no analytics or tracking software.
- Crash reports never contain your list contents (personal data is scrubbed), and you can opt out.
- The app's source code is open, so anyone can verify these claims.
What we do NOT claim, the honest version
Encryption protects you against nosy third parties, data breaches, and data-mining for profit, not against every conceivable scenario. Specifically:
- We do not claim per-message forward secrecy or post-compromise security, these are advanced cryptographic guarantees this design deliberately does not pursue.
- Anyone you invite into a group can, by design, read everything in it, it's their list too. Vinkt does not protect against a group member you trusted who abuses that trust.
- Our assumption: you don't need to blindly trust us (the server operator), the threat model targets nosy third parties, breaches, and data-mining, not a malicious member of your own group.