Where your data lives
| Service | Location |
|---|---|
| Dashboard, accounts and payments | United Kingdom |
| File host storage | United Kingdom Local |
| Email (mx1 and mx2) | United Kingdom |
| Email backups | United Kingdom |
| Chat (XMPP, IRC and the webchat), this page and the code check | Canada |
The alo.ne website and API go through Cloudflare (a US company) for protection against attacks. The chat server, the mail servers, this page and the code check don't: you connect to them directly.
What we never keep
- IP addresses. Not in logs, not in the database. Mail and chat servers run with logging off.
- Access logs or tracking. No analytics, no ad trackers, no fingerprinting.
- Your passwords in readable form. Dashboard passwords are stored as a one-way argon2id hash.
Dashboard and account
Username, a hash of your password, your 2FA secret if 2FA is on, membership and storage limits, email address and aliases if you use email, biolink profile and badges, referral and reseller records, invite codes, credits and items, and your Discord ID and username if you link Discord.
Your IP is used briefly, in memory only, so one visit counts once. It's never saved.
File host
Files sent through chat are deleted after 30 days, and you can delete any file whenever you like. Upload dates are hidden if you choose "remove timestamps".
Your files, their names, sizes and types, and the folders and shares you create.
Encrypted in your browser before upload. We only ever have scrambled data, and the key stays in your link.
If someone reports an encrypted file and includes its key, our moderators can open that one file, and we keep the key for moderation.
#, which browsers never send to us or to Cloudflare.Mail servers keep no logs by default. If we need to debug a specific problem, we turn logging on for a set time (usually 2 hours), and it's wiped when it switches off. Outgoing mail has your app name and your IP removed from its headers.
All mail sits on encrypted disks. With encrypted storage turned on, new mail is also encrypted with your own key, which is locked with your mail password.
Taken every 6 hours, encrypted, and kept for up to 12 months. Mail you delete can stay in older backups until they expire. With encrypted storage on, your mail stays encrypted inside the backups too.
Chat (XMPP, IRC and the webchat)
| What | How long the server keeps it |
|---|---|
| DMs | 1 day, and only with your contacts by default. You can switch to all DMs or none. |
| Messages waiting for you while you're offline | Until they're delivered |
| Channel messages | 30 days |
| Files sent in chat | 30 days |
| IRC | Nothing |
| Your contact list | Until you remove the contact |
Turn on OMEMO and your DMs and files are encrypted on your device. The server only ever sees scrambled data.
Stored only in a form that can check it, never readable. Apps prove they know it without sending it.
#general and #suggestions are copied to Discord, Telegram and IRC. Those copies follow those platforms' rules, not ours. The premium room and DMs are never copied.
We publish signed hashes of the webchat and dashboard code on GitHub, Discord and Telegram. Check them yourself at check.alo.ne or with the commands in each signed message. For the strongest protection, use an app such as Conversations, Monal or Gajim.
Payments
We keep the order, the amount and the receiving address we generated for it.
Handled by Mollie. We never see your card number. Mollie keeps what card processors are required to keep.
For referrals and sales, we keep the amount, the currency and the transaction ID.
Legal requests
We only respond to valid legal process from a court or authority with jurisdiction over the server involved, and we only hand over what this page says we have. Where the law allows, we tell the affected user first. We can't hand over what we don't keep: no IP addresses, no access logs, no OMEMO-encrypted content, and no DMs or channel messages past the times above.
Like any provider, we can be legally ordered to change what we collect from then on. If that ever happens, this page and our announcements are where you'd see it, as far as the law lets us say.