Privacy notice for Yappio

Who is responsible

The operator of Yappio is Jovan Johl, an individual in the United States, who decides how your data is used. Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected].

What we collect when you make an account

To make an account we ask for, and store:

your email address,
a username and a display name,
your date of birth, to check that you are old enough,
your password, which we keep only as a hash and never in a readable form.

What we collect while you use Yappio

Besides your account details, Yappio keeps the following.

Your profile: avatar, banner, bio, pronouns, status, links and colours, if you choose to add them.
Your messages, in servers and in direct messages, with replies, reactions, pins, mentions and edits, and the files, images, voice notes and other content you upload.
Your servers, roles, friends, blocks, invites, settings, notification choices and read positions.
Sign-in sessions: when and how you signed in, your IP address, your browser or app and device details (the user agent and a device name), an approximate country worked out from your connection, and a device identifier stored in a cookie.
Voice and video: when you join a voice room we know that you are in it and for how long. The audio and video travel through a LiveKit media server that we run. We do not record calls by default. Features that write down or save voice are described below.
Reports you send or that are made about you or your content, and the actions taken on them, such as warnings, timeouts, kicks and bans.
Billing: if you or your server buy a paid plan, we keep your subscription, its status, the dates and the invoices Stripe sends us. The card details go to Stripe and we never see or store the card number.
Emails we send you, for example to confirm your address, reset a password, tell you about a security event, confirm a data request or tell you that a payment failed. They are sent from our own mail server.
Basic technical logs, such as the pages and API calls requested, errors and abuse-protection counters, which include IP addresses.

Voice notes, transcripts and clips

A voice note is an audio message you choose to record and send. A voice note can be written out as text (a transcript) so people can read it. You can turn this off for your own voice notes in your privacy settings ("Keep my voice out of transcripts"), and then your voice notes are not written out. Servers have a monthly limit on how many minutes can be written out, so some notes will have no text.

A voice room can have live transcripts switched on, but only by someone in that server who has been given the permission to do so. When transcripts are on, what is said in the room is written out as text and is shown to people who can see the room. If you do not want your speech written out, leave the room or ask the server to turn transcripts off. Transcripts are kept for a limited time, which depends on the plan (30 days on the free plan), and are then deleted.

A voice room can also have a short rolling buffer switched on, from which a member with the right permission may save a clip of the last few moments. Nothing is saved unless a clip is made. This feature only applies where it has been switched on for the service.

Whoever turns transcripts or clips on in a room is responsible for telling the people in it where the law requires that.

What we do not collect

We do not use advertising, ad networks, data brokers or third-party trackers in the app or on the website. We do not sell your data and we do not use your messages for advertising. The website sets no cookies. The app sets only the cookies listed on the cookies page.

Why we use your data

We use the data for these reasons, to carry out our agreement with you, to meet our legal duties, and because we have a legitimate interest in running a safe service, where the law asks us to name a basis.

To run Yappio: sign you in, deliver your messages and calls, store your files, show your profile, search your history and send you the notices you ask for.
To keep it safe: check age, stop spam and abuse, enforce our rules, block people who were banned, handle reports and keep a record of what was done.
To take payments and handle subscriptions through Stripe.
To follow the law, including reporting child sexual abuse material and answering valid legal requests.
To fix problems and improve the service, using counts and logs rather than the content of your messages.

Who can see your data

Here is who can see what.

The people you talk to, and the members of a server you post in, see what you post there. Server owners and moderators can also see what they need to moderate that server, and the server audit log of moderation actions.
Other people can see your public profile details, such as your username, display name, avatar and status.
Our staff. We do not read conversations routinely. Staff see reported content and the context saved with a report, and they can see your account details with the support code that you give them in the app, or when it is needed to deal with abuse, a safety issue or a legal request. Staff actions on accounts are logged.
Our service providers, listed below, only to the extent they need it to do their job.
The authorities, when the law requires us to share something, such as a valid legal request, or when we report child sexual abuse material to NCMEC. We may also share information when we believe it is needed to protect someone from serious harm.

Who processes your data

We do not give your data to analytics, advertising or mailing-list companies. Your data may be handled on servers in the United States or in other countries. Where the law requires safeguards for sending data abroad, we use them.

Hostinger provides the servers that host the website, its early access list and the Yappio mail system. The chat service runs on servers that we rent and manage ourselves.
Stripe processes payments and holds card details. Stripe has its own privacy policy and is responsible for the data it collects from you.
LiveKit, the media software that carries voice and video, runs on a server that we operate.

How long we keep it

These are the usual times. They can be longer where the law or an open case requires it.

Account details: for as long as your account is open. When your account is deleted, the email address and other details are removed or replaced, as described below.
Messages and files: until you or the server delete them, or until your account or the server is deleted. When a message is deleted it is hidden from everyone straight away, but we may keep the deleted message in our systems for a while for safety and abuse handling, and in backups (database backups are kept for about 14 days and weekly copies of uploaded files for about the same time). Deleting your account blanks the text of your messages, as described below.
Sign-in sessions and their IP and device details: until the session expires or is signed out, and then for about 7 days more before they are deleted. Sessions last up to 180 days.
Voice transcripts: for a limited time that depends on the plan (30 days on the free plan).
Server audit logs: up to one year.
Interaction data from bots and slash commands: 7 days.
Reports, moderation records and bans: for as long as we need them to keep people safe and to stop banned people coming back.
Evidence kept for a safety or legal reason, such as content we preserve under a child safety report, a takedown or a legal request: for as long as the case or the law requires. Content we remove and set aside as evidence is normally deleted after 180 days unless a legal hold or a legal duty means we must keep it longer.
Billing and invoice records: as long as tax, accounting and payment rules require.

Your rights and choices

You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to move it. If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, California or another place with a privacy law, you have the rights that law gives you. We give the same choices to everyone. We will not treat you worse for using them.

To use any of these rights, write to [email protected] from the email address on your account. We answer within a reasonable time and within the time the law sets.

Data download: we can prepare an export of your account data as a ZIP file and email you a link to it. The link works for 7 days, and an export can be requested once every 7 days.

Account deletion: you can ask us to delete your account. You confirm it with your password, and it starts after a 14 day waiting period during which you can cancel. Deleting an account signs you out everywhere, removes you from your servers, blanks your direct messages and your server messages (they stay as a gap marked as from a deleted user so conversations still make sense), deletes your uploads, your profile and your personal settings, and replaces your name, email address, date of birth and password with placeholders. If you own a server, you have to transfer or delete it first. If your account is under a legal hold, we cannot delete it until the hold ends.

What deletion does not remove: records we must or need to keep, such as reports and moderation actions, billing records, evidence under a legal hold, and backups until they expire.

You can also change or remove most of your profile yourself in the app, close sessions, and turn voice transcripts off for your own voice notes in your privacy settings.

If you are not happy with how we handled a request, tell us. You may also complain to a data protection authority where you live.

Security

Connections to Yappio are encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored as hashes, sensitive evidence is stored sealed, and staff access is separate from normal accounts and logged. Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. No service is perfectly secure; if there is a breach that affects you we will tell you as the law requires. Report a weakness to [email protected].

Children

Yappio is for people aged 13 and over. We ask for your date of birth and we refuse to make accounts for people under 13. A short cookie remembers a refused sign-up for a day so it cannot be retried straight away. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we close it. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has an account, write to [email protected].

If you are under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian should know that you use Yappio. Parents and guardians can write to us to see, correct or delete a child's data.

The website and the early access list

If you only read pages on yappio.chat, no account is created and no tracking script runs. The website may offer to add your email address to a list for news and early access. If you join, we store your email address, the part of the site you joined from and the time you joined. We use it only to write to you about Yappio, you can leave at any time with the link in each message, and we do not sell it or share it for marketing. The server briefly keeps your IP address in memory to limit repeated attempts on the form; it is not written to the database.

The hosting provider receives the usual technical details of each request to the website, such as IP address, page, browser and time.

Changes

We will update this notice when Yappio or the way it uses data changes. The date at the bottom shows the latest version. If a change matters, we will tell you in the app or by email.

Contact

Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected].

Last updated: 2026-10-28Draft pending legal review