Legal
Privacy Policy
Last updated October 1, 2026. This policy covers the Always Connected app specifically. See also our general Terms of Service.
Who this is for
Always Connected is an app for exactly two people. You connect by sharing an invite code with your partner; there is no public profile, no discovery, and no third person who can ever join your space. Everything below describes what happens to the data the two of you create together.
What we store
The table below is a real inventory of this app's data, generated alongside the codebase, not written separately from it.
| Category | Examples | Where it lives | Kept until |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account | Email address, display name, profile photo | Firebase Authentication + Firestore | Until you delete your account |
| Messages | Chat text, photos and voice notes you send in chat | Stream Chat's servers (our processor): encrypted in transit and at rest, not end-to-end encrypted | Until you delete your account, or your partner disconnects |
| Calls | Voice and video calls, and walkie-talkie (hold-to-talk) audio | Relayed live through Stream's servers and not recorded. We keep a call history (start and end time only) in Firestore | Call history until you delete your account, or your partner disconnects |
| Memories & Glimpses | Photos, captions, dates, and an optional location tag (exact coordinates plus place name) that you choose to attach. A Glimpse is a photo you send straight to your partner; it is kept in Memories too | Firebase Storage (photo files) + Firestore (captions/metadata): encrypted in transit and at rest, not end-to-end encrypted. For photos only the two of you can ever see, use the Private Vault | Until you delete the memory, your account, or your partner disconnects |
| Private Vault | Photos and captions you put in the Vault | Firebase Storage + Firestore, as ciphertext only: end-to-end encrypted on your phone before upload (see “Encryption” below). Upload times and which of you added each photo are not encrypted | Until you delete the photo, your account, or your partner disconnects |
| Together features | Whiteboard drawings, daily question answers, calendar events, time capsules (sealed notes, with an optional photo), quiz answers | Firestore (and Firebase Storage for capsule photos) | Until you delete them, your account, or your partner disconnects |
| Presence | Current status, battery level, network status, online/offline | Firestore: a live snapshot only; we do not keep a historical log of these values | Overwritten continuously; deleted with your account |
| Approximate location | “Their world” context (local time, weather, distance apart), only if you opt in | Firestore, rounded to roughly 1km before it is ever written; your exact coordinates are never stored or sent for this feature | Overwritten continuously; deleted with your account |
| Activity | Which days the two of you messaged, knocked or answered the daily question (for your streak) | Firestore: one small record per day, no message content | Until you delete your account, or your partner disconnects |
| Knocks, love notes & thumb kisses | A knock, its optional note, and thumb kisses | Delivered live or as a push notification; not stored. We keep a short-lived counter to stop knock spam | Not stored (the counter resets within hours) |
| Device & push | Push notification token, platform (iOS/Android), a random per-install id | Firestore (your account record); notifications are delivered by Firebase Cloud Messaging | Until you sign out or delete your account |
| Home-screen widgets | Your partner's name, status, days together and latest Glimpse photo | On your phone only, so the widget can show them; never uploaded | Until you sign out or uninstall the app |
| Support requests | Your email, your message, app version, and a one-way hash of your IP address (for abuse limits, never the IP itself) | Firestore | As long as needed to answer you; deleted on request |
| App lock PIN / vault key | A salted hash of your app-lock PIN; the Private Vault key | Your device's Keychain (iOS) or Keystore (Android) only, never uploaded to our servers. The vault key needs Face ID, your fingerprint or your device passcode to unlock | Until you clear it on-device or delete the app |
| Earlier mood journal | Mood entries and character settings from a feature that has since been removed | Firestore; no longer shown or used by the app | Until you delete your account |
Encryption: an honest answer
“Secure” means different things depending who you're asking about. Here is exactly what protects you today, and from whom:
- Network eavesdroppers (public wifi, your ISP): everything is sent over TLS. Fully protected.
- Someone who picks up your unlocked phone: protected if you turn on the app lock (Face ID / Touch ID / PIN) in Profile.
- Us, reading our own database, or a valid legal order served on us or our infrastructure providers: the Private Vault is end-to-end encrypted. Its photos and captions are encrypted on your phone (AES-256-GCM) with a key that is created on your device, shared directly between your two phones, kept in your phone's secure hardware behind Face ID, fingerprint or passcode, and never sent to our servers. We, Firebase, and anyone we could be ordered to hand data to see only ciphertext. Everything else is not end-to-end encrypted: messages (Stream Chat, our messaging processor) and memories, Glimpses and the other together features (Firebase) are encrypted in transit and at rest, but technically readable server-side, same as most hosted apps.
We would rather under-promise here than have you rely on a protection that doesn't exist. If something only the two of you should ever see, put it in the Vault.
Who we share data with
We do not sell your data, and there are no advertising or analytics-tracking third parties in this app. Data passes through two infrastructure processors, strictly to run the service:
- Google Firebase: authentication, database, file storage, and push notification delivery.
- Stream: chat message and video/audio call infrastructure.
Your rights
Both of these are built into the app itself, under Us → Account, not a support ticket you have to file and wait on:
- Export your data. Us → Account → Export my data gives you a downloadable zip of your data within a couple of minutes.
- Delete your account. Us → Account → Delete account permanently removes your account, immediately. Because everything in this app is shared between exactly two people, deleting your account also deletes the shared space (messages, memories, vault, whiteboard and the rest) for your partner, who is warned about this before you confirm. Your partner's own account stays intact. You can also ask us to delete it without the app: see how to delete your account.
Children
Always Connected is for adults. It is not directed at, and is not knowingly used by, anyone under 18. If you believe a minor is using the app, contact us and we will act on it.
Changes to this policy
If what we store or how we protect it changes, this page changes with it: the “last updated” date at the top reflects the true last edit, and any material change is announced in-app.
Contact
Questions, deletion requests you'd rather not do in-app (see delete your account), or anything else: ijogendrajat@gmail.com.