Qevio Privacy Policy
Draft. This policy is a draft for review by the operator's legal counsel before publishing. The highlighted items in brackets are placeholders that will be replaced.
The short version
Qevio is built so that we cannot read what you say or share. Your messages, photos, videos, voice notes, files, calls, Glimpses, your profile photo and about line, and your group names are end-to-end encrypted on your phone before they leave it. Only the people you talk to can decrypt them. Not Qevio, not our hosting provider, not Google, not anyone else.
The only things we can read about you are your phone number, which we verify with a one-time code when you sign up, and the real name you give for your account, which we keep to verify accounts, prevent abuse and help you if you contact us.
What we keep, and for how long
| What | Can Qevio read it? | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Your phone number (verified by code) | Yes | Until you delete your account |
| When you joined; your devices (model, encryption public keys, last active) | Yes | Until you remove the device or delete your account |
| The real name on your account (given at sign-up) | Yes, to verify accounts, prevent abuse and for support | Until you delete your account |
| Your about line and profile photo; group names and photos | No (encrypted) | While you use them |
| Your privacy settings (for example "last seen: my contacts") | Yes, to apply them | Until you delete your account |
| Which Qevio accounts you added as contacts | Account ids only. Never the names you saved | Until you remove them or delete your account |
| Messages | No (encrypted) | Only until delivered to the recipients' phones (at most 30 days) |
| Photos, videos, voice notes, files | No (encrypted) | Only until downloaded by the recipients' phones (at most 7 days) |
| Glimpses (stories) | No (encrypted) | 24 hours |
| Call records (who called whom, when, audio or video, duration) | Yes. Never the call itself | 7 days |
| One-time sign-up codes | Stored only as a keyed one-way hash | A few minutes |
| How your sign-up code was delivered (WhatsApp or SMS, and whether WhatsApp delivery failed) | Yes, to deliver codes and prevent abuse | Up to 1 hour |
| Connection logs (account, device, IP address, time) and traffic metadata (who sent to which conversation, when, size, message/media/call). Never content | Yes, encrypted at rest | [90] days, as required by [applicable law, e.g. Thailand's Computer Crime Act], then deleted automatically |
Your chat history and media are stored only on your phone. If you turn on backups, an encrypted copy goes to your own Google Drive, locked with a password or recovery key that only you know. We never receive it and cannot open it.
What we don't do
- No advertising, no analytics, no tracking, no selling or sharing of data.
- No reading of your contacts' names. If you allow contact access, your phone sends only the phone numbers to check which ones use Qevio; we don't store that list.
- No access to your messages for us or for anyone who asks us, because we don't have the keys.
Services we use
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google): wakes your phone for new messages and calls. The notification contains only random ids. Your phone fetches and decrypts the content itself.
- Twilio and WhatsApp (Meta): deliver your sign-up code by WhatsApp, or by SMS if you don't use WhatsApp. They see your phone number and the code. On Android the code is handed to Qevio automatically; Qevio never reads your other messages.
- Google Drive (optional, only if you turn on backups): stores your encrypted backup in your own account.
- TURN relay (our server): helps calls connect through strict networks. It forwards encrypted call data it cannot decrypt.
Requests from authorities
We respond only to valid legal process. We can only provide the data in the table above that we can read: your phone number, the name on your account, when you joined, your devices, your privacy settings, the account ids in your contact list, call records from the last 7 days, and connection/traffic logs within the retention period. We cannot provide message content, media, calls, profile photos or group names, because we cannot decrypt them.
Your choices
- Delete your account: Settings → Account → Delete my account. We delete everything listed above. Encrypted server backups (kept for up to 7 days) and our hosting provider's backups may still contain it until they expire; connection logs are kept for their legal retention period.
- Control who sees what: Settings → Privacy (last seen, online, profile photo, about, read receipts, groups, Glimpses, silence unknown callers, disappearing messages, blocked contacts).
- Verify your chats: compare security codes in a contact's info to confirm that no one is intercepting.
Children
Qevio is not intended for children under [13 / the minimum age in your country].
Contact
[CONTACT EMAIL / ADDRESS]