Privacy

This page is not boilerplate. The things Hereandaway refuses to store are the product, so this is the most important page on the site. It is written to be read.

Presence is never written down

Whether you are here or not is a live value in the server’s memory. It is never written to disk, never logged, never copied into a database, a metrics system, or a backup. When you go idle, quit the app, or the server restarts, that value is simply gone.

No timestamp is ever attached to presence. The server does not record when you arrived, when you left, or how long you were there. There is no “last seen” anywhere in the system — not shown to your friends, not hidden in an admin panel, not sitting in an internal table. It does not exist, so it cannot leak, be subpoenaed, be breached, or be sold. I cannot tell anyone when you were online, because I genuinely do not know.

Messages are short-lived

Here messages die with your session. The note you attach while you’re at your computer lives in server memory only. Quit the app, or go idle long enough, and it’s gone. It is never stored on disk at all.

Away messages expire after 7 days. An away message is the one kind of message the server keeps on disk, because it has to outlive your session — that’s the point of a note left on a door. It is stored until you clear it, replace it, or 7 days pass, whichever comes first. Then it is deleted, not archived.

What we do store

The account has to work, so a few things live in the database:

• Your email address. Used to log you in, and for nothing else. It is never shown to other users, never searchable, and never sent anywhere except to deliver your login code.
• Your username, color, and font. These are shown to your friends. That’s their job.
• Your friendships. Who is on your list. Every one of these was created by someone deliberately handing someone else an invite code.
• Your current away message, until it clears or expires, as above.
• Your private aliases and groups. The nicknames you give friends and the folders you sort them into are stored so they sync across your machines. They are readable by you alone — never by the friend, never by anyone else.
• Your settings. Preferences like theme, sound, and idle threshold.

That is the complete list. There are no profiles, no avatars, no uploaded files, and no message history, because none of those exist in the product.

The one exception

There is exactly one situation where the server deliberately makes a record: when you file a report. If you report a friend from the app, the server snapshots that person’s current message text, who reported whom, and when, so we can actually act on it. That is a record a person asked to exist — a different thing entirely from the server quietly writing down when everyone was at their desk. Nothing else is ever logged about anyone’s activity.

No analytics, no telemetry

The app collects no analytics, no crash telemetry, no usage data. Nothing about it phones home. This website is the same: no cookies, no trackers, and not a single line of JavaScript — you can view source and check.

Email delivery

Login codes are sent through Resend, our email delivery provider, from send.hereandaway.net. Your email address passes through them for exactly that purpose. That is the only third party involved in running Hereandaway.

Deleting your account

Settings → Account → Delete account. It takes effect immediately and it is total: your user record, your email address, your away message, your friendships, your aliases and groups, and every session are deleted. Your row disappears from your friends’ lists silently. There is no soft-delete, no retention window, and no “deactivation.” Since presence was never stored in the first place, there is no activity history to delete — it was never there.

Questions

Write to support@hereandaway.net and a person will answer.