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.

Last updated 20 August 2026.

who is responsible for this

Hereandaway is operated by Silicron Code, a sole proprietorship of Kevin Stauss, in the United States. Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR that makes Silicron Code the data controller. Write to support@hereandaway.net with anything on this page and a person answers.

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, an analytics tool, 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 screen, not sitting in a file somewhere on our side. 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, and no usage data. It starts no network connection except the one to the presence server that shows you your friends, and the update download you ask for by clicking (see below). This website is the same: no cookies, no trackers, and not a single line of JavaScript. Nothing here is watching you read it.

updates

Hereandaway never checks for updates on its own. It does not phone anywhere when it starts, and it has no schedule. Most apps do check, quietly, every launch, which means whoever runs that server holds a list of who opened the app and when. That is exactly the record this whole product exists to not create, so we do it the other way round.

Instead: when the app connects to show you your friends, it mentions which version it is, the same way it has to say who you are. If a newer one exists, the server says so, and a small “update” link appears at the bottom of the window. Nothing downloads until you click it. You can also check by hand any time in Settings, and if you never click either one, the app never talks to anything but the presence server.

When you do update, the download comes from this website and is checked against a key built into the app, so a tampered file is refused. Your version number is used to answer the question and is not stored, counted, or written down, the same as everything else here.

Email delivery

Login codes are sent through Resend, from webmaster@hereandaway.net. Your email address passes through them for exactly that purpose.

the companies involved

Running this at all takes a few outside services. The complete list:

• Fly.io hosts the server and the disk the database sits on, in the United States. They hold the data described above because it physically lives on their hardware.
• Resend delivers login codes. They see your email address and the code, and nothing else.
• Netlify serves this website. The website has no accounts, no cookies, and no scripts, so it holds nothing about you beyond the ordinary server request logs any web host keeps.
• Ko-fi, only if you choose to use the tip jar. That is a page on their site, not ours. What happens there is between you and them, and nothing about it comes back to Hereandaway. We never see a card number, and a tip is not linked to your account.

None of them are advertising companies, and none of them get anything for their own purposes. There is no data broker, no analytics vendor, and no ad network anywhere in this list, because there is nothing here worth selling and we would not sell it.

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. Nothing is held back in a hidden copy, there is no waiting period, and no “deactivation.” Since presence was never stored in the first place, there is no activity history to delete. It was never there.

where it lives, and how long

The server and its database are in the United States. If you use Hereandaway from the EEA or the UK, your account data is transferred to and stored in the US. Our providers rely on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for that transfer.

How long each thing is kept, in full:

• Presence: never stored, so there is no duration.
• Here messages: until your last session ends.
• Away messages: until you clear or replace them, or 7 days, whichever comes first.
• Your account, friendships, aliases, groups, settings: until you delete your account.
• Login codes: 10 minutes, and never kept as the code itself. What is stored is scrambled in a way that cannot be turned back into the code.
• Sessions: up to a year, or until you sign out. The key your app holds is scrambled the same way before it is stored.
• Invite codes: 7 days.
• Reports: kept after they are resolved, and after the reported account is deleted. A safety record that is erased on request is not a safety record.

why we are allowed to hold it

For people in the EEA and UK, the GDPR wants a lawful basis named. Ours is performance of a contract: everything in the list above exists because the app cannot work without it. There is no processing here based on legitimate interests, because there is no processing here beyond running the thing you asked for. The one exception is reports, which we keep on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping people safe from abuse.

your rights over your data

Depending on where you live you may have the right to access a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, take it elsewhere, restrict or object to how it is used, and complain to a regulator. If you are in California, you have the right to know what is collected, to delete it, and not to be discriminated against for asking. We do not sell or share personal information, and we never have.

Most of these you can exercise yourself, immediately, without asking anyone: your username, color, font, aliases, and groups are all editable in settings, and Delete account removes everything at once. For anything else, including a copy of your data, write to support@hereandaway.net. We will answer within 30 days, and we will not ask you why.

One honest limit: we verify such a request by the email address on the account, because that address is the only thing we know about you. If you have lost access to it, there is nothing we can check you against.

if this page changes

If it changes in a way that matters, we will say so plainly on the site before it takes effect, and update the date at the top. We will not quietly start collecting something and leave you to notice.

Questions

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