In short
BurnApp has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no trackers. We cannot read your messages, and we do not keep them.
Who we are
BurnApp is made by José Luis Rey, an independent developer in Spain. Contact: jluisrey@gmail.com.
What stays on your phone
- The channel key (a large block of random data) and the channel settings you agree on with your friends.
- Messages, photos and voice notes, encrypted on the phone with a key held in Android's secure hardware (Keystore). They are deleted automatically when their lifetime ends, when you burn the channel, or when you uninstall the app.
Nothing on the phone is backed up to Google or any cloud: Android backup is disabled for the app.
What passes through our server
- Encrypted messages. Each message is encrypted on your phone with the one-time key before it leaves. The server stores the encrypted blob in a random mailbox until the recipient downloads it, and deletes it then, or when the retention time set in the channel expires, whichever comes first. The server never has the key and cannot read, see or hear any content.
- Push signals. A small "you have mail" signal on a random topic wakes the recipient's app. It carries no content.
- Technical data. Like any internet service, the server sees the IP address of each connection, the time and the size of what is sent. It does not write these to logs, and it has no names, phone numbers, emails or contact lists to link them to.
- Remote setup (optional). If you create a channel with an invite code, the key travels through the server protected by standard end-to-end encryption (ECDH P-256 + AES-256-GCM), and is deleted once delivered.
- Finding the server. If your network's DNS can't find our server, the app asks a public DNS service (Cloudflare or Google, over HTTPS) for its address. Only the server's name is sent.
The server is our own machine in Microsoft Azure's Sweden Central region (European Union). No third party receives your data, and we do not sell or share it.
Permissions the app asks for
- Nearby devices, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and location: to create a channel with phones in the same room. Android's Nearby Connections requires the location permission to find devices nearby; BurnApp never reads or sends your location.
- Camera: to scan the key shown as an animated QR code on another phone, and to take photos you choose to send.
- Microphone: only while you are recording a voice note.
- Notifications and running in the background: to tell you a message has arrived, without Google's push service.
- Motion sensors: sensor noise is mixed into the random key while it is being created.
Deleting your data
There is no account to delete. Burn a channel to erase its key and messages on your phone right away; uninstalling the app erases everything. Anything still waiting on the server is deleted automatically within the channel's retention time (at most a few days).
Children
BurnApp is not directed at children under 16.
Changes
If this policy changes, we will update this page and the date above.