Privacy Policy
The short version
- Your account, posts, comments, messages and settings are kept on Budgie’s own server: a computer run by Budgie’s developer, not a big tech company.
- We don’t ask for your email, real name, phone number or location, and Budgie’s server doesn’t log IP addresses.
- Budgie shows ads from Google between posts in feeds, never in chats. They aren’t personalised, and Google uses cookies for them only as far as you allow (section 6).
- Budgie itself uses no cookies, analytics or tracking, and we never sell your information or give Google your posts, messages or account.
- You can download everything we hold about you, or delete your account, any time in Settings → Account.
1. Who is responsible
Budgie (called Nook until October 2026) is made and run by Teofil Ionescu-Mihai, who is the “controller” of your personal data under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Contact us through github.com/teofilcelzmecher.
2. What we keep
| What | Who can see it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your username, profile picture (icon or photo), colour, shape and bio, and when you joined | Everyone on Budgie | So people know who wrote what |
| Your password and recovery code, only as one-way scrambled hashes that can’t be turned back into them | Nobody | To let you sign in and recover your account |
| Your posts, comments, images, polls and the nests you create | Everyone on Budgie | That’s what Budgie is for |
| Your votes, Sparks and poll answers | Only totals are shown, never who voted | To count them, and so you can change your vote |
| Nests you joined | Only the member count is shown | For your home feed |
| Your friends and friend requests | You and the other person | So friends can message each other |
| Your private messages, and when each one was read | You and the person you’re writing to (see section 4). Once you open a chat, your friend sees “Seen” under what they sent | To deliver them and show they arrived |
| Your notifications | You | To tell you about replies and requests |
| Your settings, saved posts, collections, drafts, streak and badges | You | So they follow you to every device |
| Reports you make, and moderation decisions about you | Moderators, and you | To keep Budgie safe and handle appeals |
| Which version of these terms you agreed to, and which invite code you used, if you joined with one | Moderators | As a record of your agreement and to stop codes being reused |
| Your sign-ins: a scrambled form of each sign-in key, when it was made and last used | Nobody | To keep you signed in |
We don’t store your IP address. To slow down people guessing passwords, the server briefly counts attempts per address in its memory. That count is never saved and disappears within the hour.
Images are shown through long, random links. Anyone who has an image’s exact link can open it, so don’t upload anything you wouldn’t want shared.
3. Why we’re allowed to (legal bases)
- To provide Budgie to you (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)): your account, what you post, your friends and messages, and your settings.
- Our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): keeping Budgie secure and running (rate limits, backups, hosting) and keeping it safe (moderation and reports). You can object; contact us.
- Showing ads, which keeps Budgie free: our legitimate interest in funding it with non-personalised ads (Article 6(1)(f)), and your consent wherever the law requires it for cookies or similar storage (Article 6(1)(a) and the ePrivacy rules). You can withdraw that consent any time (section 6).
- Legal obligations (Article 6(1)(c)): when the law requires us to act on illegal content or to answer the authorities.
4. Where it’s kept, and who else is involved
Budgie’s server is a single computer looked after by Budgie’s developer. The database on it is protected by the computer’s security, and nightly backups are kept on the same computer, with occasional copies on a storage drive in the developer’s care. As the person who runs the server, the developer can technically open the database, private messages included. We only do so to fix problems, handle reports about a specific message, or when the law requires it.
- Tailscale (Tailscale Inc., Canada) connects the server to the internet. Your connection is encrypted all the way to Budgie’s server, so Tailscale can’t read what you send, but it handles your IP address to route the connection. See the Tailscale Privacy Policy.
- GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc., USA) hosts the website itself. Like any web host, GitHub receives your IP address and basic browser information when it sends you the site’s files, and may keep logs for security. See the GitHub General Privacy Statement.
- Google (Google Ireland Limited if you’re in the EU, the UK or Switzerland, Google LLC elsewhere) provides the ads, through Google AdSense. When a feed shows an ad, your browser loads it from Google, and Google receives your IP address, details about your browser and device, and the address of the page. We never give Google your posts, messages, username or anything else from your account. We ask Google for non-personalised ads, so the ads you see aren’t based on what you’ve done before, on Budgie or elsewhere. Google still uses cookies or similar storage for them, to limit how often you see the same ad, to stop fraud and to count views and clicks. Google decides how it uses that data, as an independent controller: see How Google uses information from sites that use its services and the Google Privacy Policy.
All three may process data outside the EU, under their own safeguards for international transfers. Budgie’s own fonts, icons and colour library come from the same site; the only thing loaded from another company is Google’s ads.
5. How long we keep it
- Your account and what you post stay until you delete them.
- When you delete a post or comment, its content is wiped from the server at once. When you delete your account, your profile, votes, Sparks, friends, messages (on both sides), notifications and images are deleted, and your posts and comments are wiped and marked “deleted”.
- Backups are overwritten within 14 days, so deleted things are gone from backups after that.
- Sign-ins you don’t use for 90 days expire. Your inbox keeps your newest 200 notifications.
- Reports and moderation decisions are kept as a record for up to a year after they’re resolved.
6. In your browser
Budgie itself doesn’t use cookies. It keeps one thing in your browser’s storage: your sign-in key, so you stay signed in. That’s strictly necessary for the service you asked for, so under EU rules (the ePrivacy Directive) it doesn’t need consent. Signing out removes it.
The ads are different: Google may keep cookies or similar data in your browser for them. In the EU, the UK and Switzerland, Google’s consent message asks you first. If you say no, you get limited ads that don’t use that data for advertising. You can change your answer any time in Settings → Privacy and legal → Ad cookie choices. Wherever you are, you can also manage Google’s ads in My Ad Center and block cookies in your browser’s settings.
7. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict and move your personal data, and to object to how it’s used. You can do most of this yourself:
- See and take a copy: Settings → Account → Export my data.
- Correct: edit your profile, posts and comments.
- Delete: Settings → Account → Delete account, or delete single posts, comments and photos.
For anything else, contact us (section 1). We’ll answer within a month. You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority, for example in the country where you live.
If you’re in the United States: we don’t sell your personal information, and because we ask Google for non-personalised ads, we don’t use it for targeted advertising. That’s true under the California Consumer Privacy Act and other state privacy laws.
8. Automatic decisions
Budgie’s moderation rules decide automatically whether some text can be posted (see the Terms of Use, section 7). They run on your device and again on the server, only look at the text being posted, and don’t make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on you. Reports are reviewed by a person. If you think a rule or a decision got it wrong, contact us and a person will look at it.
9. Security
Connections to Budgie are encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are stored with scrypt, a slow one-way hash, and sign-in keys and recovery codes only as hashes. The server only answers Budgie’s own website and only listens behind its encrypted tunnel. If something ever goes wrong with your data, we’ll tell you and, where the law requires it, the authorities.
10. People named in the credits
Budgie’s credits name the people who made and tested it, with their agreement. If you’re named and want your name changed or removed, contact us and we’ll do it.
11. Children
Budgie isn’t meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly let them sign up. Between 13 and your country’s age of digital consent (up to 16 in the EU), you need a parent’s or guardian’s permission to use Budgie. Ads on Budgie aren’t personalised for anyone, whatever their age. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we’ll delete it.
12. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we’ll tell you in the app before it applies. The date at the top always shows the latest version.