Privacy Policy

The short version

Starling does not collect, store, or transmit any personal data. The app has no accounts, no backend server, and no analytics. Everything you do in Starling stays on your local network and your device.

What Starling does not collect

• No names, email addresses, phone numbers, or any account information — there are no accounts.
• No messages or files. Messages exist only in memory for the duration of a session and are never written to any server or cloud storage.
• No IP addresses or network topology. Discovery traffic stays on your local subnet and is never forwarded anywhere.
• No usage data, crash reports, or analytics of any kind.
• No advertising identifiers.

How Starling works

Starling uses UDP broadcast and multicast on your local network (LAN or Wi-Fi) to discover other devices running Starling. Once peers are found, messages and files travel directly between devices over encrypted TCP connections. No relay server, cloud service, or internet connection is involved at any point.

All communication is end-to-end encrypted using X25519 key exchange, HKDF key derivation, and ChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption. The encryption key is derived from the room passcode, which is shared between participants in person and never transmitted to any server.

What is stored on your device

Starling stores a small settings file on your device containing:

• Your display name (optional, set by you)
• Your notification preferences
• A list of pinned rooms (room names and passcodes you have chosen to save)

This data never leaves your device. You can clear it at any time from the Settings screen. Messages are not persisted — they exist only while the app is running.

Third-party services

Starling (the app) uses no third-party SDKs, analytics services, or advertising networks.

This website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare may collect standard web server logs (IP address, browser, request path) as part of serving the site. See Cloudflare's privacy policy for details. Starling (the app) is separate from this website and makes no requests to it.

Children

Starling does not knowingly collect any information from anyone, including children. Because no data is collected at all, there is nothing to differentiate.

Changes to this policy

If this policy ever changes materially, the updated version will be posted at this URL with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to robrighter@gmail.com.