Your data

What is stored

• Your username and gender letter. As you typed them, plus a lower-case version used to keep names unique.
• A device fingerprint for the cookie. Not the cookie value itself — only a one-way hash of it, so a copy of the database cannot be used to sign in as you.
• Your messages. The text, the room, the time, and the name and gender they were sent under. Swear words are masked before the message is saved, so the unmasked version is never stored.
• Room names, with the time of the last message, so search works.
• Reports. Who reported whom, in which room, any reason given, and a copy of the surrounding 20 lines. See below.
• Counters. Totals of lines and rooms for the stats page. Numbers only, attached to nobody.
• A salted hash of your IP address, used only to limit how many names can be claimed from one connection. The raw address is never written down, and the salt is replaced every day so yesterday's hash cannot be matched to today's.

Not collected: email address, password, phone number, payment details, real name, location, contacts, or anything from another site. There is no analytics, no advertising, no third-party script and no tracking pixel — which is also why there is no cookie banner to click.

Who you block is not collected either. Your browser tab remembers it until you close the tab and never sends it to us; only the Block name line you type is a chat message like any other.

The cookie

The site sets one cookie. It holds a long random value and nothing else: no name, no gender, nothing readable. The server keeps only a hash of that value and matches it to your username.

• It is prefixed __Host-, which means the browser sends it only to this site, over HTTPS, and no other site can set or read it.
• It is HttpOnly, so page scripts cannot read it either.
• It lasts 60 days and is refreshed every time you use the site, so an active device keeps its name indefinitely.
• It is not used to track you, here or anywhere else.

This cookie is your entire identity on the site. There is no password and no recovery: clear it, and the name goes with it.

How long it is kept

• Messages: the last 100 lines of a room, or 30 days, whichever ends first. In a busy room that is minutes.
• Rooms: deleted 30 days after the last message, with everything in them.
• Usernames: deleted 60 days after the name was last used. The name then goes back in the pool for anyone to claim.
• Reports, with their copied lines: 90 days.
• The IP-claim hashes: one day.
• Bans: if a moderator bans a username, the name and the device fingerprint that held it are kept until the ban is lifted, so neither can be used again.

Deletion is automatic and runs on a timer. Nothing is archived first, and there are no backups holding a second copy.

Reported conversation is kept longer than chat

Filing a report copies up to 20 lines of the room into that report. The copy is kept for 90 days, so it outlives the 30-day deletion of the chat it came from, and survives the room being deleted, the lines being pushed out by newer ones, and the usernames involved expiring.

It works that way because a report filed on day 29 would otherwise arrive with nothing to read. Once copied, those lines are evidence attached to a complaint rather than chat, and they are kept for as long as a complaint might need answering.

They are read by whoever runs the site. Private messages are the one thing held back: a private message appears in a report in full only if the person who filed it was the sender or the recipient. For anyone else it stays as the placeholder line, so reporting a room cannot be used to harvest other people's messages.

Removing yourself

Press the grey settings button and choose Reset username. That releases your name and clears the cookie. Clearing cookies in your browser has the same effect from your side, though it leaves the name reserved until it expires.

Messages you have already sent are not removed by either. They stay in the room until the last 100 lines have moved past them or the 30 days run out, and a report already filed keeps its copy for the full 90 days.

Nothing you can reset here is tied to your identity anyway: after your name expires it is just a name someone once used, and anyone else can claim it.

Where it lives

The site runs on Cloudflare's network, and the data described above is stored there. Rooms are created in the region where the first person joined them, so a conversation stays near the people having it.

This is a pilot run by one person. There is no support desk, but anything about your data can go to contact@talkchat.social.