Privacy Policy
Last updated 3 November 2026
Voal is built so that it holds as little about you as possible. This page says what that is, in plain words.
Who runs Voal
Voal is run by Cosmin Ghinea, Romania, who is the data controller. Contact: support@voal.app.
What the server holds
- Your account: a random ID, your public keys, a hash of a delivery token, and the month you joined. This is how the service delivers messages to you, so it's needed to provide it.
- Encrypted envelopes: messages waiting for you, which we can't read. They're deleted once your phone has them, and after 30 days at the latest.
- Encrypted attachments: files we can't read, under random names, deleted after 30 days.
Your account stays on the server until you delete it. If you lose your phone without deleting it, the account stays, because we can't tell that it has gone. It holds only what's listed above.
What it doesn't hold
No name, phone number, email address, contact list, message content, group names or members, or read state. We can't see who sent a message. No IP addresses are written to the database, files or logs.
What can still be seen
- While a message passes through, the server sees which mailbox it's for, its rough size, and when it arrived.
- A server watching live could guess who talks to whom from timing. Tor makes that harder, not impossible.
- With Tor turned off, the server sees your IP address while you're connected. It doesn't store it.
- Hetzner, which hosts the servers, could see the same traffic details.
Payments
Apple handles every purchase and knows which Apple Account bought Voal. The app checks that record on your phone, and nothing about it reaches our server, so we can't connect a payment to a Voal account. Apple's privacy policy applies to that.
On your phone
Your messages are stored encrypted on your phone and left out of backups. Voal has no analytics, no advertising and no third-party SDKs. If you turn on Guard mode's camera, frames are checked on your phone and never stored or sent.
This website and email
This website keeps no logs, sets no cookies and uses no analytics. Porkbun registered the domain, and Cloudflare answers DNS lookups for it. Let's Encrypt issues its certificate. If you email us, your message passes through Porkbun and our mail provider, and we keep it only as long as we need it to help you.
Outside the EU
Voal's servers are hosted by Hetzner in Germany. Porkbun, Cloudflare and Let's Encrypt are based in the United States, so an email you send us, or a DNS lookup for this website, may be handled there. Their own privacy policies explain the safeguards they use.
Your rights
You can ask us to access, correct, erase, restrict or receive a copy of your data, and you can object to how we use it. Because we don't know who you are, we can usually only find your account if you tell us its ID. The fastest way to erase everything is Delete Everything in the app, which removes your account from the server. Our legal basis is providing the service you asked for.
You can also complain to Romania's data protection authority, ANSPDCP (dataprotection.ro), or to the one where you live.
Children
Voal isn't meant for anyone under 16.
Changes
We'll update this page and its date when this policy changes.