Privacy
Vixus Hush is built so that we have as little to protect as possible. Short version: we cannot read your messages, we do not store conversations, and we do not store IP addresses. But a private chat is not an invisible one, and some other parties do see your IP address. This page lists all of it.
What we do not have
- Messages. They are encrypted in your browser before they are sent. Our servers relay scrambled data and keep none of it.
- Room keys. The key is in the part of the link after the
#. Browsers never send that part to any server, so it reaches nobody but the people you give the link to. - Accounts. There is no sign-up, no name, no email and no phone number.
- Chat history. Messages exist only in the memory of each person's browser tab. When a chat ends, or a tab closes, they are gone. We cannot bring them back.
- Cookies and browser storage. The chat page uses none: no cookies, no localStorage, no sessionStorage, no IndexedDB. The only cookie on this site is a login cookie for the site owner's private statistics page, which visitors never receive.
- Trackers. No analytics scripts, no third-party fonts, no ad networks, and no requests from the chat page to any site other than our own and our realtime server.
What others can see: your IP address and timing
Every website sees the IP address of its visitors, and the networks in between see it too. For Vixus Hush this means the following can see your IP address and the time you connect:
- Our hosting provider (Hostinger), which serves this website and the small sign-in endpoint for rooms. Its access logs cannot be switched off by us. They may record IP addresses and request times. They never contain room keys (the part after
#is never sent) or messages (they are not sent to the host at all, and request bodies are not logged). - Our realtime server,
push.vixus.io. It relays the encrypted messages between the people in a room. It sees your IP address, when you connect and disconnect, how many people are in a room, the size and timing of messages, and a hashed room id. It does not see keys or readable messages. - Cloudflare, if we put the site behind it (we will update this page if we do). It would see IP addresses and request times, as any such proxy does.
- Your own network (workplace, school, internet provider, VPN), which can see that you connect to this service.
- The people in your room, who can copy, screenshot or forward anything you write. They do not see your IP address through us.
We do not claim that Vixus Hush is untraceable or anonymous against these parties. If your threat is a network observer, a VPN or Tor Browser changes who sees your IP address, but we make no promises about them.
What we do store: anonymous totals
We keep only anonymous aggregate counters, in a small database, and nothing else:
- page views of the home page, rooms created, and joins, per day;
- an approximate number of unique visitors and participants per day, estimated with a probabilistic sketch (HyperLogLog) that cannot be turned back into a list of visitors or IP addresses;
- how many rooms and people are connected at a moment, and the daily peaks. These come from the realtime server's own counts and never include room names.
We never store IP addresses, room ids, room keys, user agents or message data in it. An IP address is read, mixed into the sketch with a secret, and discarded within the same request. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, we do not count your visit at all.
To limit abuse, the sign-in endpoint also keeps a tiny counter per visitor for a few minutes in the server's temporary storage. The counter is filed under a salted hash of the IP address, not the address, and it expires by itself.
The application never writes logs of its own and never writes message or key data anywhere.
Links in messages
Links in messages are shown as plain text. Nothing is fetched and no previews are made. If you choose Open, you first see the full domain, and the site you open then sees your IP address and is not covered by this page.
Your browser history
A link to a room contains its key. Your browser may keep it in its history, in bookmarks, or in messages you used to share it. When you leave or end a chat, the page replaces its address with the home page, but some browsers still remember the original. For a sensitive chat, use a private window.
Your rights
Because we hold no personal data about you in any form that can be tied to you, there is nothing for us to look up, correct or delete. If you think we hold something about you, write to us and we will check.
Contact
Questions about this page: [email protected]. Reports of misuse: Report abuse.