privacy · tilde 1.3 for android
~ Tilde
Your details stay on your phone.
Tilde has no account, no internet and no tracking. This is what it stores, where, and when anything leaves your phone.
what the app can do
- Tilde asks for two permissions: NFC and vibration. It has no internet permission, so it can’t send anything anywhere.
- No analytics, no ads, no accounts and no tracking. The app writes no logs of your details.
what stays on your phone
- Your cards, their photos, your Met list and what you’ve received in Receive are stored only on your phone. Tilde opts out of Android’s cloud backup.
- A backup is a file saved wherever you choose. It isn’t encrypted, so keep it somewhere private. The Guest Wi-Fi and Hotspot passwords are only included if you check the box for them.
- Delete all data (Settings → About, from the gear on the Cards tab) removes everything from the phone, as uninstalling Tilde would.
when something leaves your phone
- Nothing leaves your phone until you share it: when you tap phones, when someone scans your code, or when you use Send.
- A contact card you Send includes your photo only if you switch on Include your photo when you send your contact card (Settings → Sharing). It’s off by default, and a tap or the code never includes it.
- iPhones and the contact link: a tap with your contact card also carries a link to taptilde.com/c, with the details on your contact card, and your card’s ~/handle, color and line under your name (if you wrote one), written into the link after a #. An iPhone opens it to show your contact and save it. Browsers never send the part after the #, so neither Cloudflare nor this website receives your details: the page reads them on the other person’s phone, sends them nowhere and stores nothing (its only other requests are this site’s own fonts, which carry none of your details). Anyone who has the link can read it, as with the contact card itself.
- Notes and lists: a note or list written to a sticker is in its link to taptilde.com/n, after a #. A phone that taps it opens the page, which reads it on that phone; neither Cloudflare nor this website receives it. If you tick items, the page remembers which ones on your phone for a week, never the words. Anyone who taps the sticker can read the note.
- Package tags and 17track: a package tag holds only a link (taptilde.com/p), never your tracking numbers. Your numbers stay on your phone (and in a backup file you save). They go to 17track only when you tap Track all or Track on 17track, or, if you turn on “A package tag opens 17track directly”, when you tap your own package tag. The browser opens 17track; Tilde itself still has no internet permission.
- By default, Tilde only answers taps while it’s on screen. Answer taps when Tilde is closed (off by default) lets it answer while the phone is unlocked. Taps are never answered from the lock screen.
- Guest Wi-Fi: the password is stored only on your phone, but the Wi-Fi code contains it. Anyone who scans it, or taps your phone while you share it, can join your network.
how you can check
- The code is open source under the MIT license, so anyone can read what the app does: source on GitHub.
- Every release is built from the public code and signed with the same key.
this website
- 0 cookies and 0 trackers.
- Cloudflare carries the traffic for taptilde.com and this website. It sets no cookies. It asks browsers to report connections that fail, never ones that work, and those network error reports never include the part of a link after the #.
- The contact page (taptilde.com/c) is logged like any page: the time, the visitor’s IP address and browser, never the details in the link.
- The note page (taptilde.com/n) is logged like any page: the time, IP address and browser, never the note.
questions
- About privacy, or about something here that looks wrong: [email protected].
~ Tilde is free and open source.