Tethr — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 23 July 2026

Tethr is a focus app that blocks distracting apps behind a real-world NFC tap — with a partner (two paired phones), in a circle (a small group of family or friends), or solo (Tethr Tags, your own NFC tag). It is built to know as little about you as possible.

What we store

The solo Tethr Tags mode works without an account and stores nothing on our servers — a tag lock lives only on your phone, and Tethr Tags keeps no history of your locks, unlocks or breaks at all, not even locally. Everything below applies to the connected modes — a pair or a circle:

• A display name you choose at setup — no email address, no phone number, no real-name account.
• Your pairing — which two anonymous accounts form a pair.
• Your circle — which anonymous accounts belong to a circle (up to 10 people), who its anchor is, and each member's current lock status. Your display name and lock status are visible to the other members of a circle you chose to join, the same way your state is visible to a partner you pair with.
• Lock session state and events — timestamps of lock, unlock, break-lock and related events (for circles: tapping in and out of a gathering), kept so your partner or circle can see the shared state. Event history is deleted automatically after 90 days.
• A push token (Google Firebase) used only to wake the app for state updates.
• The package names of apps you choose to block — kept per mode (your pair list and your circle list are separate). We never read your app usage beyond detecting the foreground app on your own device — that check happens on the phone and is not sent to us.

We collect no location, no contacts, no messages, no browsing data. There are no ads and no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs.

Where it lives

Data is stored in the EU (Germany), on systems we operate ourselves. Traffic passes through Cloudflare (EU/global CDN) for transport security. Push notifications are delivered by Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which may process the push token and the event name (never message content — Tethr pushes carry none) outside the EU; Google LLC is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

Legal basis & your rights (GDPR)

Processing is based on your consent, given when you set Tethr up. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting your account — see account deletion. You have the right to access, correct, or erase your data, and to complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).

Retention

Event history: 90 days, purged automatically. Account data: kept until you delete your account, then erased (see below). A dissolved pairing's or circle's remaining records are hard-deleted 90 days after it ends. The short-lived codes that prove a tap are deleted as soon as they expire. Encrypted database backups are kept for up to 60 days for disaster recovery; data deleted from the live system ages out of them within that window, and the backups cannot be read without a decryption key stored separately.

Children

Tethr is not directed at children and is intended for users 16 and over.

Contact

Data controller: the Tethr developer, Ireland — hello@usetethr.app.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date above changes with it; material changes will be announced in the app.