Privacy Policy
Poltergate lets you see and control your own iPhones from a browser. To do that, the screens of your phones pass through our server on their way to you. This page says plainly what we keep, why, and for how long. The short version: your phone's screen is shown to you and to people you share it with, and is never recorded, sold or used for anything else. We have no ads, no trackers and no analytics.
What we keep
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your account: email address, password (stored only as a one-way scrypt hash), when you signed up and last signed in | To let you in and to send you sign-up and password-reset letters | Until you delete the account |
| Sign-in sessions: a random session key, the IP address and browser it came from | To keep you signed in and to show you where you are signed in (Settings → Sessions), so you can sign out a browser you don't recognise | 30 days at most, 7 days if unused |
| API tokens you create (stored only as a hash) | To let your own programs control your phones | Until you revoke them |
| Your dongles and phones: the dongle's serial number, the name you give it, its firmware version, the Wi-Fi network name it joined and its IP address; the phone's model, iOS version and screen size, whether the Poltergate app is open and the broadcast running; cursor calibration numbers | To connect your dongle to your phone, show their status and aim the cursor exactly | While the dongle is in your account |
| Activity log: connections, disconnections, sign-ins, setting changes | So you (and we, when you ask for help) can see what happened | 30 days |
| Backups of the database above (not of screens) | To recover from a failure | 14 days on the server, 90 days in an offline copy |
What we do not keep
- The screen of your phone. The Poltergate app sends the picture to our server only while you (or someone you shared a link with) are watching, and the server passes it straight to your browser. Frames live only in memory for a few seconds and are never written to disk. A screenshot you ask for is made on request and sent to you, not stored.
- What you type through Poltergate. Taps, swipes and text go from your browser to the dongle and are not logged.
- Wi-Fi passwords. When you set the dongle's Wi-Fi from the app, the password goes from your phone to the dongle over an encrypted Bluetooth link; from the dashboard it passes through our server to the dongle without being saved.
- Your contacts, photos, location, or anything else on the phone: the app does not ask for or read them. It only uses Bluetooth (to set up the dongle) and the local network (to send the screen).
The Poltergate iPhone app
The app streams the screen only after you start the broadcast yourself in iOS (the red indicator shows while it runs) and only to the Poltergate server your phone was paired with. The connection is encrypted and the app accepts only Poltergate's own server certificate, so the picture cannot be sent anywhere else. While it is open, the app reports where taps land inside the Poltergate app itself (never in other apps): that is how the dongle's cursor is aimed exactly. If you use Paste in the dashboard, the text you send is put on the phone's clipboard so the dongle can paste it. The pairing key is kept in the iPhone's Keychain, on that device only. The app has no advertising, no analytics and no third-party code.
Who else handles data
- OVHcloud (Canada) runs the server that holds your account and passes the screens.
- Cloudflare serves this website and our domain names.
- Resend (European Union) delivers our sign-up and password letters; it sees your email address and the letter.
- Apple delivers the app through the App Store and TestFlight under Apple's own privacy policy.
We do not sell or rent your data and do not share it with anyone else, except where a law requires us to.
Cookies
The dashboard sets one cookie to keep you signed in, and one more when you open a share link. Both are necessary for the service to work. This website sets no cookies.
Security
Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS and TLS). Passwords and tokens are stored only as hashes. Dongles accept only firmware signed by us. Accounts are protected against password guessing. If we ever learn of a breach affecting your data, we will tell you by email.
Your rights
You can see your phones, sessions and API tokens in the dashboard at any time, sign out other browsers and revoke tokens yourself. To get a copy of your data, correct it, or delete your account and everything linked to it, write to [email protected] from the address on the account; we do it within 30 days. Deleted data leaves the backups within 90 days.
Children
Poltergate is a tool for businesses and adults. It is not meant for children under 16, and we do not knowingly keep their data.
Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date above and tell account holders by email before the change takes effect.