In one paragraph
We collect nothing. CampChat has no servers, no accounts, no analytics, and never transmits data to us or any third party. Everything the app handles — your nickname, your messages, the rooms you've joined — lives on the participating phones and nowhere else.
But know this: CampChat does not encrypt messages in transit, and there is no commitment to ever add encryption — assume it never will. Anyone within Bluetooth or Wi-Fi radio range, using suitable equipment, can passively observe every nickname, every room name, and the contents of every message sent across the mesh. Treat a CampChat conversation as you'd treat one held aloud in the same room.
Who we are
CampChat ("the app", "we", "us") is published by Wojtek Rygielski,
an individual developer based in Poland. We operate the marketing
website at campchat.rygielski.net and publish the CampChat
Android application on the Google Play Store.
CampChat is a non-commercial project. There is no company, no investors, and no advertising relationships behind it. Contact details are at the end of this policy.
Data we collect
None. The CampChat app does not transmit any data to us, our infrastructure, or any third-party server. We do not operate any backend. We have no database that stores anything about you, your device, or your conversations.
Specifically, the app does not:
- Send analytics, telemetry, crash reports, or usage statistics to us or to any third party.
- Use advertising SDKs or attribution frameworks.
- Use the Android Advertising ID.
- Make any HTTP, HTTPS, or other network requests to remote servers as part of normal operation.
- Phone home for license checks, updates, or feature flags.
Data stored on your device
Although we collect nothing, the app must store information locally on your phone so it can function. All of the following is held in CampChat's private app storage and is removed when you uninstall the app.
| What | Why it exists | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Nickname | Your chosen display name (up to 24 characters), shown to other CampChat users in chats and room lists. | Phone, private to CampChat. |
| Device name | Your phone's device name (the one you set in Android settings; if unset, the model name), shown alongside your nickname so peers can tell two people with the same name apart. | Phone, read from Android settings. |
| Stable peer identifier | A short locally-generated identifier the mesh uses to attribute messages and pick your avatar color. Not derived from your account or hardware. | Phone, private to CampChat. |
| Rooms you've joined | Lets the app remember which fires you participate in across launches and reboots. | Phone, private to CampChat. |
| Per-room message history | A rolling history of each room's messages — effectively unlimited for everyday use — so you can scroll back, sync to peers who just joined, and continue conversations across launches. Only the oldest messages are dropped once a room grows very large. Leaving a room deletes its history from your phone. | Phone, private to CampChat. |
| Preference settings | Small flags such as whether you've paused the mesh and which one-time warnings you've dismissed. | Phone, private to CampChat. |
The app does not access your contacts, photos, calendar, call history, microphone, or camera. It does not read or write files outside its own private storage.
Mesh transmission & encryption status
This is the part of this policy you most need to understand. We deliberately place it before any reassurance because it is a material limitation of the current build.
CampChat does not encrypt messages in transit. All traffic exchanged over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi between devices running CampChat is sent in cleartext. Any party within radio range of your phone, using widely available wireless monitoring equipment, can passively observe:
- Your nickname and the nicknames of everyone else on the mesh in range.
- The names of every room being announced (including rooms you have not joined).
- The full text of every message sent across the mesh.
- Delivery and read-receipt metadata associated with those messages.
- The stable peer identifiers and device names broadcast for discovery.
This is the case regardless of whether the observer is a member of the same room — because the mesh relays traffic for every room unconditionally, an observer within range sees traffic for rooms they never joined.
What this means practically
Treat a CampChat conversation as you would treat a conversation held aloud in the same physical space: convenient, useful, and overhearable. CampChat is appropriate for casual coordination among nearby people ("meet at the wing exit", "I'm at site 14"). It is not appropriate for sharing passwords, financial information, private health information, legally privileged communications, or anything else you would not say out loud in a crowded room.
Will this change?
We make no promise that encryption will ever be added. It is not a committed feature on any timeline, and you should plan as though mesh traffic will always be in the clear. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and the in-app UI — but do not wait for it.
No interception by us
To be clear: we cannot intercept your messages, because we have no servers and the mesh never routes through us. The risk described above is from third parties in physical proximity to your phone, not from the app's publisher.
Web access & the hosted server
CampChat includes an optional "web access" feature: a phone can host a small embedded HTTP server so that people without the app — for example, an iPhone user or someone on a laptop — can join the chat from a browser by connecting to the host phone's hotspot and scanning a QR code.
This feature is off by default. It only starts when the user explicitly enables it from the identity screen. While it is running:
- The host phone runs a small webserver bound to the local hotspot network only. It does not expose anything to the public internet.
- Traffic between the browser guest and the host phone is plain HTTP, not HTTPS. It is not encrypted. Anyone with access to the host phone's hotspot Wi-Fi password — or, on some Android versions, anyone within Wi-Fi range using suitable monitoring equipment — could observe the same data described in section 04.
- Browser guests appear in the chat attributed as "Nickname · (host device) · web" so other participants can tell that those messages came in via the web client.
When the host turns the web-access toggle off, the server stops, the QR code becomes inactive, and any connected browser guests are disconnected.
Permissions & how they're used
CampChat requests the following Android permissions. Each is used exclusively for the purpose stated below; none of the data accessed via these permissions leaves the device for our servers (we have none).
| Permission | Why CampChat needs it |
|---|---|
| Bluetooth (scan, connect, advertise) | The core transport, used over both Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth LE to discover nearby CampChat devices, advertise this device's presence, and exchange messages. |
| Nearby Wi-Fi devices / Location | Required by Android in order to use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi scanning. CampChat does not read, store, or transmit your location. We do not use GPS, Wi-Fi positioning, or any location API. |
| Wi-Fi (Google Nearby Connections) | An additional transport that extends mesh range, available only on phones with Google Play Services. It uses Google's Nearby Connections over Wi-Fi; turning your phone's Wi-Fi off drops the mesh back to Bluetooth only. |
| Network / internet access (local only) | Used solely by the optional web-access feature (section 05) to run a small web server on your phone's own hotspot. CampChat makes no connections to the internet or to any server of ours — we have none. |
| Notifications | To show incoming-message notifications and the persistent foreground-service notification that indicates the mesh is running. |
| Foreground service | Lets the mesh keep running while the screen is off and across reboots, so messages can reach you even when CampChat isn't in the foreground. |
| Receive boot completed | Restarts the mesh service automatically after the phone reboots, so the ambient "always-on campfire" behaviour survives a restart. |
Each runtime permission can be granted or revoked at any time from Android's app settings. Revoking Bluetooth or Nearby Devices stops the mesh; the app will surface a clear in-app warning when this happens.
Security practices
At rest
On your phone, CampChat's data lives in the app's private storage area. Android isolates this storage from other apps. We rely on the platform's at-rest encryption and sandboxing; we do not add an application-level encryption layer to local storage.
CampChat also leaves Android's automatic backup enabled, so your local app data (nickname, rooms, message history, preferences) may be included in the device-level backup that Android performs to your own Google account. That backup is governed by Google and your device settings, not by us; you can disable it in Android's backup settings.
In transit
As fully disclosed in section 04, traffic over the mesh is not encrypted, and we make no commitment to encrypt it in future. Assume everything you send is observable by anyone in radio range.
Vulnerability reports
Found a bug or security issue? Email us — see the contact section at the bottom. We'll respond as quickly as a single-maintainer project can. Coordinated disclosure preferred.
Retention & deletion
How long things stick around
- Messages in a room you've joined. Each room keeps a rolling history on your device — effectively unlimited for everyday use. Only once a room grows very large are its oldest messages dropped as new ones arrive. You can create and join as many rooms as you like.
- Rooms you've left. Leaving a room deletes that room's message history from your phone. The device continues to relay the room's mesh traffic for other people on the mesh, but does not store it.
- Mesh traffic in flight. Messages relayed but not stored (because they belong to a room your device hasn't joined) are held only momentarily, long enough to forward them.
How to delete everything
- Per room: long-press the room in the rooms list and choose "Leave room". Deletes that room's local history.
- Everything at once: uninstall the app from Android settings, or use "Clear storage" in your phone's app settings. Both remove all local CampChat data — nickname, peer identifier, rooms, message history, preferences.
Because we do not store any of this data ourselves, there is no separate "delete my account" request to send — there is no account to delete.
Children
CampChat is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone — adult or child — because we do not collect personal information at all (see section 02).
That said, because messages on the mesh are visible to nearby observers (section 04), parents and guardians should weigh whether the app is appropriate for a minor's intended use. We recommend reading section 04 carefully with that lens.
Your rights
Privacy laws such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) give you certain rights over personal data held about you — for example, the right to access, correct, or delete it, and the right to know how it is used.
Because CampChat holds no personal data about you on our side, there is nothing for us to disclose, correct, port, or delete on request. The data the app handles is held by you, on your own device, and you can inspect or delete it at any time using the controls described in section 09. If you nevertheless want to make a formal rights request, use the contact details below and we will reply with confirmation that we hold no records relating to you.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes — for example, if the disclosures in section 04 and section 08 ever need updating — the "Effective" date at the top of this page is revised and the previous version is kept available on the project's source repository for reference.
Material changes (anything that meaningfully changes what the app collects, transmits, or shares) will additionally be surfaced inside the app on next launch, so that you don't have to re-read the website to know about them.
Contact
For any questions about this policy, data handling, or security:
Publisher of CampChat
Email rygielski@gmail.com
Web www.campchat.rygielski.net
This document is the canonical Privacy Policy for CampChat and is the version linked from the Google Play Store listing.