Privacy Policy

1. What the phone app reads

To make a backup, the DroidVault app reads the following from your phone, with your permission:

Android removes location tags from the photos in your phone’s gallery before it shares them with DroidVault, so the app never receives the location where those photos were taken. Pictures in MMS messages are different: they are backed up as received, including any location the sender’s photo carries. The app does not request access to your camera, microphone, or location.

2. Where your data goes

Your data goes to one place: the Windows PC you paired with. It is never sent to Gigadyne LLC, to any server, or to any third party. (The one other place the phone app can put message details is an optional diagnostics report that stays on your phone; see Section 3.)

• Pairing. DroidVault for Windows shows a QR code and a matching pairing code containing your PC’s connection details on your local network. You scan the code with your phone’s camera app, or type the pairing code into the DroidVault app, and the phone connects directly to that PC.
• Local network only. The phone app only talks to your PC, on your local network, plus a once-a-day check for app updates on droidvault.app (see Section 5). Your backup does not travel across the internet. If you tap the droidvault.app link in the app, it opens this website in your browser, like any other link (see Section 8).
• Encrypted in transit. The connection between your phone and your PC is encrypted with TLS, the same kind of encryption secure websites use. Before sending anything, the phone app checks that it is talking to the same PC it was paired with.
• No cloud and no account. Your backups never go to any server — not Gigadyne’s, not anyone’s. The phone app only asks droidvault.app for app updates (Section 5). There is no account or sign-up, and we do not know who you are.

3. Where your backup is stored, and how to delete it

Your backup is stored in DroidVault’s backup folder on your PC’s own drive, usually C:\Users\<your name>\DroidVault. You can browse it in DroidVault for Windows and export conversations to CSV, HTML, or TXT files whenever you choose. You control these files completely.

DroidVault for Windows shows the folder’s exact location under Settings › Backup folder, where Open in File Explorer opens it. It holds your texts, call log, photos, videos, contacts, and calendar.

• To delete your backups, open DroidVault for Windows and choose Settings › Backup folder › Delete all backups on this PC. It deletes every backup in that folder and this PC’s pairing keys, then closes DroidVault; your phone will need to pair again. Files you exported are ordinary files wherever you saved them; delete them like any other file.
• Before you uninstall DroidVault for Windows, decide what should happen to your backups. To remove them, use Delete all backups on this PC first. To keep them, copy the backup folder somewhere else or export anything you want to keep: depending on how Windows installed the app, uninstalling it can delete the backup folder along with the app.
• To remove DroidVault entirely, use Delete all backups on this PC, then uninstall DroidVault for Windows from your PC and uninstall the DroidVault app from your phone. If a backup folder is still on your PC after that, delete it to remove your backups.
• Uninstalling the phone app removes DroidVault and its settings, including its pairing details, from your phone. It does not touch the texts, photos, or other data on your phone.

Gigadyne cannot access, recover, or delete your backups, because we never have them.

Optional diagnostics report on your phone

The phone app’s Settings include a Run RCS Diagnostics button. You never need it for backups; it is a troubleshooting tool for questions about RCS chats. If you run it, the app saves a report on your phone and also tries to save a copy named droidvault-rcs-diagnostics.json in your Downloads folder. The report contains message counts, your phone’s make, model, and Android version, the names of the fields your phone uses to store messages, and one sample of each kind of message with the message text removed and phone numbers masked. A sample can still show its date and time, and a sender shown as a name or email address rather than a phone number. The app also writes the report to the phone’s system log, which stays on your phone and is overwritten over time. The report is never sent anywhere. To remove it, delete the file from your Downloads folder; uninstalling the app removes the app’s own copy.

4. What Gigadyne collects

Nothing from the apps, apart from the phone app’s update check described in Section 5. Specifically:

• DroidVault for Windows and the DroidVault phone app contain no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, and no advertising. They do not report usage, device information, or anything else to us. The phone app’s update check carries only the app’s own version number.
• We do not sell, share, or transfer any user data to anyone. We don’t have any to sell, share, or transfer.
• DroidVault for Windows gets its updates through the Microsoft Store and does not send data to Gigadyne.
• When you buy DroidVault for Windows, Microsoft handles the purchase and payment through the Microsoft Store, under Microsoft’s own privacy statement. Gigadyne does not receive your payment details.
• Cloudflare, which hosts droidvault.app, sees the internet (IP) address your browser or the phone app connects from when it contacts the site (Sections 5 and 8); we do not receive request logs. The only personal information we receive is what you choose to send us by email (see Section 9).

5. Updates to the phone app

Because the phone app comes from droidvault.app rather than an app store, it checks droidvault.app itself for newer versions. This is the only internet connection the app makes on its own, and it never carries your backup or anything else from your phone.

• What the check sends. One request: GET https://droidvault.app/android/update.json. Its only identifying detail is the app’s own version number, in the header User-Agent: DroidVault/<version>. Its other headers, such as Accept and Accept-Encoding, are the same on every phone. There is no device identifier, phone number, phone model, account, cookie, or query string, and no messages, contacts, photos, or other data from your phone.
• When it runs. At most once a day on its own: when you open DroidVault, and after a scheduled backup runs, even if you don’t open the app. It also runs whenever you tap Check for updates in the app’s Settings.
• Downloading an update. The app downloads a new version (the app file, an APK) from droidvault.app only after you tap to install it, with the same kind of request. Before installing, it checks the file against the published size and fingerprint and checks that it is signed by Gigadyne LLC, and Android asks you to confirm the update.
• Who sees the request. droidvault.app is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, so its files are served from Cloudflare’s network; Gigadyne runs no web server of its own for the site. As with any request to a website, Cloudflare sees the internet (IP) address the request comes from, because it needs it to reply, and handles IP addresses under Cloudflare’s own privacy policy. Gigadyne does not receive request logs. Cloudflare’s dashboard shows us traffic figures for the site, such as request counts, bandwidth, and visitor countries, and can show a small sample of individual requests for security troubleshooting; we do not export, store, or keep request logs. We do not use any of this to identify you, build profiles, or advertise.

You can also update by downloading the new version from droidvault.app yourself, which is an ordinary visit to this website (see Section 8).

6. Android permissions

The DroidVault phone app asks for these Android permissions and uses them only as described here:

• Text messages (SMS and MMS) and call log: read-only, to back them up. Texts permission is needed for a backup to run. Because the app is installed from droidvault.app rather than an app store, Android 15 and newer (and some earlier phones) may ask you to confirm Allow restricted settings before you can grant these two.
• Contacts, calendar, and photos & videos: read-only, to back them up. Each is optional. If you don’t allow one, DroidVault skips that data. On Android 14 and newer you can also give access to only the photos and videos you select.
• Network access (internet, network state, and Wi‑Fi state): to connect to your PC on your local network, to wait for Wi‑Fi before a scheduled backup, and to check droidvault.app for app updates (Section 5).
• Install apps: only to install DroidVault’s own updates from droidvault.app, each of which you confirm. Android asks you to allow this the first time you install an update.
• Notifications, foreground service, keeping the phone awake, and starting after a restart: to show backup progress in a notification, tell you when an app update is ready, keep a backup running while the screen is off, and keep scheduled backups on schedule after your phone restarts.

You can revoke any of these permissions at any time in your phone’s settings.

7. The Text Firewall (planned for a future update)

The Text Firewall is not available yet. We describe it here so you know in advance how it will handle your data. If anything changes before it ships, we will update this policy first.

• To silence the alert for texts that match rules you set, the Text Firewall will use Android’s notification access. Android’s notification access lets an app see the notifications on your phone. DroidVault will use it only to read the alerts for incoming messages, so it can check them against your rules.
• All matching happens on your phone. Message alerts, your rules, and the copies held in DroidVault’s Held inbox are never sent anywhere, including to Gigadyne.
• It stays off until you turn it on and grant notification access yourself, and you can withdraw notification access at any time in Android settings.
• It never touches one-time codes or emergency texts. It does not delete texts from your messaging app or block their delivery.

8. This website

droidvault.app is a set of static pages hosted on Cloudflare Pages, so they are served from Cloudflare’s network; Gigadyne runs no web server of its own for the site. Our pages set no cookies and run no analytics, advertising, or tracking scripts. Cloudflare offers an optional visitor-analytics script for the sites it hosts; we keep it turned off, so it is not on our pages. To hide our email address from spam robots, Cloudflare rewrites the email links on our pages and adds one small script of its own, email-decode.min.js, served from droidvault.app, that turns them back into a readable address in your browser. That script sets no cookies and sends nothing anywhere, and it is the only code on our pages that isn’t ours. Like any web host, Cloudflare receives the basic technical details your browser sends to load a page, such as your IP address and browser type, and handles them under Cloudflare’s own privacy policy. This includes downloading the phone app from this site and the phone app’s update check (Section 5). Gigadyne does not receive request logs; Section 5 describes what Cloudflare’s dashboard shows us. We do not use any of this to identify you, build profiles, or advertise.

9. Email you send us

If you email us, we receive your email address, your name if you include it, and whatever you write. We use it only to answer you, keep it only as long as needed to help you, never use it for marketing, and never share it. You can ask us to delete your emails at any time.

10. Children’s privacy

DroidVault is not directed to children under 13. Apart from the phone app’s update check (Section 5), which carries only the app’s version number and, like any web request, the internet address it comes from, the apps send nothing to Gigadyne from anyone, including children. If you believe a child has emailed us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

If we change how DroidVault handles data, including when new features such as the Text Firewall arrive, we will update this policy and its effective date before that change takes effect.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy or about DroidVault’s privacy practices are welcome:

• Email: [email protected]
• Gigadyne LLC, Hutto, Texas, USA