txtshell
Privacy Policy
Last updated: 5 November 2026
Who we are
Txtshell is run by Kavan Ravi, an individual based in Hyderabad, India. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Kavan Ravi.
- Contact for anything in this policy: [email protected]
- Grievance officer (India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023): Kavan Ravi, [email protected]. We reply within 30 days.
The short version
- Txtshell works without an account. Then your notes stay in your browser and we never receive them.
- If you use cloud sync, your notes are end-to-end encrypted on your device before they are uploaded. We store only the encrypted copy and can’t read it.
- We keep the minimum we need to run your account and your subscription, and we list all of it below.
- No analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts, and no tracking in our emails. The one exception: this policy, the terms and the extension’s privacy policy show our email address, and on those pages Cloudflare adds a small script that hides the address from spam bots. It runs in your browser, sends nothing anywhere, and isn’t on the app itself.
- Payments are handled by Dodo Payments. We never see your card or bank details.
- Paid cloud sync isn’t open yet. The parts of this policy about subscriptions, payments and their emails apply once it is.
Using Txtshell without an account
- Your notes are stored in your browser (IndexedDB) on your device. We never receive them.
- They are not encrypted by default. Anyone with access to your browser profile can read them. You can encrypt them on your device with a passphrase (
/encrypt), or by using an account. - Preferences such as your theme are kept in your browser’s local storage.
- No cookies. Txtshell sets none.
- Deleting: delete notes in the app, or erase everything with
/wipe. Clearing your browser’s site data also removes them.
Using cloud sync (an account)
If you connect your own sync server instead (/sync setup), your encrypted notes go only to that server. We receive nothing.
Your notes
- Encrypted on your device with a key we never receive, using passkeys and your 12-word recovery phrase. We store only the encrypted copy, and we can’t read your notes or their contents.
- We can see technical details of the encrypted copy: its size, when it was uploaded, and which of your devices uploaded it.
- If you lose every passkey and your 12 words, nobody can recover your notes, including us.
What we keep about you
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Your account; sign-in codes; service emails (below) | While you have an account |
| Sign-in data: for each passkey, its public key, the type of authenticator, a device label (for example “Mac · Chrome”), and when it was added and last used; your sign-in sessions | Signing you in, showing you your devices, security | While you have an account (sessions: up to 7 days) |
| Security notices: for example “a new device was added” | Telling you about changes to your account | Until you acknowledge them, then 90 days; unacknowledged ones after 180 days (except a warning about a pending erase request, kept until that request ends) |
| Subscription data: our Dodo Payments customer and subscription identifiers, status, renewal or end date, whether it is set to cancel, the identifier and date of your last payment, and whether you have used your self-serve refund | Knowing whether your account syncs; refunds | While you have an account |
| Records of billing emails we sent you (type and subject) | Not sending the same notice twice | 400 days |
| Payment events from Dodo Payments (an identifier, the event type, the time, and which account it belongs to) | Processing each event only once | 90 days |
| Payment events we can’t match to an account (event type, subscription identifier, email address) | Sorting out the payment by hand | 90 days |
| Earlier encrypted copies of your notes, when the current one is replaced or erased | Restoring them if something goes wrong | Up to 30 days |
We do not store your card or bank details, your billing address, or payment amounts.
Abuse prevention
To stop abuse (for example, too many sign-in attempts), we count requests per IP address and per email address for a short time. These counters store a one-way keyed hash, not the address itself, and are deleted within about a day.
Like any website, Cloudflare (our host) processes your IP address and browser details to deliver each request and protect the service. We don’t receive or keep a log of them.
Unfinished sign-ups
If you start creating an account but don’t finish it (no passkey added), we delete your email address and anything linked to it after 7 days, unless you’ve already paid.
The waitlist
If you join the waitlist, we keep only your email address, to invite you. It is deleted when you confirm that address to create an account, or after 12 months, whichever comes first. Write to us to be removed sooner.
Emails we send
All are about your account or your subscription. We send no marketing.
- Sign-in codes.
- Security emails: a new device was added to your account; someone asked to erase your cloud notes; that request was stopped.
- Renewal reminder: 30 days before your subscription renews.
- Deletion warnings: 30 days and 7 days before a lapsed account’s cloud data is deleted.
Dodo Payments also emails you directly: receipts, renewal and payment notices, and reminders if a payment fails. Its emails are covered by its own privacy policy.
Payments
- Dodo Payments is our merchant of record. It sells you the subscription, takes payment, collects the tax, and issues your invoice.
- You give Dodo Payments your name, email, billing country or address and payment details on its own pages. It handles them under its own privacy policy, and keeps invoices and tax records as the law requires.
- We send Dodo Payments your email address and our internal account identifier, so a payment can be matched to your account.
- We receive from Dodo Payments the status of your subscription and payments.
Who else handles your data
| Provider | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Hosts the website and app, runs the sync service, stores the encrypted data and account records, and receives mail sent to [email protected] | Account data and encrypted notes are stored in Cloudflare’s Asia-Pacific region; requests are served from Cloudflare’s global network |
| Resend, Inc. | Sends our emails | Sent from Tokyo, Japan; Resend is a US company |
| Dodo Payments | Payments, as above | As set out in its privacy policy |
We don’t sell or share your data with anyone else, and we don’t use it to train AI models.
How long we keep things after you stop
- Your notes on your devices stay there until you delete them. Nothing we do removes them.
- When a subscription ends (cancelled and the paid year over, lapsed after a failed payment, or refunded): sync pauses, and your encrypted copy and account are kept for at least 12 months so you can pick up where you left off. Then they are deleted. We email you 30 days and 7 days before.
- Deleting your account (
/account deletein the app) deletes your account and every encrypted copy at once, including earlier copies. Short-lived records, such as abuse-prevention counters and payment events, expire on their own as listed above. Dodo Payments keeps its own records of your purchases.
Your rights
You can ask to access, correct or delete your personal data, or to withdraw consent where we rely on it, by writing to [email protected]. You can delete your account and its cloud data yourself, at any time, in the app (/account delete).
If you’re not satisfied with our reply, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India, or, if you’re in the EU or UK, to your local data protection authority.
We use your data to provide the service you asked for, to keep it secure and prevent abuse, and where the law requires it.
Children
Accounts and subscriptions are for people 18 or older. Txtshell without an account collects nothing about anyone.
Security
End-to-end encryption, passkey sign-in (no passwords), encryption in transit (HTTPS), and an email and in-app notice whenever a new device is added to your account. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
The browser extension
The Txtshell browser extension has its own privacy notice at txtshell.com/privacy-extension. It sends nothing to any server itself. What you capture with it becomes a note in Txtshell, and syncs only if you use cloud sync.
Changes to this policy
We’ll update the date above when this policy changes. For a significant change we’ll email account holders before it takes effect.