Privacy Policy
Last updated September 22, 2026The short version: Lahar has no servers, no accounts, and no analytics. A file moves straight from your device to the recipient's over a direct, encrypted connection — nothing about the transfer ever passes through anything we run, because nothing we run sits in between.
What Lahar does not collect
There is no Lahar backend. No sign-up, no login, no account of any kind. We do not operate a server that your files, filenames, or transfer links pass through, and we have not built any analytics, crash reporting, or advertising tracking into the app. We simply have no infrastructure to collect anything on, and nothing in the app phones home to us.
What's stored on your device
Everything Lahar needs to function is kept locally, in the app's own storage on your phone:
- A device identity — a randomly generated keypair and the display name you chose during setup, created the first time you open the app. It's used to recognize a device you've paired with; it is never uploaded anywhere.
- Paired devices — the public identity and name of any device you've paired with, so you can send to it again without a new link. You can remove a paired device at any time from the Devices tab.
- In-progress and recent transfers — the files you're currently sending or have received, and the bookkeeping needed to resume a send if you close the app.
Uninstalling the app removes all of it. None of it is backed up to a Lahar-run service, because there isn't one.
How a transfer actually works
When you share a file, Lahar creates a direct, end-to-end encrypted connection between your device and the recipient's, using the same distributed peer-to-peer network technology (Hyperswarm, built on a Kademlia-style DHT) that BitTorrent-style tools use to find peers. A few things worth knowing about that:
- The file itself only ever travels directly between the two devices involved — it is not copied to, or readable by, any third-party server.
- To find each other, both devices briefly announce a connection topic on that public DHT, the same way any peer-to-peer protocol does. That's a normal part of how peer discovery works on this kind of network, and is not something Lahar operates or controls.
- A
lahar://link only works while the sender keeps sharing it. There's no expiration timer we enforce — you control it by stopping the share.
Permissions
On Android, Lahar asks for a notification permission and, optionally, an exemption from battery optimization. Both exist purely to keep an active transfer running while the app is in the background (so the system doesn't pause it) and to show its progress in a notification — neither is used to collect or transmit any data.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we'll update the date above. Since Lahar has no accounts or contact list, we can't notify you directly — check back here if you want to know what changed.
Contact
Questions about this policy: privacy@laharfs.app.