title: Privacy & safety
crumb: Guides / Privacy & safety
description: Slirc privacy and safety: where your data lives, how access is gated, and what stays private.
lead: Slirc is self-hosted on our own hardware and talks an open protocol. This page names what is stored, what is gated, and where the edges are.

## Your data lives on our hardware

Conversations, identity, channels, and history run on our own machine, the same one that serves the app. There's no third-party chat platform and no analytics or tracking scripts.

Because Slirc speaks IRC, your history is portable: it can be read with any IRC client, and the whole service can be forked and run anywhere.

## Email is only for sign-in

Your email address is used solely to send sign-in links. It's never shown in the chat, in profiles, in member lists, or to other people.

The address is also the key to your account, so you can't edit it yourself. Ask an admin: they can update it from your profile, and your next sign-in link goes to the new address.

## Channels are gated, twice

Invite-only channels stay hidden until you're invited, and the server blocks anyone who isn't on the member list. Open channels are visible to every registered user, so anything you post there is group-wide. An archived channel is read-only until it's unarchived.

The public channel is readable by anyone, and its member list stays hidden in the app for everyone: joins, parts, and quits aren't visible, and neither is the list of who's there.

## Media links are unlisted, not private

Uploads get random, unguessable URLs. There's no public gallery, but any signed-in person who has the link can open the file. Links can still be shared or end up in logs, so treat media like the room it came from.

## Deleting has limits

Deleting a message removes it from server history. IRC clients that already received the message may keep their own copy. That's the nature of an open protocol, and no product setting can undo it.

## Be careful with keys

Two things act as keys to your channels:

- **Invite links** let anyone with the link join the channel, and they don't expire.
- **Media links** open the files they point to.

Only share them with people you trust to be in the channel.

## FAQ

<details>
  <summary>Who can read the public channel?</summary>
  <div><p>Anyone on the internet can read it. Writing requires an account, and joining events stay hidden from visitors.</p></div>
</details>

<details>
  <summary>Can other people see my email?</summary>
  <div><p>No. Email exists only to send you sign-in links and is never exposed in chat, profiles, or member lists.</p></div>
</details>

<details>
  <summary>Who can open an uploaded image or video?</summary>
  <div><p>Any signed-in person who has the link. Upload URLs are random and unlisted. They're shared through the conversation.</p></div>
</details>

<details>
  <summary>Does Slirc track me?</summary>
  <div><p>There's no analytics and no tracking. The service is a chat server on our own hardware.</p></div>
</details>