Terms & privacy

What Proxima keeps.

Your exact location never leaves this phone

Android produces a fix and Android turns it into a place name. What Proxima sends is that name — "Lekki" — and a grid cell about 1.2 km across. There is nowhere in the database to put a latitude or a longitude; it is not a setting that could be switched the other way.

Distances are therefore banded. The app says "8 km", never "8.2 km", because the data cannot support the second decimal and pretending otherwise would be a lie about precision.

What is collected

Your email address, to sign you in. Nobody in a circle ever sees it.

If you continue with Google: your Google account id and the email on it. Google also offers your name and photo; Proxima uses neither unless you type the name in yourself. Google learns that you signed in to Proxima.

Your first name, and the hexagon colour assigned to you at sign-up.

Your presence, per circle and only where you allowed it: a place name, a feeling word, an activity word, and — only if you switch it on — a battery percentage. Every feeling carries an expiry.

Your messages and quick signals. A quick signal has no free text in it; it is one of four fixed kinds with fixed answers.

Your moments: up to 140 characters, shown only to the people you picked, and deleted 24 hours after you post them.

A push token, so the phone can be woken.

Photos and voice notes you send into a circle, kept in private storage that only its current members can open.

Presence history for 30 days, and only if you leave history on. Off means it is never written — not written and hidden.

What is never collected

Your contacts. There is no address-book upload, and there never will be.

Any advertising identifier. There is no ad network and no tracking SDK in this app.

Any analytics product. No Google Analytics, no Amplitude, no Mixpanel, no PostHog.

Your precise location, as above.

Anything about how you use the app: no feed, no ranking, no recommendations, no profiling.

Proxima runs no artificial intelligence or machine learning over your messages, your presence or your photographs. Nothing you write is used to train anything.

Calls and photographs

Calls are encrypted end to end and are never recorded or stored. When the two networks allow it, audio and video go directly between the phones.

When they do not — two phones on mobile data, usually — the call is relayed, through a server we run or through Cloudflare. A relay passes along encrypted audio and video it cannot open, and keeps none of it. It does see both phones’ internet addresses while the call lasts.

A photograph you pick is written again on the phone before it is sent, as a fresh file with no location or camera details in it, and goes only to the circle you send it to.

How your messages are protected

Messages are encrypted in transit and encrypted at rest on the server. They are NOT end-to-end encrypted: the database holds the text, which means we could technically read it and a lawful order could compel it.

That is stated here rather than buried, because plenty of apps imply otherwise. If end-to-end encryption arrives it will be announced as a change, not discovered.

Where it is kept, and who else touches it

Supabase, on Amazon servers in Ireland. For a Nigerian user this is a transfer outside the country.

Google Firebase, for push. It receives a token and each notification: the sender’s first name and a fixed line such as “is calling” or “sent a quick signal” (with the circle’s name on a group call). Never what anyone wrote, where anyone is, or how they are.

A call relay we run on Oracle Cloud, and Cloudflare’s, for calls that cannot connect directly. Encrypted media passes through; nothing is kept.

Sentry, for crash reports, when it is switched on: stack traces with no personal data, scrubbed of anything shaped like a coordinate.

Nobody else. Proxima sells nothing to anyone and shares nothing with advertisers.

What you can do about it

Turn any layer off, per circle, at any time. Unshared layers are removed on the server before they reach anybody else’s phone.

Go dark, with an end time that everyone can see. While you are dark nothing is written at all.

Block anyone. Their messages stop reaching your phone, decided on the server, and they are not told.

Report a message or a person. A human reads it; nothing here is automated.

Delete your account and everything in it, from inside the app, at any time.

What is not allowed here

Harassment, threats, sexual content involving anyone under 18, impersonation, and anything illegal where you are. Reported content is read by a person, and accounts are removed for it.

Proxima is for people who already know each other. There is no discovery, no public profile and no way to contact a stranger, which removes most of the harm before it starts — but not all of it, which is why reporting exists.

Copyright

If you believe something here infringes your copyright, write to the address published at proxima.noyeralabs.com and it will be removed if the claim is good.

Deleting your account

From inside the app: You → Terms & privacy → Delete your account. Everything goes, including what you wrote.