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Privacy Policy

Your data stays on your device. That is the whole product.

Effective date: 7 August 2026 · Owner: DataVault · Applies to johnwick-got-myback.netlify.app and the DataVault tool itself · English is the authoritative version of this policy.

DataVault reads your Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp data export — entirely in your own browser, on your own device. This policy tells you, plainly and verifiably, exactly what happens to your data when you use it. Every claim below can be checked by you in about two minutes with your browser's developer tools.

01The short version

Your export never leaves your device.

The file you drop in — every photo, message, comment, friend, search and post — is unpacked, scanned and analysed by JavaScript running in your own browser. Nothing about the file is uploaded, stored on a server, or transmitted anywhere. There is no account, no login, and no server that ever sees the contents of your export.

02What stays on your device

  • The export itself — zip or folder contents, photos (as base64), messages, comments, friends, search history, privacy-scan findings, threat model, Brain dossier, GEDCOM export, research log, face-cluster merges, and demo data. All parsing and every analysis run in the browser.
  • Your saved vault — stored in your browser's local database (IndexedDB), not on any server. If you re-open DataVault on the same browser, a "Resume your vault" card lets you pick up where you left off.
  • Small local preferences — in your browser's localStorage: your language choice, dismissed hints, flag-cleared state, threat findings you've marked resolved, editable book words, and an anonymous visitor id. Every write is wrapped so the tool still works in private mode.
  • Nothing is stored on our servers. "Clear saved data" wipes your vault from the device for good.
An honest note: the data is protected by being on your device and never uploaded — that is the promise. Like any offline app, if someone already has full access to your browser profile, they can read what that profile can read. We do not claim encryption-at-rest; the export is not sent anywhere, which is what keeps it private.

03The only things that leave your device

Exactly three things leave, and none of them is your file:

1 · An anonymous usage counter When you load a page, import an export, run the demo, or unlock, the tool sends one small event to the DataVault license server: the event name, a random anonymous id (a UUID — never your name or email), your country (derived from your connection by the server), and your device type (phone/tablet/desktop). That's all — no names, no messages, no photos, no file contents. It is used to understand how the tool is used and to show live visitor stats on the owner's private dashboard.
2 · The £6.99 payment (if you buy) Purchases are processed by Stripe through a payment link. Only the payment is sent to Stripe — your export is never sent to Stripe or to us. Stripe's own privacy policy applies to the payment details you enter on Stripe's checkout page. Your email (if provided for the receipt / license key) is used only to deliver your key and is masked in our logs.
3 · Anything you type into "Report a problem" If you use the report link, exactly the message you type (plus the page you were on, and a "paid user" marker if you've unlocked) is sent to the DataVault error inbox so the owner can fix bugs. Nothing else is attached — no file, no export data. Identical messages are deduplicated, and reports are kept in a short rolling list for support.
Optional · the face-scan model DataVault's family-tree photo scan uses an on-device face model. The model code is fetched from a public CDN only when you click "Scan my photos for faces" — never at page load, never required. Detection runs locally on your device; no image bytes are ever uploaded. Without it, the tool works fully offline.
Verify it yourself: open your browser's developer tools → Network tab, then import a file. The only requests you'll see go to DataVault's own counter — none of them carries your file. This is checked by an automated security test before every release.

04What the owner can see

Nothing personal. The private dashboard shows:

  • Anonymous event counts — page views, imports, demo runs, unlocks — with the country each event came from, and device types.
  • Anything you typed into "Report a problem", with your message and the page it happened on.
  • License-issuance events (masked) and live health checks of the service.

It can never show your name, email (except what you type into a report), messages, photos, or the contents of your export — because that data is never sent anywhere.

05How the service works (the honest mechanics)

  • Static site. DataVault is a static web page. Its JavaScript is public — by design there are no secrets in it. The only "key" it uses is the public half of a signing key, which exists to verify that an unlock token was genuinely issued.
  • License worker. A small server (Cloudflare Worker) issues short-lived signed unlock tokens after a successful payment and counts the anonymous usage events above. It stores no export data, ever.
  • Hosting. The site is hosted by Netlify; the license server by Cloudflare. Both providers keep standard, brief server logs (IP addresses, request times) as any hosting provider does — the same way visiting any website on the internet works. We do not receive or sell your data.
  • Links out. Where DataVault links to other sites — Meta's download page (facebook.com/dyi), free public records, or an Amazon printing link — it always opens them in a new tab with noopener noreferrer, so no referrer data is passed and the page you came from is never leaked. Those sites have their own privacy policies.

What DataVault reads from your file — honestly. Your export is the record of what you did and shared on Meta — not everything Meta knows about you. DataVault unpacks only what is in the file you download:

  • It reads: profile info (name, email, phone, birthday, city), friends, posts, comments & messages, reactions, search history, pages & groups, ads you've viewed, photo dates (from EXIF metadata), login sessions & connected apps.
  • It does not read (it cannot — it's not in the file): ad-targeting inferences, third-party & shadow data, location history, Meta's internal signals, or content someone else shared — e.g. photos you're tagged in that another person posted.

The file is yours by law. This tool shows you what's inside it — nothing more, nothing less.

06Cookies and tracking

DataVault sets no advertising or marketing cookies and uses no third-party trackers. It uses your browser's local storage only for the preferences and vault described above. There is no cross-site tracking, no fingerprinting, and no behavioural advertising of any kind.

07Your rights

Because your export never reaches us, most privacy rights are yours to exercise directly — on your own device:

  • Access & deletion: your vault is on your device. "Clear saved data" (or clearing the site's browser storage) deletes it completely, any time, no request needed.
  • Right to be informed: this policy, plus the on-page "Your data stays on your device" section, tells you everything we collect — and it is the full list.
  • Rights over the tiny amount we do see: the anonymous counters contain no personal data that can be tied back to you. If you typed a report and want it removed, contact us via the report link or the address below and we'll delete it from the rolling list promptly.
  • Lawful basis: under the UK GDPR / EU GDPR and California's CCPA/CPRA, the anonymous usage statistics are processed on the basis of legitimate interest (understanding how the tool is used); reports are processed with your consent (you chose to send them); payment data is processed by Stripe to perform the contract.

08Children

DataVault is not directed at children under 13 (or under 16 where local law sets that age). We do not knowingly collect any personal data from children — indeed, we collect almost nothing at all, and what little exists (anonymous counters) is not tied to any person.

09Data retention

  • Your vault and preferences: on your device until you clear them.
  • Anonymous counters: aggregated into live statistics; individual dedupe markers expire automatically within hours. Historical counts are kept as rolling totals for the dashboard.
  • Reports: kept in a short rolling list (tens of entries) so recent bugs are visible; older entries fall off automatically.
  • License records: masked (never raw) so a key can be re-issued if a buyer loses it; the raw key is never stored.

10Security

  • The site is served with strict security headers — a content-security policy that only allows the site's own scripts, a lazy face-model CDN, and the license API; no third-party scripts ship at all.
  • A network-surface guard is enforced by the test suite before every deploy: any new outbound call that isn't in this policy's list fails the build.
  • Unlock tokens are signed with a key pair and verified locally — a forged token can never unlock the paid suite.
  • Import is sandboxed against hostile files (zip bombs, oversized entries, malformed payloads are rejected before parsing).
  • We do not log request bodies or anything that could identify a person; emails are masked in every log path.

11Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the effective date at the top of this page is updated. Material changes will be summarised here. Because the tool stores nothing about you, a change to this policy never changes what data we hold — it can only change what future versions of the tool do with your data (which, by design, will remain: nothing.

12Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests about the small amount of data we see (reports, counters), are welcome at any time:

  • Use the "Report a problem" link in the DataVault footer — it goes straight to the owner's inbox.
  • Or reply to the email that delivered your licence key, if you purchased one — that mailbox is read by the owner.
One sentence version: your file is read on your device, never uploaded; the only things that leave are an anonymous counter, the £6.99 payment, and anything you type into "Report a problem" — and every claim above is something you can verify yourself.