Terms of Service
Read this part if you read nothing else
- We cannot recover your data. Ever. Your vault is encrypted with a key derived from your passphrase, which we never receive. Forget it and the vault is unrecoverable noise — not by us, not by anyone. There is no reset link, because there is nothing on our side to reset.
- Burning is permanent and immediate. The feature does exactly what it says. There is no trash, no grace period and no undo.
- This is a beta. It may lose data, break between versions, or be withdrawn. Do not make it the only copy of anything you cannot afford to lose.
Who may use it
The private beta is invitation-only. You must be 16 or older. Your invitation is for you; please do not pass the application on, not least because this build contains an extractable API key that we would then have to rotate.
What you may not do with it
burnbox is built for people with a legitimate need to keep and destroy their own material — journalists protecting sources, clinicians handling session records, anyone whose notes should not outlive their usefulness. It is not built for, and you may not use it for:
- Destroying material you are under a legal duty to preserve. The product exists so that lawful deletion does not manufacture evidence against the person deleting. It is not an obstruction tool, and we will say so plainly if asked.
- Storing or transmitting child sexual abuse material, or content that is unlawful where you are.
- Sending unsolicited messages or drops to people who have not asked for them.
- Attacking the service — attempting to exhaust or degrade the relay for others, or to claim inboxes or drops that are not yours.
We should be honest about enforcement: the relay holds only ciphertext and cannot inspect content, so we cannot detect most misuse and do not scan for it. Scanning would require a capability that would betray every legitimate user, and we have chosen not to build one. We act on credible reports, and we can withdraw an invitation.
What we provide, and what we do not promise
The software is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. We do not promise uptime; the relay may be unavailable, and burnbox is designed to keep working locally when it is. We do not promise that best-effort features behave like the verifiable ones — in particular, shredding files in place on your disk is explicitly labelled best-effort and is not the same as destroying a vault item.
To the maximum extent the law allows, we are not liable for lost data, lost profits, or consequential damages. Given that we cannot read, recover or restore your data, this is a description of reality as much as a limitation of liability.
Your content
Yours. We claim no licence to it, and could not exercise one if we did — we cannot read it. You are responsible for what you store and send.
Ending it
You can stop at any time; burning the vault removes your data from your device, and burning synced items removes the copies from the relay. We can end a beta invitation at any time, and will try to give notice where we can — though as the privacy policy explains, we have no way to contact you unless you have given us one.
Changes
Material changes will be surfaced in the app rather than silently posted here.
Contact
This document describes the software as built. It has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer, and it is not legal advice.