Privacy, precisely

The short version

• No accounts, no email, no name — there is nothing to sign up with and nothing to leak.
• Chat messages are never written to a database. They are relayed in real time and dropped.
• Your reflections live only in your browser (check-ins, journal, safe kit). Export or erase them any time from the journal.
• No analytics, no ads, no tracking pixels — we can't profile you even if we wanted to.
• One anonymous cookie-like ID does not exist: SoulSpace sets no cookies at all for visitors.

What happens during a peer conversation

When you look for someone, your browser creates a random conversation ID and a topic. Our server uses that to pair you with another waiting person. The pairing records — two random IDs, a topic, and a timestamp — exist for the duration of the chat and are deleted when either of you leaves (or after 2 hours at the latest).

Messages you send travel from your browser to our server, which checks that you're allowed to send them, and forwards them through Pusher(a real-time messaging company) to the other person's browser. That means:

• messages are not stored by SoulSpace — there is no chat history anywhere;
• messages transiently pass through Pusher's infrastructure, a US company, in encrypted transit (TLS). We can't guarantee what Pusher's systems momentarily hold in memory, so we won't claim messages are invisible to everyone but you and your peer;
• like any web service, the server technically processes message content while checking it (including a safety scan). We don't log it.

What the server keeps, and for how long

• During matching: your random session ID + topic, deleted when matched, when you leave, or after 10 minutes.
• During a chat: the two random IDs and start time, deleted when either person leaves or after 2 hours.
• Rate-limit counters: approximate counters per IP address, kept in server memory for minutes. They prevent flooding; they are not profiles.
• Reports: if you report a message, we store the room, a short snippet, a reason, and a timestamp so a human can review it. These are the only durable abuse records.

What lives in your browser

Check-ins, journal entries, your safe kit, and optional post-conversation reflections are stored in your browser's local storage. They are never sent to us. This also means they are only as safe as the device you use — clear them from the journal page if you share a device.

What we can't promise

• We can't promise anonymity from network-level observers (employers, ISPs). If you need that, use Tor or a trusted network.
• We can't promise other people behave well. Peers are anonymous humans; report and hide tools exist, and they are imperfect.
• We can't provide emergency intervention. If a life is at risk, crisis lines and local emergency services are the right and only serious answer.

Deletion, precisely

• Conversations: gone when the chat row is deleted (leaving, or 2-hour expiry). There is nothing to delete afterward, because nothing was kept.
• Reflection data: “Erase everything” in the journal removes it from your browser immediately. Since we never received it, there is no server copy to request removal of.
• Reports: contact the maintainer (see repository) to request removal of a report you filed.

Changes

If the architecture ever changes — say messages become stored, or analytics get added — this page must change first, and honestly. The current build has no analytics SDK, no cookies, and no database writes of message content; that's verifiable in the open-source repository.