Privacy policy

FortressChat is a personal messaging app. You sign in with your phone number, message friends, and — if you choose to — find people you already know. This page describes what data we collect, what we do with it, and what we don't do. We keep it plain and current.

What we collect

• Your phone number.You sign in with it, and it's how friends who have your number can find you on FortressChat. We verify it by SMS at sign-in.
• Your profile. The name you enter and, optionally, a profile photo. You may also link an Apple or Google account so you can recover your account — we store that its linked, not your Apple/Google password.
• Your messages and attachments.The messages, reactions, and photos/files you send. We store them so the people you're talking to can receive them and so your chats sync to a new phone when you sign in again.
• Contacts you choose to match. If — and only if — you grant contacts access, we use your address book to show which of your contacts are already on FortressChat and to let you invite the rest. See “Finding friends from your contacts” below for exactly how this works.
• Push notification tokens for each device you sign into, so we can deliver notifications for new messages.
• Basic diagnostics — device type, app version, and crash/error logs — to keep the app working and catch abuse. We strip message content from these where feasible.

What we do with it

• Run the product: deliver your messages, sync your chats to your devices, and send the notifications you allow.
• Help you connect: verify your number, let friends who have your number find you, and — if you opt in — surface which of your contacts are already here.
• Keep it safe: detect spam and abuse, and act on reports. If you message an AI assistant in the app, that conversation is sent to our AI provider to generate the reply.

Finding friends from your contacts

Contact matching is optional and off until you grant access. When you turn it on:

• We match contacts using transformed (hashed) identifiers, not plain phone numbers and emails, so we can tell you which contacts are already on FortressChat.
• We don't build profiles of people who aren't on FortressChat, and we never message or post to anyone on your behalf — an invite is only sent when you tap to send it.
• When you call, text, email, or FaceTime someone from the People tab, that goes straight through your phone's own apps. We don't route or log who you contact.
• You can turn contact matching off at any time in your phone's Settings; deleting your account removes the match data we hold.

What we don't do

• We don't sell your data or share it for advertising.
• We don't train external AI models on your messages or your contacts.
• We don't log who you call, text, or email from your contacts.
• We don't read your private conversations except as needed to keep the service safe, comply with the law, or when you report a message to us.

Who we share data with

We only share data with the service providers that make the product work, and only the data each one needs to do its job:

• Google Firebase — phone, Apple, and Google sign-in, and SMS verification
• Fly.io & Neon — our application servers and database
• Cloudflare — storage and delivery of photos and files you send
• Apple Push Notification service — message notifications on your devices
• Google (Gemini) and Anthropic (Claude) — generating replies when you message an AI assistant
• Vercel — hosting this website

Security

Data is encrypted in transit. We store contact-matching identifiers only in transformed (hashed) form, and we limit who on our team can access production data to what's needed to operate and support the service.

Children

FortressChat isn't directed to children under 13 (or the age of digital consent in your country, if higher), and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we'll remove it.

Deleting your account and data

You can delete your account from inside the app at any time — open Profile → Account & settings and choose Delete account. Deleting your account removes your profile, your contact-match data, and the messages you've sent, and revokes your sign-in. You can also email us at privacy@fortresschat.app to request a copy or deletion of your data.

Contact

Questions, complaints, or data requests: privacy@fortresschat.app.

Changes

We update this page when our data handling changes. Material changes will be announced in-app before they take effect.