Festchat is built so your messages, contacts and location stay on your phone and with the people you choose. We don't have accounts for festival-goers, we don't track you, and we don't sell or share data with advertisers.
No account
You pick a name in the app. There's no sign-up, email or phone number.
Chats stay on phones
Messages go phone to phone, encrypted for each person. They never pass through our servers.
No tracking
No analytics, advertising or tracking tools, and no data sold or shared for marketing.
This policy covers the Festchat iPhone app and the Festchat staff website. Festchat is run by Neil Beveridge in San Francisco, California (“we”). Questions: meshfest@proton.me.
What stays on your phone
These are stored only on your iPhone, in the app's private storage. They're included in your iPhone backups (iCloud or computer), protected the way Apple protects your other app data, and we can't see them.
Your name and identity keys. The name you choose and the cryptographic keys the app creates for you. The private keys never leave your phone.
Contacts and message requests. People you've added, and requests from people you haven't.
Crews and messages. Your group chats, their messages and photos, and delivery receipts.
Your saved sets, and the festivals you've downloaded, with their artist photos.
The last known location of crew members who share theirs with you.
To delete all of it, use Erase everything in the app, or delete the app.
What travels between phones (the mesh)
Festchat sends messages over Bluetooth, from phone to phone, so they arrive without cell service. Other people's phones running Festchat help pass messages along.
Crew messages, photos and receipts are end-to-end encrypted separately for each member (using the Noise protocol). Phones that relay them, including strangers' phones, can't read them.
Your contact card (your name and public keys) is shared when you show your QR code or send your Festchat link. Anyone you give it to can see your chosen name.
Your location is shared only with crews where you turn on location sharing, and only while the app is in use. It's encrypted like messages. Turn it off at any time.
Crowd counts are off unless you turn them on. If you do, your phone shares an anonymous counting summary only with phones directly next to it. It contains no name or location, can't be traced back to you, and isn't passed on or stored.
What nearby devices can see: like any Bluetooth app, Festchat makes your phone discoverable to other phones running it nearby, under a mesh ID that isn't your name or phone number. Relaying phones can see that an encrypted message is passing through, but not who it's from or what it says.
Festival alerts are public announcements from festival organizers, signed by the festival and passed between phones so everyone gets them.
What our servers receive
When you have internet, the app connects to our server (hosted by Supabase, in the United States) to:
search for festivals and download festival information and artist photos;
check for updated festival information and new festival alerts.
These requests contain nothing about you: no name, contacts, messages or location. Like any internet service, our hosting providers (Supabase and Cloudflare) automatically log technical details of each request, such as your IP address, the time and the app version, for security and to keep the service running. We don't use these logs to identify or track you, and they're deleted on the providers' standard schedules.
The festival map uses Apple Maps. To draw it, your iPhone requests map images directly from Apple, as described in Apple's privacy policy. These requests don't go through our servers, and we don't receive them.
Phone permissions
Bluetooth: to send and relay messages between nearby phones.
Location (while using the app): to show you on the festival map and, if you choose, share your location with a crew. It's never sent to our servers.
Camera: only to scan a friend's QR code. No photos are taken or saved.
Notifications: for new messages, festival alerts and set reminders. They're created on your phone.
Photos: only the photos you pick to send, using Apple's photo picker. The app can't see the rest of your library.
Festival staff
Organizers who use the Festchat staff website sign in with Google or with an email and password.
What we store: their email address and which festivals they can edit.
Change history: we keep a record of who changed what, so changes can be undone.
Backups: festival information and staff email addresses are backed up nightly to a private repository. Passwords are not included; they're stored by Supabase in hashed form.
Staff can ask us to delete their account by email.
What we don't do
We don't sell your data, or share it for advertising.
We don't use analytics, advertising or tracking tools, and we don't track you across other apps or websites.
We can't read your messages, and we don't have a copy of them.
Children
Festchat is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.
Your choices and rights
Because your data stays on your phone, you control it directly: edit or erase it in the app, or delete the app. For anything stored on our side (staff accounts, or server logs tied to a request you made), email us and we'll respond within 30 days. This includes requests under laws such as the CCPA and GDPR.
Changes
If we change how Festchat handles data, we'll update this page and the date at the top. We'll do this before the change, for example before adding push notifications, which need a device token stored on our server.