1. Who is responsible
The data controller for Astro Notes is Marco Ferra, Av. Dom João II, 52, Piso 0, 1990-096 Lisboa, Portugal, operating astronotes.eu. Contact for privacy matters: privacy@astronotes.eu.
2. What we store — and what we cannot read
Astro Notes is end-to-end encrypted. Your notes — including their titles and tags — are encrypted on your device with keys derived from your password. The server stores only ciphertext. We cannot read, recover, or hand over your note content, and a lost password can only be recovered with your recovery key.
We do store, in readable form, the minimum needed to run the service:
- Your handle and/or email address (an email is optional).
- A one-way hash of your login credential — never your password.
- Encrypted note data, its size, and modification timestamps.
- The accounts each note is shared with, and their roles.
- Hashed session tokens and subscription status.
- Feedback you choose to send to Mission Control (message text and time), kept in readable form so it can be emailed to us and counted against your yearly allowance.
- Command bridge transmissions, if you subscribe and use it: the message itself is encrypted on your device and unreadable to us, but we do store who sent it and when, and every subscriber can read it. The key is passed between members and never held by us — though membership is decided by subscription state, so we could in principle be handed one. Transmissions cannot be edited or deleted, and are removed after 30 days.
- Server access logs containing IP addresses, kept for security and abuse prevention.
3. Why we process it (legal bases)
- Operating your notes, sync, and sharing — performance of our contract with you (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)).
- Billing and invoicing for Orbit (the paid tier) — contract and legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(b), 6(1)(c)).
- Security logging, rate limiting, and abuse prevention — our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe (Art. 6(1)(f)).
We do not profile you, sell data, or show advertising.
4. Who else is involved
| Provider | Purpose | Location / transfers |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner Online GmbH | Server hosting | Germany / EU |
| Stripe | Payments, subscriptions, invoices (we never see card numbers) | US — EU-US Data Privacy Framework, under a data processing agreement |
| Amazon Web Services (SES) | Transactional email (verification messages) | Germany / EU (eu-central-1) — under a data processing agreement |
| New Relic, Inc. | Service monitoring — aggregate metrics (counts and latencies) and error diagnostics relayed through our own server; never note content | US — EU-US Data Privacy Framework, under a data processing agreement |
5. How long we keep it
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account and encrypted notes | Until you delete them or your account |
| Sessions | 30 minutes idle, 30 days at most |
| Security logs (IP addresses) | 30 days |
| Error diagnostics (at New Relic, no note content) | 30 days |
| Deleted-note stubs (ID only, for device sync) | Up to 90 days |
| Feedback messages (quota bookkeeping) | 400 days, or until account deletion |
| Command bridge transmissions (encrypted) | 30 days; the sender is removed the moment their account is |
| Database backups | 4 days, rotating; erased accounts are never restored from backup |
| Invoices (at Stripe) | As required by tax law |
6. Your rights
Under the GDPR you can:
- Access and export — download all notes as pure text from the app menu at any time.
- Rectify — change your handle, email, or password in Account settings.
- Erase — delete your account in Account settings. This destroys your data immediately and cancels any subscription.
- Restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interest.
- Complain to a supervisory authority — in Portugal, the CNPD — or the authority of your residence.
7. Cookies and local storage
Astro Notes sets no advertising or analytics cookies, and your browser loads nothing from third parties: the page talks only to our own server. Diagnostics for errors are relayed through that server to our monitoring provider (New Relic), never sent from your browser directly and never including note content. Your browser's local storage holds only what the app needs to function: your session, theme choice, and dismissed notices.
8. Security
Beyond end-to-end encryption: credentials are hashed with Argon2id, connections use TLS, session tokens are stored only as hashes, and the infrastructure is hardened and kept automatically patched. Should a breach nevertheless affect your data, we will notify the supervisory authority and, where required, you, per GDPR Arts. 33–34.
9. Children
Astro Notes is not directed at children under 16.
10. Changes
We will announce material changes to this policy in the app before they take effect.