Guides / Privacy & safety

Privacy & safety

Slirc is self-hosted on our own hardware and talks an open protocol. This page names what is stored, what is gated, and where the edges are.

This page describes the instance at app.slirc.org. If you run your own Slirc, everything here applies to your server and your operator instead, and the code that enforces it is the same.

Your data lives on the server you chose

On app.slirc.org that is a single machine run by the author. On your own instance it is yours. Conversations, identity, channels, and history run on that machine, the same one that serves the app. There's no third-party chat platform and no analytics or tracking scripts.

Because Slirc speaks IRC, your history is portable: it can be read with any IRC client, and the whole service can be forked and run anywhere.

Email and invitations

Your email address is not shown in chat, profiles or member lists. Slirc uses it for sign-in and invitations. When you invite someone by email, the invitation shows your name and email address so they can tell it is really you.

A verified member who enters your exact email to start a conversation can discover your account through the resulting DM or membership. Slirc does not provide an email directory or email autocomplete. Senders can see addresses they entered in their own Invitations page.

People search is not an instance directory. It returns only someone you can already discover: an explicit member of a public or workspace channel, someone who has posted in one (including #open-chat and #help), a person you share a non-direct room with that you both read, or someone you have a DM with, even a closed one. Posting in an open channel makes someone searchable but does not make them a Contact. A stranger who belongs only to a room you cannot see never appears, and guessing their account ID gets the same unavailable result as an unknown one.

The address is also the key to your account, so you can't edit it yourself. Ask an admin: they can update it from your profile, and your next sign-in link goes to the new address.

Channels are gated, twice

Invite-only channels stay hidden until you're invited, and the server blocks anyone who isn't on the member list. Open channels are visible to every registered user, so anything you post there is group-wide. An archived channel is read-only until it's unarchived.

The public channel is readable by signed-in members. Slirc does not currently offer anonymous reading, and the member list stays hidden in the app for everyone: joins, parts, and quits aren't visible, and neither is the list of who's there. Slirc does not yet promise IRC invisibility.

Media follows conversation access

Uploads have random URLs. Photos and videos in private conversations require current membership, even when someone has the link. Thread media also requires access to its parent conversation. Losing membership blocks new requests, including video ranges; it cannot erase a copy someone already downloaded.

Media posted in public rooms is public. Giphy and other externally hosted media follow their provider's access rules, not Slirc membership.

Saving an image as custom emoji makes the cropped emoji public across this Slirc instance, including public rooms. Use an image everyone may see.

Closing a DM is not deleting it

Close DM hides a one-to-one conversation from your list across devices. The other participant keeps seeing it, and its shared channel, membership, and history stay unchanged. A new message in it reopens it, and opening the person from Contacts also restores the DM and its history.

Deleting a message is separate: it removes that message from server history. IRC clients that already received it may keep their own copy. That's the nature of an open protocol, and no product setting can undo it.

Be careful with keys

• Email invitations are personal. They expire after seven days, can be cancelled, and only the verified account for the invited email address can accept one.
• Media links point to files. Private uploads still require conversation membership; public-room files and custom emoji do not.

Only share them with people you trust to be in the channel.

FAQ