Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 24, 2026

Walking Visuals LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company ("Walking Visuals", "we", "us"), owns and operates Palavr™ and is the controller of the personal data described here. This policy explains what we collect when you use the Palavr app and this website, why we collect it, and the choices you have. By using Palavr you agree to this policy.

1. What we collect

• Account details. Your email address (to sign you in and contact you about your account) the @username you choose, and an optional display name if you add one. Your username and display name are public; your email is not shown to other people.
• Age. Palavr is 13+. At sign-up we ask for your date of birth to confirm you meet the minimum age. Your date of birth is stored privately and is not shown publicly — only a "verified 13+" flag is.
• Content you create. The messages in your Palavers, your margin notes, and any tags you add. This content is public by design — other people can read and Watch it. Your reactions show to other people only as a count on the message.
• Who you Watch. The Pals and Palavers you Watch are private: only you can see your Watching list. Other people see only counts — how many Watchers a profile or Palaver has, and how many people a profile is Watching — never who they are.
• Usage & device data. Through Google Firebase (Analytics and Crashlytics) we collect app-usage events (for example: sign-up, creating a Palaver, sending a message, subscribing), plus basic device and diagnostic information and crash reports. This helps us understand what's working and fix what isn't.
• Notification tokens. If you allow notifications, the app stores a notification token for your device, the kind of device (iPhone or Android), and when the token was last updated. The token is an address our notification service uses to reach that device; it isn't your phone number and it's private to your account. We use it only to send you notifications.
• Reports you file. If you report content or a person, we keep the report and related context so our moderators can act on it.

On this website. The site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or ads. If you join the waitlist, we store the email address you enter, when you entered it, and which form you used, so we can tell you when Palavr opens. We use that address only for news about Palavr's launch, and it isn't linked to a Palavr account. To keep bots out, we briefly store your IP address with a count of sign-up attempts from it; that record expires on its own within about 11 minutes. To be taken off the waitlist, email privacy@palavrapp.com and tell us the address you signed up with (see section 6 for how long we keep it).

We do not ask for your real name, phone number, contacts, or location, and Palavr contains no third-party advertising SDKs.

2. How we use it

• To run the core product — show the Lobby, deliver messages in real time, let people Watch and leave margin notes, and keep streaks and counts.
• To keep Palavr safe — enforce the 13+ age gate, power blocking and reporting, and let moderators review and act on reports.
• To understand and improve the product through aggregate analytics, and to diagnose crashes.
• To send the notifications you've allowed: a new message in a Palaver you're in, a new message in a Palaver you Subscribe to, a new Watcher (we never say who), and when a Pal leaves a Palaver you're in or a Palaver you were in is deleted. Notifications to Pals can show a preview of the message; notifications about Palavers you Watch show only who spoke, never the words. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device's settings.
• To contact you about your account, including verification and password resets.
• If you joined the waitlist, to email you about Palavr's launch.

3. Who we share it with

We don't sell your personal data. We share it only with service providers that help us run Palavr, under their terms:

• Google Firebase — authentication, database (Firestore), analytics, crash reporting, and notifications (Firebase Cloud Messaging, which passes notifications for iPhones to Apple's push service). See Google's privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.
• Cloudflare — hosts this website and stores the waitlist. See Cloudflare's privacy policy at cloudflare.com/privacypolicy.

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, and security of Palavr and the people who use it. If Walking Visuals LLC is ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your data may transfer as part of that transaction; we'll say so here before it takes effect.

4. Public by design

Palavr is a spectating product. The Palavers you participate in and the margin notes you leave can be read and Watched by other people, and may be shared by them outside the app (for example, by screenshot). Please treat anything you post as public. Palavr does not use end-to-end encryption.

Watching, though, is private. Who you Watch, and which Palavers you follow, is visible only to you. Other people see counts, not names.

Palavr also shows real-time presence. While you're viewing a live Palaver, you're counted in its "here now" number; other people see the number, not who is in it. If you're one of the Pals in a Palaver, people viewing it can see your @username while you're typing.

5. Your choices & rights

• Deleting your account. You can delete your account at any time in the app (your profile → Settings → Delete account), or without the app by following how to delete your account. This works for every account, including accounts we've restricted or banned. Deleting your account removes your sign-in account, your profile and display name, your date of birth, your block list, your reactions, your "here now" presence, the Pals and Palavers you Watch, and your notification tokens.
• Your messages and margin notes. When you delete your account, your messages are removed by default. Each one is replaced with "Message removed", which shows no text and no name, and your margin notes are deleted, in every Palaver. You can choose to keep them instead. Kept messages and margin notes stay where they are, under your retired @username. For 1 year after you delete your account, you can ask us to remove them by emailing privacy@palavrapp.com from the address your account used. We'll do it within 30 days (see section 6 for how we check it's you). After that year we can no longer confirm a request comes from you, so kept messages stay. Palavers that only you ever joined are deleted. You leave the others; if you were the last Pal in one, it closes for everyone and is removed after 30 days.
• Removing or editing your words without deleting your account. You can delete any message you sent, or leave a Palaver and remove your messages in it. Removed messages show as "Message removed" so the conversation still reads in order, and reactions on them are cleared. In a small conversation, the order of turns may still hint at who wrote a removed message. If you leave a Palaver and keep your messages, you can no longer edit them. While that Palaver is live, you can still delete them one at a time from its Watcher view. If it isn't live any more, or you can't open it, email privacy@palavrapp.com and we'll remove them. Limits may apply to prevent abuse. They never stop you from deleting your account. When you edit or remove a message, we keep a private copy of the earlier text for a limited time (see section 6).
• Accounts deleted before October 24, 2026. Messages from these accounts stayed under the retired @username, as this policy said at the time. If that was you, email privacy@palavrapp.com from the address your account used, with your old @username. Because we didn't keep a way to verify those accounts, we'll make reasonable efforts to confirm it's you and then remove them.
• Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights to access, correct, or export your data — email privacy@palavrapp.com to make a request.
• Content already Watched. Because content is public, copies others have saved or shared are outside our control.
• Analytics. You can limit some data collection through your device's privacy settings.

6. Data retention

We keep your account data while your account is active. When you delete your account or remove your content, we delete it, except for the following. The periods below are the longest we keep each item, and they apply to accounts deleted on or after the "Last updated" date of this policy.

• Your retired @username. It stays reserved forever so nobody else can claim it and pass themselves off as you. We keep only the name.
• A scrambled copy of your email address, for 1 year, only if you kept your messages. If you choose to keep your messages when you delete your account, we keep a one-way, salted hash of the email address it used, stored separately from everything else and never alongside your account ID or username. This is a scrambled value that can't be turned back into your address. We use it for one thing only: if you later email privacy@palavrapp.com asking us to remove messages you kept, we hash the address you wrote from and check that it matches. We then reply to that address with a link to confirm. We can't use the hash to find or contact you. It's deleted automatically 1 year after your account is deleted. If you remove your messages instead, we keep no copy of your email at all.
• "Message removed" placeholders. These keep conversations readable for the people still in them. A placeholder holds no text and nothing that identifies you.
• Messages and margin notes you chose to keep when deleting your account. They show your retired @username (see section 5).
• A private copy of removed or edited-away text, for safety. When a message or margin note is removed (including when you delete a single message), by you or by us, and when you edit a message, only our moderators can see a copy of the earlier text, for 30 days. Then it's deleted, unless it has been reported or the account that wrote it is banned or under review; in those cases we keep it until the review ends and then follow the "Reported content" periods below. This lets us act on reports about content that was changed or removed before we saw it. It applies to every account, including restricted or banned ones.
• Reported content. If something is reported, our moderators keep a copy of the reported item. They also keep any other messages the same person removed from that Palaver in the 30 days before, but never other people's messages. We keep these copies for 90 days after the report is closed. For reports of child sexual exploitation, we keep them for 1 year from the later of the report's closing or our report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Anything we're legally required to preserve is kept until that obligation ends.
• Closed Palavers. When the last Pal leaves a Palaver that others took part in, it closes for everyone. Only our moderators can see it, and it's deleted 30 days later, including Watchers' margin notes in it.
• Reports and moderation records. Reports (including ones you filed) are kept for 2 years after they're closed, and records of actions we took for 2 years after the action. A ban stays on record while it lasts; if it's lifted, a record of it is kept for 1 year after. If a ban is permanent, its record is kept permanently.
• Invite records. Invites (including any note sent with them), our log of invites sent, and invite cooldown records are kept for 31 days. Invite-safety signals are kept for 90 days after the last activity. A withdrawn invite stays in the recipient's Requests until it would have expired, so it can still be reported.
• Notification tokens. We keep a device's token until you sign out on that device, the token is replaced by a new one, our notification service tells us it no longer works (for example, after you uninstall the app), or you delete your account. Turning notifications off in your device's settings stops them, but the token stays until one of those happens.
• Waitlist. Your waitlist email address, when you joined, and which form you used are kept until you ask us to remove them or we close the waitlist after launch, whichever comes first. The IP attempt counter expires on its own within about 11 minutes.
• Usage and crash data. Held by Google Firebase under its retention settings (analytics and crash reports).
• Notifications. Notifications already delivered to people's devices can't be recalled. Notifications to Watchers show only a username, never message text.

Copies other people saved or shared, such as screenshots, are outside our control.

7. Children

Palavr is for people aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email privacy@palavrapp.com and we'll remove it.

To report child sexual abuse or exploitation, email safety@palavrapp.com and see our child safety standards. If a child is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first.

8. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data, including access rules on our database. No system is perfectly secure, and content you post is public by design.

9. Changes

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes we'll update the date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app.

10. Governing law

Palavr is operated from the United States, and your data is processed there by us and by Google Firebase; this website and the waitlist run on Cloudflare's global network. This policy is governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, USA. Depending on where you live you may have rights under other laws — see section 5, and email privacy@palavrapp.com to exercise them.

11. Contact

Privacy questions and data requests: privacy@palavrapp.com. For help with your account: support@palavrapp.com.

Walking Visuals LLC · North Carolina, USA

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