Shared data

We will never share your data with anyone.

Cloud Chat

Potato is a cloud service. We store messages, photos, videos, and documents from cloud chats on our servers so that you can access your data at any time from any device, and use our instant server search to quickly access your messages from the past. All data is stored with high-level encryption, and in each case, the encryption keys are stored in several other data centers located in different jurisdictions. In this way, local engineers or physical intruders cannot access user data.

For chat

Secret chats use end-to-end encryption. This means that all data is encrypted with a key known only to you and your chat partner. For us or anyone else, it is impossible to know the contents of these messages without direct access to your device. We do not store your secret chat history on our servers. We also do not keep any message logs in secret chats, so after a short period of time, we cannot know to whom or when you sent messages via secret chat. For the same reason, secret chats cannot be conducted in cloud chats—you can only access these messages from the device on which they were sent.

Media in private chats

When you send photos, videos, or files through secret chat, each item is encrypted with a unique key unknown to the server before being uploaded. This key and the file's location are then encrypted again, this time using the secret chat's key, and sent to your chat partner. They can download and decrypt the file. This means that, technically, the file is stored on one of Potato's servers, but to anyone except you and your chat partner, it appears as random, indecipherable garbage. We do not know what this random data represents, nor do we know which specific chat it belongs to. We regularly clear this random data from our servers to save disk space.

Contact person

Potato uses phone numbers as unique identifiers, so you can easily switch from other messaging apps (SMS, WhatsApp, etc.) and retain your social graph. We will ask for your consent before syncing your contacts. We store your contacts in order to notify you when one of your contacts registers with Potato and to correctly display their names in notifications. We only require the phone number and name, and do not store any other data about your contacts.

Email address

After enabling two-step verification for your account, you can choose to set up a password recovery email. If you forget your password recovery code, this address will only be used to send you the password recovery code. That's right: no marketing or "we miss you" nonsense.

Message

Everything you delete will be permanently removed. Except for cats. We won't delete funny cat pictures—we love them too much. When you delete a message, it is removed from your message history. This means a copy is still retained on the server as part of your partner's message history. Once your friend deletes it as well, it will disappear forever. Potato's goal is not to make a profit; we value disk space on our servers very highly.

Self-destructing message

You can set messages in secret chats to self-destruct. Once such a message is read (indicated by two check marks), the countdown begins. When the time is up, the message (photos, videos, etc.) will be deleted from both devices participating in the secret chat.

Destroy account

If you stop using Potato and do not log in to Potato for 6 months, your account will be deleted, and all your messages, media, contacts, and any other data stored in the Potato cloud will also be deleted. You can change the exact self-destruction period for inactive accounts in "Settings."