ChatWise — Privacy Policy

🛡️

ChatWise stores nothing about you off your phone. All analysis runs locally. No accounts. No servers. No tracking.

Summary

ChatWise (the "app") is a privacy-first WhatsApp chat analyzer. The app does not collect, transmit, share, or sell any personal data. The Android app does not even declare an internet permission (android.permission.INTERNET) — the operating system literally blocks it from making network requests.

Everything you import — chat exports, statistics, charts, share cards — stays on your device. You can wipe all of it at any time from Settings → Delete all reports.

What we don't do

No internet permission
No ads, no tracking SDKs
No telemetry, no analytics
No cloud uploads, no servers
No selling or sharing your data
No accounts, no sign-ins

What we do

AES-256-GCM encrypts your raw chat text
SQLCipher AES-256 encrypts the analytics database
Keys live in the Android Keystore — they never leave
Your data is excluded from cloud backups
"Delete all reports" wipes everything on demand

Information we collect

None. ChatWise does not collect any personal information, identifiers, contacts, location data, device IDs, advertising IDs, diagnostics, crash logs, or usage analytics from you. There is no account creation, no login, and no telemetry of any kind.

The data Google Play handles when you purchase the optional Pro upgrade (purchase token, transaction record) is processed by Google Play Billing under Google's privacy policy, not by us. ChatWise only sees a local boolean flag indicating whether Pro is unlocked on your device.

How we use your data

Because we do not collect or transmit data, there is nothing for us to use. The chat exports you import are processed entirely on your device's CPU to generate statistics that are also stored only on your device.

Data sharing

We do not share any data with anyone. ChatWise does not send data to:

Our servers (we don't have any)
Third-party analytics, advertising, or attribution services
Cloud backup services (the app is excluded from Google's auto-backup)
Affiliates, partners, or law enforcement (we have no data to disclose)

The app does not include Firebase, Crashlytics, Google Analytics, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Mixpanel, Sentry, Bugsnag, Amplitude, or any other third-party SDK that collects or transmits user data.

Data storage and security

All data lives on your device. ChatWise uses two layers of strong, modern encryption to protect data at rest:

Raw chat text: Encrypted with AES-256-GCM via Android Jetpack's EncryptedFile API. The master key is generated and stored in the hardware-backed Android Keystore.
Analytics database: Encrypted with SQLCipher (AES-256 with HMAC-SHA512 page integrity).
Backup exclusions: All app data is excluded from Android cloud backups and device transfers (see data_extraction_rules.xml and backup_rules.xml in the source).

Your rights and controls

You have full control over your data because it lives on your device. Within the app you can:

Delete a single chat — long-press it in the Library and confirm.
Delete all chats — Settings → Danger zone → Delete all reports. This wipes both the encrypted database rows and the encrypted blob files on disk.
Uninstall the app — removes everything ChatWise has stored, instantly.

Because we never collect your data, there is nothing to "request a copy of" or "request deletion of" from us — both happen locally and instantly, without any third party involved.

Children's privacy

ChatWise is not directed at children under 13. The app does not collect data from anyone, including children. We comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by default — there is no data to collect.

International users

Because no data leaves your device, there are no cross-border data transfers. The same privacy guarantees apply equally to users in the EU, UK, India, US, and every other jurisdiction.

Permissions ChatWise requests

The app requests only these Android permissions:

POST_NOTIFICATIONS — to optionally show local notifications when an analysis finishes. Off by default.
USE_BIOMETRIC / USE_FINGERPRINT — auto-included by the AndroidX Biometric library, used in future versions to optionally gate access. Not currently requested at runtime.
com.android.vending.BILLING — Google Play Billing for the optional Pro upgrade. Communicates with the local Play Store app via inter-process binder, not the network.
ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE — read-only flag that lets the app see whether the device currently has connectivity. Does not allow any data transmission. Required by the Google Play Billing Library 7+ for connection-retry logic so the upgrade dialog can recover gracefully if the device briefly goes offline. The same permission is held by privacy-first apps like Signal, Tor Browser, and Bitwarden.

ChatWise does not request INTERNET, location, contacts, microphone, camera, or storage access beyond the file you explicitly share with the app. Without INTERNET, no Chatwise process can transmit data — Android's permission model enforces this at the kernel level, so the privacy guarantee is verifiable from the manifest alone.

Changes to this policy

If we update this policy, we will change the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, post a notice in the app's next release notes. Continued use of the app after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

Questions, concerns, or feedback about privacy? Email geekguruguide@gmail.com. We read every message.