AwayMsg — Privacy Policy

Last updated 5 October 2026

AwayMsg lets you write one styled away message and read your buddies'. This page says what it stores, who can see it, and how to get rid of it. It is short because the app does not do very much.

What it stores

• Your email address, because that is how you sign in. If you sign in with Apple and choose to hide your email, this is the private relay address Apple makes for AwayMsg, not your real one.
• Your Apple ID's identifier for AwayMsg, if you sign in with Apple — a code Apple issues that means nothing outside this app.
• A screen name, which you choose and can change.
• A first name and last initial, which you type in at sign-up. If you sign in with Apple, the name Apple shares is used only to fill those two boxes in for you, and nothing else of it is kept.
• What you write: your away message and its styling, your about-me, your chosen face and colour theme. Away messages you replace are kept so that the hall of fame can still show one people liked.
• Who you are buddies with, who you have blocked, which messages you have liked, and which you have reported — so that those stay hidden from you.
• Your invite code and how many invites it has left, and who invited you, if anybody did — using their code is what made the two of you buddies.
• If you join the waitlist, when you joined, and the line you wrote about yourself, if you wrote one.
• When you were last active, so buddies can see whether you are online.
• A device token, if you turn on any alerts. It is the address Apple's push notification service delivers them to, and it is deleted when you sign out.
• Which alerts you have chosen: which buddies, whether all of them, and whether likes. Nobody else can see these.

That is the complete list. There is no analytics, no advertising identifier, no tracking of any kind, and nothing is shared except with the few services that run the app, listed below.

Two things are kept on your phone only, in the iOS keychain — never synced to iCloud and never restored onto another device. If you tick Save password, your email and password. And between signing up and confirming your email address, the email and password you signed up with, so the app can finish signing you in by itself once you have clicked the link; they are deleted the moment it does, and after seven days if you never do.

Who can see it

• Your email address is never shown to other people on AwayMsg. If you join the waitlist, a moderator sees it, with the line you wrote, so they can let you in.
• Your screen name, face, theme, about-me, real name and away messages can be read by anyone signed in to AwayMsg who can open your profile.
• If your account is public, people can find it in search by your first name and last initial as well as by your screen name.
• You can turn that off. Edit profile → Privacy hides you from search and from the public boards, so only your buddies can find you — and search then finds you only by your exact screen name, never by your real name.
• Somebody you have blocked cannot see you, and you cannot see them.
• Your invite code is shown only to you, and goes wherever you send it. Nobody is shown who invited whom.
• When you like a message, anyone who can see your profile can see that you liked it. If your account is private, only your buddies can.
• If you turn on alerts for a buddy — or for all of them — their screen name and away message are sent to your phone through Apple's push notification service each time they post a new one.
• If you turn on like alerts, the screen name of whoever liked your away message is sent to your phone the same way — unless they could not otherwise have been found by you, in which case nothing is sent.
• A message you report is shown to a moderator, exactly as it was when you reported it.

Deleting it

Your profile's Account window has a Delete account button. Your profile and everything on it disappears from the app immediately. For 30 days you can sign back in and change your mind. After that it is permanently deleted: your sign-in email and password, your profile, your away messages, your buddies, your likes, your invite code and who invited you, and any record of the screen names you have used. A report you filed about somebody else is kept for the moderators, with your name taken off it.

Who else is involved

• Supabase stores everything above and runs signing in.
• Resend sends the email that confirms your address, the code for resetting your password, and — if you joined the waitlist — the one saying you have been let in, so it is given that address.
• Apple delivers alerts, if you turn them on, so it is given your device token and the text of each alert. If you sign in with Apple, Apple confirms who you are to AwayMsg, and when you delete that account AwayMsg asks Apple to end its access to your Apple ID.
• Cloudflare serves this page and the page the confirmation email links to, and sees what any website sees of a visit to it.

There are no others.

Children

AwayMsg is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

Questions, or want your data removed: awaymsgted@gmail.com