Privacy Policy

1. Scope, operator, and different roles

This Privacy Policy describes personal data handled by NodePier, an independently operated, invitation-only service based in Fairfax, Virginia, when operating its marketing page, owner console, API, hosting control plane, and infrastructure.

It does not replace the privacy policy of a site hosted on NodePier. A hosted-site owner decides what its application, forms, scripts, cookies, integrations, and databases collect. Depending on the context and applicable law, that owner may be the controller or business responsible for that data, while NodePier may act as its hosting provider or processor. The parties' legal roles depend on actual use and are not changed merely by this wording.

This policy does not cover independent data practices of domain registrars, DNS operators, certificate authorities, the Tor network, upstream networks, software repositories, or third-party services embedded by a hosted site.

2. Information NodePier collects or stores

Owner authentication and configuration

• The one authorized public key and its fingerprint.
• Short-lived signing challenges and authentication state needed to verify a signature.
• A signed session token stored in the owner's browser session storage. It is cleared when the session is removed or the browser session ends.
• If enabled, an authenticator secret encrypted at rest, enrollment state, and verification timing needed for optional two-factor authentication.
• Service configuration and operational state, such as domain names, project names, project type, lifecycle status, resource settings, deployment timestamps, DNS instructions, and errors.

Hosted content and application resources

• Uploaded static files and application source archives, release manifests, build inputs, container images, and deployment metadata.
• Application configuration and persistent data written by the hosted application to its assigned data volume.
• Application standard-output and error logs. These may contain anything the application chooses to print and can appear in container or system-service logs under their applicable rotation and retention settings.
• For an enabled Tor onion service, its hostname, private service keys, and routing configuration.

Communications and legal requests

If you contact NodePier, it may retain the message, sender details, attachments, related identifiers, and response history. The mail system also processes ordinary delivery metadata, including message headers, sending-mail-server addresses, timestamps, and delivery results. Legal, security, and abuse records may be retained as needed to address the request and establish what action was taken.

3. Visitors to NodePier and hosted sites

NodePier marketing page and control service

The public NodePier landing page has no advertising, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics scripts. NodePier's Nginx control-site access logging is disabled. The owner console communicates with the NodePier API as needed for authentication and service operation.

Privacy-preserving hosted-site totals

For hosted-site traffic, NodePier writes only these analytics fields:

• timestamp;
• HTTP response status;
• response bytes served;
• response time;
• a page-view flag based on response content type; and
• a coarse bot flag calculated from the request User-Agent before the raw value is discarded.

NodePier does not write the visitor's IP address, URL path, query string, referrer, raw User-Agent, cookies, authorization headers, or request body to these traffic logs. It does not calculate unique visitors, per-person histories, top paths, or referral sources.

Volatile abuse controls

Nginx uses client IP addresses in volatile shared memory to enforce request and connection limits. This rate-limit state is not written to NodePier traffic logs and is cleared when the relevant Nginx state restarts. Hosted application proxies strip client IP forwarding headers, so the application receives the proxy connection rather than the visitor's client IP through those headers.

4. What hosted applications may collect

A hosted application is controlled by its site owner. It may collect personal data through account registration, posts, uploads, messages, payments, forms, browser APIs, application cookies, third-party scripts, external media, or information a visitor deliberately submits. It may also create its own database and application logs.

NodePier does not automatically remove personal information from an application's submitted content, database, outbound requests, or code-generated logs. The site owner is responsible for minimizing that collection, securing it, choosing retention periods, honoring user rights, and publishing an accurate privacy notice.

Static and application sites can include third-party browser code that contacts outside services directly. Those requests do not pass through NodePier's application proxy and may reveal the visitor's IP and other browser information to the selected third party.

5. How information is used

NodePier uses information as reasonably necessary to:

• authenticate the owner and provide deployment, hosting, domain, TLS, container, analytics, and onion-service functions;
• maintain service state, troubleshoot errors, allocate resources, and respond to requests;
• protect systems and people, rate-limit abuse, investigate incidents, and enforce the Terms and AUP;
• comply with applicable law, valid legal process, sanctions, and recordkeeping duties; and
• establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

Where a legal basis is required, processing may be necessary to perform a contract, comply with law, or pursue legitimate interests in operating and securing the service, balanced against affected rights. Consent is used where applicable law requires it and may be withdrawn prospectively.

NodePier does not use hosted-site traffic logs to advertise to visitors, build cross-site profiles, or sell personal information.

6. Disclosures and service providers

NodePier relies on multiple infrastructure providers, including providers of VPS hosting, networking and denial-of-service mitigation, DNS and domains, certificates, software distribution, and email delivery. NodePier may disclose limited information:

• to those providers when needed to supply or protect the service;
• to professional advisers and contractors bound by appropriate duties;
• when reasonably believed necessary to comply with valid law or legal process, address an emergency, protect rights or safety, investigate abuse, or enforce policies;
• as part of a merger, financing, reorganization, sale, or transfer of the service, subject to applicable notice duties; or
• at your direction or with your consent.

NodePier does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

7. Retention and deletion

• Hosted-site anonymous traffic totals: kept through 30 daily log rotations, ordinarily about 30 days.
• Owner identity and configuration: retained while needed to operate the service or until replaced or the service is closed.
• Site content and application data: retained while the project exists. NodePier does not create customer-content backups. The deployment system may keep the current and up to two previous releases, container images, and build artifacts as operational service copies; they are not a recovery promise.
• Application logs: retained according to container and system-service rotation settings; actual content and volume are determined by the application.
• Communications, abuse, security, and legal records: retained as reasonably needed for the request, safety, compliance, dispute, or limitation period.

Removing a project is intended to remove its active content, configuration, and assigned application data. Deletion may be delayed in temporary files, an infrastructure provider's systems, or material preserved because law requires it. NodePier does not guarantee recovery of deleted or failed data.

8. Choices and privacy rights

Depending on location and applicable law, a person may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or objection; withdraw consent; or complain to a supervisory authority. NodePier may verify identity and authority before acting and may retain or decline information where an exception applies.

Because NodePier traffic logs intentionally omit visitor identifiers, NodePier generally cannot locate an anonymous hosted-site traffic record by a person's IP, identity, or browsing path. Requests about an account, post, form submission, or database maintained by a hosted site should first be directed to that site's operator.

NodePier does not respond to browser “Do Not Track” signals because it does not use advertising trackers on its landing page or create behavioral profiles from hosted-site traffic logs.

9. Security, location, and children

NodePier uses measures intended to reduce risk, including owner-key signatures, optional encrypted two-factor secrets, TLS, rootless container isolation, resource limits, restricted proxy headers, and minimized traffic logs. No system is perfectly secure, and NodePier cannot guarantee that information will never be lost, accessed, altered, or disclosed.

All NodePier servers are currently located in the United States. Infrastructure providers may process their own account, support, network, or security records wherever they operate. Cross-border transfer safeguards will be used where applicable law requires them.

NodePier invitations and owner-console access are only for people at least 18 years old. Customers may not use NodePier to operate a service directed primarily to children under 18 or knowingly collect their personal data without prior written approval. Hosted-site owners remain responsible for age-appropriate design and any duties arising from data they collect from minors.

10. Changes and contact

NodePier may update this policy prospectively. The effective date and version will change when it does. Materially expanded use of previously collected personal data will not be applied retroactively solely through a quiet policy edit; additional notice or consent will be provided where required.