Privacy policy
Instash is an app for keeping the links, posts, screenshots and notes you want to come back to. A helper called Pebble files them into collections and helps you find and use them. This page covers the Instash app, the Instash browser extension, and this website, getinstash.com: what we collect, why, and the choices you have.
The app and extension
What we collect
- Your account: your username and a password, stored only as a secure hash. You can add a display name.
- What you save: links, text you share into the app or send from the browser extension, notes, photos, screenshots and other files you add, the collections you make, and your choices on saves such as Later, Done and why you saved something.
- Your chats with Pebble: the questions you ask and the answers.
- Basic technical records: the IP address and time of requests, kept briefly to stop abuse (for example, too many sign-in attempts).
We don't collect your contacts, your location, or what you do in other apps.
How we use it
- To store your saves and keep them in sync across your devices.
- To understand each save: we open a shared link's public page once to read its title, description, picture and text, and we read text in images you add. Software on our own servers then picks a collection, writes a short summary and finds any places mentioned.
- To search your saves and answer your questions in chat, using only your own saves.
All of this runs on our own servers with open models we host ourselves. We don't send your saves to outside AI companies, and we don't use your saves to train models.
This website and the waitlist
If you join the waitlist
- Your email address, and the Google account you use on Play if you give one so we can invite you to test the app.
- Your answers on the form: whether you'd like to test the Android app, whether you'd use an iPhone app, and whether you agreed to emails about Instash (with which version of that wording you saw).
- Your approximate country, region and city, which Cloudflare works out from your IP address. We don't store the IP address itself.
- Where you came from: the page that linked to us and any campaign tags in the link (for example, which post you clicked).
We use this to send your invite, add testers to the app's test on Google Play, understand where interest comes from, and, only if you ticked the box, email you about Instash. You can unsubscribe from those emails at any time.
When you visit
- Usage analytics: we use PostHog to see how the site is used: pages viewed, buttons and links clicked, how far you read, the steps of the form you complete (field names only, never what you type), and recordings of visits with every form field hidden. PostHog uses your IP address to estimate your country and city.
- No cookies: the site doesn't set cookies or store anything in your browser for analytics, so a visit can't be linked to your next one.
- Bot check: when you use a form, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you're a person. It reads signals from your browser but doesn't set tracking cookies or show ads.
- Abuse protection: to limit repeated form submissions, we keep a scrambled, one-way version of your IP address for 24 hours.
Who else sees data
- DigitalOcean runs the app's servers and file storage, in India.
- Cloudflare hosts this website and stores the waitlist, and runs the bot check on our forms.
- PostHog (in the United States) receives the website analytics described above.
- Google receives the Play account address of testers we invite, because Google Play manages app tests. Our email runs on Google Workspace.
- Websites you save: when you save a link, our server visits that page once, the way a browser would. It follows the site's robots.txt rules.
- Places and maps: place names found in your saves are looked up with OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service. The map draws its tiles from OpenFreeMap, which sees your device's IP address when the map loads.
- Collections you share: if you make a share link, anyone with that link can see that collection until you turn the link off.
We don't sell your data, show ads, or use advertising trackers.
How long we keep it
- Your saves stay until you delete them. A deleted save is removed from our servers within 30 days.
- Deleting your account removes your account, saves, files, collections, chats and share links straight away. Copies in our backups are removed within 14 days.
- Your waitlist entry stays until you ask us to remove it.
- The scrambled IP addresses used against form abuse are deleted after 24 hours.
Your choices
- Edit or delete any save, collection or chat in the app.
- Delete your account in the app (Profile, then Delete account) or on our account deletion page.
- Leave the waitlist, or stop emails, by writing to [email protected] or using the unsubscribe link in any email.
- Ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or anything else about it, at [email protected].
Security
All traffic uses HTTPS. Passwords are stored as hashes, files are kept in private storage and only shown to their owner, and access to our servers is limited.
Children
Instash isn't meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top and, for important changes, tell you in the app.
Questions or requests: [email protected]. Security issues: [email protected].