Last updated: September 2026
TL;DR: There is no account, no phone number and no tracking, and your messages are end-to-end encrypted so we cannot read them. Messages sent over the local mesh never reach us at all. Messages that travel through our relay leave it able to see who is talking to whom and when — but never what you said.
OSHI was built with one core principle: your privacy is not negotiable. We would rather describe our architecture accurately than claim we collect nothing. Message contents are end-to-end encrypted and unreadable to us. Some delivery metadata is unavoidable when a message has to cross the internet, and this policy sets out exactly what that is.
OSHI reads your device location only for features you start yourself. There are three, and nothing else in the app asks for your position:
Both approximate and precise location are used. Your position is read only while one of those three features is active — never before, never after, and never in the background unless you have armed a check-in yourself. We do not keep a location history, we do not profile you with it, and we never sell it or hand it to other companies.
Coordinates you share travel the same way as any other OSHI message: device to device over the local mesh when a peer is reachable, otherwise through the relay described below, encrypted for the recipient so the relay cannot read them.
You can withdraw location access at any time in Android Settings › Apps › OSHI › Permissions › Location. Everything else in OSHI keeps working; only the map, location sharing and check-in stop.
When a message cannot be delivered over the local mesh, it is carried by a relay server that we operate. In order to route the message, that server necessarily handles:
It cannot see the contents of any message. We do not use this information to build profiles and we run no analytics over it, but it exists, and a party with legal power over the server could in principle observe it. Messages delivered peer-to-peer over the mesh do not pass through this server and produce none of this data.
End-to-End Encryption: All messages are encrypted on your device before being sent. Only the intended recipient can decrypt them. We never have access to your encryption keys.
Delivery Architecture: OSHI tries the local mesh first, sending device-to-device over Bluetooth or WiFi with no server involved at all. If no peer is reachable, the message goes through an encrypted relay that we operate, optionally routed over Tor to hide your IP address from it. As a last resort the encrypted message is placed in a content-addressed store on that same server of ours until it is collected.
No Account Required: You don't need to provide any personal information to use OSHI. Your identity is a cryptographic key pair generated on your device.
OSHI stores the following data locally on your device only:
This data never leaves your device unless you explicitly share it or send a message.
When a message cannot be delivered over the mesh or directly through the relay, it is stored as an encrypted blob addressed by its content hash. To be precise about where that lives:
We previously used a third-party pinning service for this. That arrangement ended and the associated key was revoked on 16 July 2026; this storage is now entirely on infrastructure we control.
OSHI relies on very little outside infrastructure:
We do not use any analytics, advertising, or tracking services.
OSHI is open source. You can audit our code to verify our privacy claims: github.com/Lastoneparis/OSHI
If we ever change this privacy policy, we'll update the "Last updated" date and notify users through the app. However, our core commitment to end-to-end encryption and to collecting no more than delivery requires will never change.
Questions about privacy? Contact us at contact@oshi-messenger.com