Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective August 13, 2026

This policy covers both this website and the ZENO desktop and mobile applications. ZENO is developed and operated by Plamen. For support or inquiries regarding this policy, please contact support@zenoapp.net

1. Who we are

ZENO is a desktop application developed and operated by Plamen IT. This policy explains what data the website and the desktop app process, why, and what rights you have over it.

2. The desktop and mobile apps

2.1 What stays on your machine

Everything you create - vault entries, boards, cards, notes, calendar events, transactions, links and canvases - is written to a single encrypted SQLite database in your operating system's per-user application data directory. We have no server that receives it, and no ability to read it.

The database is encrypted at rest with a key held in your operating system's keychain (DPAPI on Windows, Keychain on macOS, libsecret on Linux, the Keychain on iOS and the hardware Keystore on Android). Vault entries are additionally protected by a master password that only you know. We cannot recover that password, and we cannot decrypt your data.

2.2 What the app collects, and what it never does

The desktop app shares anonymous usage statistics with our analytics provider, TelemetryDeck: a random identifier generated on your device (not your name, email, or an account - there is no account), your app version, operating system, architecture and language, and which of a small set of signals occurred (the app was installed, opened, or is still in regular use). This is on by default, disclosed the first time you open the app, and can be turned off anytime in Settings → Privacy - the change takes effect immediately.

What is never collected, sent, or included in that data: your vault, boards, notes, finances, links, canvases - anything you create - or any file path, filename, or command you run.

There is no account to create and no identifier tied to your name or email outside of §2.4 below. The application window itself is prevented at the process level from making network requests of its own - every connection described below is made from the application's main process, never the interface you interact with.

2.3 Connections the app makes, and what triggers them

• Anonymous usage statistics - sent automatically, on by default, to TelemetryDeck. See 2.2 for exactly what this includes and how to turn it off.
• Update checks - periodically, the app checks our download server for a newer version. This request includes your app version and operating system and nothing else. Downloading and installing an update always require your say-so.
• Licence activation - only if you enter a ZENO Pro licence key or paste an offline-activation token. Sends your licence key and a salted device code to our licence server. See §2.4 for what that includes.
• S3-compatible storage backup - only if you configure one. You supply your own endpoint, bucket and access keys for a provider of your choosing (Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, AWS S3, and similar all work). Snapshots are encrypted before upload; that provider stores ciphertext.
• SFTP backup - only if you configure it. Snapshots are encrypted before transfer and sent to a server you specify and control.
• ZENO Cloud backup and sync - available to ZENO Pro devices. The app first confirms the licence with our licence server, then receives a short-lived, opaque storage permission. The separately operated storage service sees only encrypted archive or sync ciphertext, an opaque storage box code, byte counts and timestamps; it never receives your licence key, customer email, licence id, device code, vault password, or encryption keys.
• Favicons - when you save a link, the app may fetch that site's icon from that site. This reveals your request to that website, as visiting it would.
• Exchange rates - if you use the finance module with more than one currency, the app fetches public reference rates. No account data is sent.
• Opening a link - launching a bookmark hands the URL to your browser, exactly as clicking it anywhere else would.

Usage statistics and update checks are the two connections the app makes on its own; the first can be turned off in Settings, the second never downloads or installs anything without your action. Licence activation happens only when you act on it. Backup destinations are off until you configure one; favicon fetching and exchange rates are incidental to using those features.

2.4 ZENO Pro activation

Activating or refreshing a ZENO Pro licence sends: the licence key you entered, a one-way salted hash of this machine's hardware identifier (never the identifier itself - see below), a short device label of your choosing (e.g. "Windows · a date", never your hostname), and, if you use it, an email address on the recovery form. That request goes to our licence server, which validates it with Lemon Squeezy, our subscription billing processor, acting as our sub-processor for that purpose. Lemon Squeezy also independently processes your payment details when you subscribe - we never receive your card number.

The device hash is salted twice: once on your machine before it ever leaves, and again on our server before it is stored anywhere - so the value shown on your screen and the value our licence server holds are two different numbers, neither of which is derived the same way as anything ZENO's device-sync feature sends. This is deliberate: licence activation and synced data are handled by separate systems on purpose, so the two are never linkable to each other through us or through Lemon Squeezy.

When a Pro device uses ZENO Cloud, the licence server briefly records the fact that it minted a storage permission in order to operate and diagnose that request. That permission contains only an opaque, one-way storage-box code and a short expiry; the storage service cannot use it to identify the licence, purchaser, or device. We keep mint-time request logs only for a short operational retention period and do not combine them with storage-service access logs.

Recovering a lost key by email is answered identically whether or not that address has ever bought anything, so that the recovery form cannot be used to learn who our customers are.

2.5 The mobile app

Everything in §2.1 to §2.4 applies to the mobile app as written. Its database is encrypted the same way, with a key we generate on your device and hand to the platform's own secure storage - the iOS Keychain, marked so that it is never included in an iCloud or iTunes backup, and the Android Keystore, from which it cannot be exported. The app is also excluded from Android's cloud backup entirely. The practical consequence is that restoring a phone backup onto a different phone does not carry your data with it; you pair the new device instead.

Camera. The camera is used for exactly one thing: reading the pairing code displayed on your other device. Frames are examined on your device and discarded; nothing is recorded, stored, or transmitted, and the app asks for the permission only at the moment you open the scanner.

Biometrics. If you turn on biometric unlock, your fingerprint or face never reaches ZENO - the operating system performs the match and, on success, releases a key held in the device's secure hardware. We do not receive, store, or transmit any biometric data, and the stored key is erased by the operating system if a new fingerprint or face is added to the device.

No advertising identifier, no analytics SDK, no third-party trackers. The anonymous usage statistics described in §2.2 are the same on mobile, and are the only thing the app reports. If notifications are ever used to tell the app that a sync is waiting, the notification will carry no content - only the fact that something changed - so that Apple and Google learn nothing about what you sync or when you use the app.

3. This website

The website is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, runs no advertising, and does not build a profile of you.

The site is hosted on Vercel and installers are served from Cloudflare R2. As with any web host, those providers process standard server request data (IP address, user agent, requested URL, timestamp) in order to deliver the page and the file. We do not combine that with anything else or use it to identify you.

The download buttons detect your operating system in your browser, purely to highlight the right installer. That detection never leaves your device.

The pricing, offline activation and recovery pages submit the fields described in §2.4 to the same licence server the app talks to, over the same terms.

4. Legal basis and retention

We hold no data tied to your identity - no name, no email, no account - except what a ZENO Pro subscription itself requires. The anonymous usage statistics described in §2.2 are processed on the basis of our legitimate interest in understanding how the app is used and improving it, are handled by TelemetryDeck as our sub-processor for that purpose, and are retained according to TelemetryDeck's own retention policy. Licence and billing data described in §2.4 is processed to perform the subscription contract, is handled by Lemon Squeezy as our sub-processor for billing, and is retained for as long as the subscription is active plus whatever period Lemon Squeezy's own policy and applicable tax law require. Server logs held by our hosting providers are retained according to their own standard periods.

5. Your rights

Under the GDPR and similar regimes you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection. Your ZENO data is in your possession: you can export it, back it up, or delete it by removing the application's data directory. For a ZENO Pro subscription, Lemon Squeezy's own privacy notice governs the payment and billing data it holds directly; write to support@zenoapp.net for anything we hold ourselves.

6. Children

ZENO is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

7. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, the effective date above will change and the updated version will be published on this page.