Pixel Companions

Privacy

Last updated 11 November 2026.

Pixel Companions is a small project, made for one family and shared with friends. This page says exactly what it keeps, why, where, and how you get rid of it. It describes how the website, the Windows and Mac apps and our server actually work today.

What we keep

  • Your account: your e-mail address (to sign in), your name, when you signed up and last signed in, and your password as a salted hash (PBKDF2 with HMAC-SHA512, 100,000 rounds). We never store or see the password itself.
  • Your own character: how you look, your own week schedule, your status ("📚 Doing homework", with when you set it and until when), the app settings you share between your own computers, and your personal "add me" code.
  • Your circle: its name, the characters you made in it (for example your children: a name and a look you chose), relationships (partner, parent, siblings, friends), the circle's routines and places, and who is in it.
  • Messages: the text, the emote, who sent it to whom, and when it was sent, delivered and read.
  • Signed-in devices: one entry per device with a name like "Mac · Living-room-iMac" or "Phone · iOS" (the desktop apps use your computer's name), when it signed in and was last used, and a fingerprint (SHA-256) of its sign-in token, never the token itself.
  • Invite codes: an 8-character code on a character until someone uses it, at most 48 hours.

What we don't keep

  • No ads, no analytics, no trackers, no tracking cookies, and we don't sell or share anything with anyone.
  • Who's online right now (and on which kind of device) is kept only in the server's memory while it runs. It's never written to the database and is gone after a restart.
  • We don't ask for anyone's age, address, phone number or location.

Who sees what

  • People in your circle see your character, your own schedule, your status, whether you're online (or when you were last seen, and on what kind of device), and the messages you send them.
  • Your e-mail address is never shown to anyone else.
  • The owner of a circle can hide you there, keep their own version of your look in their circle, or remove you. That only affects their circle.

Where it lives

  • The data is stored with our database provider Plexxer (plexxer.com). Our server and website run on Pier (onpier.tech). Everything travels over HTTPS.
  • The hosting's web server keeps ordinary access logs (IP address, time, address requested) and counts page visits. Our own server logs only technical events with ids and counts, not your messages or passwords.
  • The pages load their fonts from Google Fonts, so Google sees your IP address when the fonts are fetched.
  • The website keeps your sign-in token in your browser's local storage (not a cookie). The desktop apps keep their token and settings in a folder on your computer.
  • The desktop apps check our website for updates; that request contains nothing about you.

How long

  • A device that hasn't been used for 30 days is signed out automatically.
  • Everything else stays until you change or delete it, or delete your account.
  • If our database provider keeps backups, deleted data can remain in them until those backups are replaced.

Children

Children usually appear as characters their parent makes: a name and a look, nothing else. A child can get their own account with an invite code from their parent, but doesn't have to. We don't ask for ages.

Your choices

  • See and change everything about yourself and your circle on the website or in the apps.
  • Sign out any device, or all other devices, and change your password on the website under ☰ → Devices.
  • Delete your account under ☰ → Devices on the website. That deletes your account, your own character, schedule, status and settings, your circle with the characters you made in it, your messages, and every device signed in to it. In other people's circles you disappear. People who have their own account keep theirs.

Contact

Contact: see the app's About page.