HearthCam Privacy Policy
Last updated: 19 August 2026
HearthCam collects nothing. No account, no analytics, no advertising, and no servers of ours anywhere. Video and audio from the nursery never leave your local network, and are never recorded.
Who this covers
This policy applies to the HearthCam Android application, published by Kyle Pastor ("we", "us"). It describes what the app does with information on your devices.
What we collect
Nothing. We operate no servers and have no way to receive your data. We do not know who you are, whether you use the app, or how often. There is no account to create and no sign-in.
Video and audio
When a phone is used as the camera, HearthCam captures video and audio and streams them directly to your viewing device over your own Wi-Fi, or over a private network the phone creates itself.
- The stream is sent peer-to-peer over your local network only. The connection is established with no STUN or TURN servers, which means a link can only ever form between devices on the same network.
- Media is encrypted in transit using DTLS-SRTP, the standard WebRTC uses.
- Nothing is recorded. There is no video or audio file, on your device or anywhere else. When you stop the camera, the stream is gone.
- Motion detection runs entirely on the camera phone by comparing frames in memory. Frames are never transmitted or saved — only the fact that motion occurred.
What is stored on your device
The following stays in the app's private storage on your own phone, and is never transmitted:
| Your settings | Sound, light, motion sensitivity, watch zone, video quality. |
|---|---|
| Event history | Times and types of events — motion, crying, connections. Kept for seven nights, then deleted automatically. |
| Sound level samples | A number every five minutes, used to draw the night's timeline. Not a recording. |
| Network details | The name and passphrase of the private network the phone creates, so viewers can rejoin. |
| Purchase status | Whether hosting has been unlocked, and how many trial nights were used. |
You can erase all of it at any time with Settings → Erase everything on this phone, or by uninstalling the app.
Permissions, and why each is needed
| Camera | To capture the picture that is streamed to your viewer. Used only while the camera is running. |
|---|---|
| Microphone | To carry room sound, measure the noise level, and detect crying. Also used on the viewer for talk-back. |
Location ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION | Android requires this permission before it will tell an app the name of a Wi-Fi network it creates. HearthCam never reads, uses, or stores your location. |
| Nearby devices | Required by Android 13 and later to create the private Wi-Fi Direct network used in off-grid mode. |
| Wi-Fi and network state | To find the address other devices can reach this phone on. |
| Internet | Android classifies all network sockets as "internet", including local ones. HearthCam uses it solely to reach devices on your own network. |
| Notifications | To show the ongoing notice while the camera is running, and alerts on the viewer. |
| Foreground service | To keep the camera streaming when the screen turns off. |
Payments
Hosting is unlocked with a one-time purchase handled entirely by Google Play Billing. The transaction takes place inside the Google Play app. HearthCam never sees your card details, name, or billing address, and we receive no payment information from you directly. Google's handling of that transaction is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.
Children
HearthCam is intended for use by parents and carers, not by children. It is designed to be pointed at a child, and we have built it so that those images cannot reach us or anyone else: there is no upload, no cloud storage, and no recording. Footage stays between the two devices in your home.
Third-party components
The app is built with Capacitor, AndroidX, NanoHTTPD and the Google Play Billing Library. None of these send your information to us or to third parties in the way HearthCam uses them. The app contains no analytics, advertising, or tracking libraries, and makes no network requests to any host outside your local network. Its fonts are bundled in the app rather than fetched from the internet.
Data sharing
We do not share, sell, or transfer your information, because we never receive any.
Your rights
Since we hold no data about you, there is nothing for us to disclose, correct, or delete on request. Everything the app stores is on your own device and under your control.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page will be updated. If a future version of HearthCam ever collected data, we would say so plainly here and in the app before it did.
Contact
Questions about this policy: kyleanthonypastor@gmail.com