Privacy Policy
Walnut is a free app for watching things together with friends. This page explains in plain words what Walnut stores about you, why, who else handles it, how long it’s kept, and what you can do about it.
Last updated
The short version. Walnut keeps what it needs to run your account, your friends, your messages and your Walnuts. There are no ads, and Walnut doesn’t sell your data or share it for advertising. Voice, video and screen shares are streamed live, not recorded. You can ask for a copy of your data, or have your account deleted, at any time.
Who runs Walnut
Walnut (easywalnut.com and Walnut for Windows) is run by an individual based in Qatar, who decides how your data is used. In this policy “Walnut”, “we” and “us” mean that operator. You can reach us at [email protected].
What Walnut stores
Your account
Your email address, username, display name and password. The password is stored only as an Argon2id hash, which can’t be turned back into the password. We also keep when you joined, when you confirmed your email, when you were last online, the status you chose (online, away, do not disturb or invisible), and two random codes that let friends find and add you: your Walnut ID and your friend link.
Your profile and settings
Whatever you add to your profile: a profile picture, banner, bio, pronouns, accent colour, tag and custom status. And your settings for privacy, notifications and appearance.
Friends, blocks and reports
Who you’re friends with, the friend requests you’ve sent and received, who you’ve blocked, and any reports you make: who you reported, the reason, the message you pointed to (if any) and what you wrote.
Messages and files
Direct messages and group chats: what you write, replies, mentions, reactions, edits, and which messages you’ve read. Files you send or upload: images, videos, voice messages (with their length and waveform), other files up to 50 MB, profile pictures, banners, and group and room pictures, each with its name, type and size.
When you delete a message it disappears for everyone, but the stored copy, and any files it carried, stay in our database until your account is deleted.
Walnuts
For each Walnut (room): its name, code and settings, who owns and manages it, who may come back to it, its invitations, a hash of its password if it has one, and its last saved state, such as the watch queue and what was on its screen, so it can pick up where it left off. Room chat is kept while the Walnut is open. We also keep a record of control in each Walnut: the TV being switched on and off, the remote being passed, screen shares and remote control that were allowed, people removed, and changes of owner.
Signed-in devices
For each device you sign in on: a name such as “Chrome on Windows”, whether it’s the web or the Windows app, your IP address with its last part removed (for example 203.0.113.x), your browser’s user-agent string, and when it signed in and was last active. You can see this list in Settings and sign any device out.
Notifications
The notifications Walnut shows you, such as friend requests, invitations and Walnuts about to close, and whether you’ve read them.
Emails
Walnut emails you only to confirm your address and to reset your password, with a 6-digit code. We store only a hash of the code; it works for 15 minutes and is deleted once it’s used. There are no newsletters or marketing emails.
Server logs and IP addresses
Walnut’s server logs the requests it receives (the method and the address on Walnut, without anything after a “?”), errors, and events such as a report being received, so problems can be fixed and abuse investigated. Your IP address is used, in memory and for about a minute at a time, to limit repeated attempts such as password guesses.
Calls and screens are live, not recorded
Voice chat, screen shares and the picture from the room’s TV are streamed live to the people in the Walnut through LiveKit, a real-time media server. Walnut doesn’t record them or keep them. To connect you, LiveKit receives your user ID, your display name, which Walnut you’re in, and your IP address. Calls are encrypted on the way, but they aren’t end-to-end encrypted: the media server handles them in order to pass them on. When a direct connection isn’t possible, the stream may pass through a relay run by Cloudflare.
Whether you’re online, and what you’re doing (in a Walnut, in a call, watching something and its title, or sharing your screen), is worked out live from your connection and shown to the people your privacy settings allow. By default, that’s your friends.
The room’s TV
The TV is a real web browser that everyone in the Walnut watches together. It runs on Walnut’s own computers, or, when the Walnut’s owner uses Walnut for Windows, on the owner’s PC.
- Everyone in the Walnut sees everything on the TV, including anything typed into it. Don’t sign in to your own accounts on the TV unless you’re happy for the room to see them.
- Sites see Walnut, not you. Pages opened on Walnut’s TV are fetched over Walnut’s internet connection, so those sites see Walnut’s address rather than yours. On a TV hosted by Walnut for Windows, they see the owner’s connection.
- Its browser data is temporary. The TV’s browser keeps its data for the room (history, cookies and anything signed in on it) for 24 hours after the TV was last switched off, then deletes it.
- Ads and trackers are blocked on the TV with uBlock Origin’s and EasyList’s filter lists, unless the room switches that off.
- The address and title of the page on the TV are part of the room’s state, which everyone in the room sees and which is saved with the Walnut.
YouTube and other sites
When a Walnut plays a YouTube video in sync, your own browser loads YouTube’s player straight from YouTube, run by Google. Google receives your IP address and may set its own cookies, and Google’s privacy policy applies. A direct video link is loaded by your browser from wherever the link points, and a link in a message takes you to its own site, under that site’s policy.
Cookies, storage and analytics
Walnut sets one cookie of its own for each account you sign in to on the web, walnut_r_ followed by the account’s id (older sign-ins used walnut_refresh), which keeps you signed in. It’s strictly necessary, page scripts can’t read it, it’s only sent to Walnut’s sign-in addresses, and it lasts up to 60 days, or until you close your browser if you sign in without “Remember me”. Walnut also saves a few preferences in your browser’s local storage, such as your voice settings, layout choices and recent emoji; they stay on your device. There are no advertising or tracking cookies, which is why Walnut has no cookie banner.
Walnut uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits: which page was opened, where the visit came from, the kind of browser and device, the country, and how quickly the page loaded. It sets no cookies and doesn’t follow you across other sites.
Walnut for Windows keeps your sign-in in Windows’ protected storage, readable only by your Windows account, and checks easywalnut.com for updates.
Who can see what
- Anyone signed in to Walnut can find you by your username or Walnut ID and see your display name, username and profile picture.
- Your privacy settings decide who sees your online status, your activity, your friends list and the rest of your profile, and who may message, call, invite or friend you.
- People in a Walnut with you see your name and picture, hear you when you talk, and see what you share, put on the TV and write in the room chat.
- Profile pictures, banners, and group and room pictures can be opened by anyone who has their link. Other files are given only to the people in the conversation or Walnut they were sent in, through private links.
Who else handles your data
We don’t sell your personal data or share it for advertising. These services handle it for us, to run Walnut:
- Cloudflare carries all traffic to easywalnut.com and protects it from attacks, relays calls when a direct connection isn’t possible, provides the visit counts above, and receives reports of network errors from browsers. It sees IP addresses and the requests passing through it. Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
- LiveKit: live voice, video and screens run on LiveKit Cloud, run by LiveKit, Inc., or on Walnut’s own media server. LiveKit’s privacy policy.
- An email provider delivers the emails with your codes, and so receives your email address and display name.
Walnut’s database and the files you upload are kept on a server the operator runs. We would disclose personal data to anyone else only when the law requires it, or when it’s needed to protect someone from serious harm.
Why we use it
- To give you Walnut: your account, friends, messages, Walnuts, calls and the TV. Under the GDPR, this is necessary for the agreement between us (our Terms of Use).
- To keep Walnut safe and working: confirming emails, protecting sign-ins, limiting repeated attempts, your device list, handling reports and fixing errors. This is our legitimate interest in a secure service that isn’t abused.
- To understand which pages are used, with cookie-free visit counts. This is our legitimate interest in improving Walnut.
- To meet legal obligations, such as answering valid legal requests.
How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account, profile, settings, friends and blocks | Until your account is deleted |
| Direct and group messages (including deleted ones), uploaded files and notifications | Until your account is deleted |
| Room chat | Deleted when the Walnut closes, 24 hours after the last person leaves |
| A Walnut’s name, settings, members, last state and record of control | Kept after the Walnut closes, until the owner’s account is deleted |
| Reports | As long as both accounts exist |
| Signed-in devices | Removed within 60 days of the device’s last activity |
| Email codes | 15 minutes; deleted once used |
| The TV’s browser data | 24 hours after the TV was last switched off |
| Server logs | A short time; they’re cleared when the server is updated |
| Database backups | Up to 14 days, so something deleted can stay in a backup for that long |
Your choices and rights
- See and correct your data: your profile and settings can be changed in Walnut at any time. To change your email address, email us.
- Get a copy of your data: email us and we’ll send what we hold about you, in a format you can reuse.
- Delete your account: email us from the address on your account and we’ll delete it, with your profile, settings, friends, messages, files and the Walnuts you own.
- Object or ask us to restrict how we use your data, where the law gives you that right.
- Complain to the data protection authority where you live, if you think we’ve handled your data wrongly. We’d like the chance to put it right first.
Write to [email protected]. We may ask you to write from the address on your account so we know it’s you, and we answer within one month.
Security
Connections to Walnut use HTTPS. Passwords and room passwords are stored only as Argon2id hashes, and email codes and sign-in tokens only as hashes. Each time a device renews its sign-in it gets a new token, and a token that turns up twice signs that device out. No service is perfectly secure; if a breach puts your data at risk, we’ll tell you, and the authorities where the law requires.
Children
Walnut isn’t for children under 13. Where the law sets a higher age for using an online service without a parent’s consent (up to 16 in some EU countries), you must be that age. We don’t knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we’ll delete it.
Where your data is handled
Walnut is run from Qatar, and Cloudflare and LiveKit work worldwide, including in the United States. If you use Walnut from the EU, the UK or elsewhere, your data is handled outside your country.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes too. For changes that matter, we’ll tell you by email or on this site before they take effect.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: [email protected]. The rules for using Walnut are in the Terms of Use.