The short version
Lounge collects nothing. Not your messages, not your contacts, not your photos, not an identifier, not usage statistics. There is no CYB3RRUNN3R server for it to send anything to.
One thing the app does not control: Google Play reports crashes and install counts to us if you have turned on Android’s own diagnostics. That happens at the store, not in the app, and it is described below rather than buried.
You do not have to take our word for it. Lounge does not request the INTERNET permission, so Android will not let it open a network connection at all. You can see the full permission list on its Google Play listing before you install it.
What stays on your phone
Messages, attachments, drafts, your spam filters, your themes and your vault are stored locally — in Android's own message database, or in Lounge's private storage on the device. None of it is backed up to us, because there is nowhere for it to go.
Your texts travel the way texts have always traveled: from your phone to your mobile carrier. SMS is not encrypted in transit, by Lounge or by any texting app, and your carrier can read it. What Lounge protects is the copy on your phone.
Uninstalling Lounge removes its private storage, including the vault, permanently and irreversibly.
Permissions, and why
Every permission Lounge requests, and what it is for. Nothing here is used for any purpose other than the one stated.
SEND_SMSSending your text messages.
RECEIVE_SMSReceiving them. Required to be your texting app.
READ_SMSShowing your existing conversations, and searching them.
RECEIVE_MMSReceiving picture and group messages.
RECEIVE_WAP_PUSHThe notice a carrier sends to say a picture message is waiting.
READ_CONTACTSShowing names and pictures instead of phone numbers. Read on your phone only, never uploaded.
RECORD_AUDIORecording a voice message. Android asks for it the first time you tap the microphone, not at install.
POST_NOTIFICATIONSTelling you a message arrived.
RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETEDRe-arming your scheduled messages after a restart. Android alarms do not survive one, so without this a message scheduled before a reboot would never send.
SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARMSending a scheduled message at the minute you chose, and clearing self-destructing messages at the age you set.
com.android.vending.BILLINGLets Lounge ask Google Play to sell you Lounge Plus. The purchase happens inside the Play Store app, which takes the payment; Lounge is told one thing only — whether you own Plus. It reads nothing on your phone.
ACCESS_NETWORK_STATEAdded by Android’s own background-work library, not requested by us. It reports whether a network exists; it grants no ability to use one, and Lounge has no internet permission.
WAKE_LOCKAlso from the background-work library — lets a scheduled job finish rather than being cut off mid-way.
FOREGROUND_SERVICEThe same library again, for work Android requires to run in the foreground.
app.lounge.sms.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSIONAdded automatically, like the three above. It carries Lounge’s own name because only Lounge can ever hold it: it exists so that a receiver Lounge sets up while it is running cannot be reached by another app. It grants access to nothing.
The last four are not ours. They are merged in automatically by standard Android libraries — the first three by the one Lounge uses for scheduling, the fourth by the one that registers its receivers. They are listed here because you will see them on the store listing, and a permission you cannot account for is exactly the sort of thing worth being suspicious about.
Three more names in the manifest are the opposite of a permission. BROADCAST_SMS, BROADCAST_WAP_PUSH and SEND_RESPOND_VIA_MESSAGE are not access Lounge asks for — they are restrictions on who is allowed to call into it, and only Android itself holds them. They are the reason a message can reach Lounge only from the system, never from another app.
What is absent matters as much as what is listed. There is no camera permission and no storage or photo permission: taking a picture hands you to your phone’s own camera, and attaching one hands you to its own picker, so neither needs Lounge to have access. There is no location permission. And there is no INTERNET permission, which is the one that matters — without it Android will not let the app open a connection, whatever any other permission says.
The vault
A vaulted conversation is removed from Android's message database entirely and stored in an encrypted database inside Lounge's private storage. Other apps that can read your messages stop seeing it, because it is no longer there for them to read.
Each message is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under its own key; those keys are sealed to an RSA public key whose private half is encrypted under your passcode. The database file itself is encrypted with SQLCipher, under a different key again — 256 random bits that live in your phone’s keystore and cannot be taken out of it. The two layers do not depend on each other, and that is deliberate: a copy of the database file lifted off the phone gives up nothing, not even how many conversations it holds, and if it were opened anyway every message inside is still sealed under your passcode. Notifications from vaulted contacts reveal nothing, screenshots are blocked while the vault is open, and it locks the moment you leave the app.
There is no recovery. We cannot reset your vault passcode, because we never have it and there is no account to reset it against. If you forget it, those messages are gone. That is the design, and it is the most important thing to understand before you use the vault.
The feedback form
This website is the one place anything is collected, and only if you fill in the feedback form. It sends what you type into it: an email address so we can reply, your mobile carrier, your phone model, and an optional description of what went wrong. Nothing else is asked for and nothing else is taken — this site runs no analytics, sets no tracking cookies and carries no advertising.
The description box is free text, so we only ever see what you choose to put in it. Lounge attaches no logs, no message contents and no diagnostics to it, and we would rather you described a problem than pasted a conversation into it.
Those details are sent as a single email to devs@loungeapp.io and are not written to any database. They are used to reply to you and to fix what you reported — the carrier and phone model because messaging faults are nearly always specific to one or the other. That mail is deleted once the report is dealt with.
Installing Lounge is between you and Google Play, under Google’s own terms and privacy policy rather than ours. There is no tester list and we are never told who installed the app — unless you write to us, we do not know you are using it. You can leave the test from Google Play without telling us at all.
What Google Play sees
Lounge has no analytics and no crash reporter of its own. Google Play has its own, and it applies to every app on the store. If you have Android’s diagnostics turned on, Google may send us anonymised crash and freeze reports — typically a stack trace, your device model and your Android version — along with counts of installs, uninstalls and ratings.
We did not ask for this and cannot switch it off, and it is not connected to your messages, your contacts or anything you typed. It is governed by Google’s own terms and by the diagnostics setting on your phone, which you control in Android’s settings rather than in Lounge.
We mention it because "no analytics" would be misleading without it, and because you would rather read it here than discover it somewhere else.
One more thing arrived with billing. Google’s billing library carries Google’s own usage logger. It writes to a file on your phone and can never send it anywhere, because Lounge does not have the internet permission — it is inert by construction, not by promise. We would rather name it here than have you find it in a dependency list.
Payments
Lounge Plus is a one-time purchase of $9.99, made through Google Play. Google processes the payment and tells Lounge one thing only: whether you own Plus. We never see your card, your billing address or your name, and there is still no account to create.
Nothing about the purchase leaves your phone from Lounge. The Play Store app does all the talking to Google, under Google’s own terms, and Lounge keeps a single yes-or-no answer on the device. Plus is currently switched on for everyone at no charge.
Children
Lounge is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age — because we do not collect information at all. The app carries no advertising, and nothing inside it can send information anywhere, because it has no internet permission.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it, and material changes will be described in the app’s release notes. We will not begin collecting something and quietly update this page to match.
Contact
CYB3RRUNN3R Software, LLC — Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Write to devs@loungeapp.io with any question about this policy or about what Lounge does with anything.
What happens to an email you send us. Writing to us necessarily shares your address and whatever you put in the message. We use it to answer you and nothing else. It is never added to a mailing list, never used for marketing, and never passed to anyone.
Deleting it. If you have emailed us — for support, or to report a problem — you can ask us to delete that correspondence at any time and we will, including anything sent through the feedback form. One email to the address above is enough; you do not have to give a reason.