Privacy: the harnsy relay
What this is. The harnsy relay (beta, a harnsy Max feature) lets your phone or laptop reach the harnsy on your computer without a public address. This page says what the relay does with data. The rest of your data is in the harnsy Privacy Policy.
What passes through. Your phone connects to an address of the form <name>.n.harnsy.app. The relay passes the encrypted connection on to your computer without decrypting it. By design, the certificate key and the passkey check stay on your computer. The relay does not decrypt the pages, messages or files in that connection (see “What you trust us with”).
What you trust us with. Your connection is encrypted with a certificate for your relay name. Your computer makes its own key and orders the certificate itself; the key stays on your computer. But the DNS zone n.harnsy.app is ours: our licence service holds its DNS key. It uses it only to write the records for the name of the computer whose relay key signed the request: a TXT record for the check and, for the time of the check, a temporary address record that points to the relay. It issues no certificates and holds no certificate account. Still, whoever held the DNS key (we, or someone who broke into us) could technically get a certificate for your relay name, and together with the relay could read your traffic. To make that visible, your harnsy reads the public certificate logs every 6 hours while the relay is on, and shows a warning on Home for a certificate on your name that it did not order. It notices after the fact; it does not prevent it. This is how the relay is built, not a guarantee against every misuse. If you do not want to depend on it, use a domain of your own or a relay of your own (harnsy relay serve): neither needs to trust us.
What the relay records. For each connection: the time, whether your computer connected or disconnected, the kind of connection, how many bytes went each way, how long it lasted and why it ended. The relay name and your licence ID, only as a short one-way code (a hash), not the values themselves. The address of the device, cut down to its network (an IPv4 address to /24, an IPv6 address to /48); the full IP address is not recorded. Error lines of the secure connection carry the same shortened address. Not recorded: user-agent, page addresses, content, e-mail address.
What the relay keeps. Nothing about you or your devices on disk. Connections exist only in the server’s memory while your computer is connected. The only other number kept is the total traffic of the whole relay for the current month: not per device, not per licence.
Where, how long, why. On our server in Germany (Hetzner Cloud, Falkenstein). The log is kept up to 14 days. We use it to run the relay, to find faults and abuse, and to limit use (our legitimate interest, GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)); and to give you the feature you bought (contract, Art. 6(1)(b)).
Certificates. Your relay address has a certificate from Let’s Encrypt. Such certificates are listed in public certificate logs, so your relay name can be seen there by anyone, together with the dates certificates were issued for it. The name is a code made from a key your computer created; it holds no e-mail address, IP address or licence number. It stays the same as long as that key stays, so it shows that a computer with that name exists.
Who else. Hetzner Online GmbH runs the server for us. Let’s Encrypt issues the certificate. Nobody else. We do not sell data or use it for advertising.
Beta. The relay is a beta: what it records may change; we will change this page first. We do not promise that it is always available.
Your rights. Access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability and objection: hello@harnsy.dev. Because the log keeps no full address and only codes, we may be unable to find your record without your relay name; you can send it with your request. You can complain to the data protection authority of Georgia or of your own country.