Who we are
Relay is built and operated by Tobias Schmidt Services LLC (TSS), a California company. Relay is a deliberately small app, kept to roughly 50 people, and it is not for anyone under 13. Questions about your privacy go to help@relayyyy.com.
What we collect
By using Relay you consent to us collecting the data the app needs to run and improve. That includes:
- What you give us at sign-up. Your username and password, your name, your birthday (used to confirm you are at least 13), and your phone number.
- Contacts, only if you allow it. Contact sync is optional. If you allow it, the contacts you share are uploaded and used to match you with friends already on Relay. You can ask us to delete synced contacts at any time.
- The content you create. Photos, captions, comments, boosts, messages, polls, and profile details like your avatar, cover photo, and anthem.
- Unedited originals, and recent photos from your library. Relay keeps original copies of photos in three cases. When you post a snap, it keeps the full resolution original of that same photo, before the film look, before Glow and before any resizing. On iPhones with an ultra wide lens it also keeps the wider frame from that same shutter press, so the surroundings of the shot are preserved alongside it. And if you grant full photo library access, Relay keeps a safety backup copy of your thirty most recent photos. Any GPS coordinates the camera wrote into these files are stripped on your iPhone before anything is sent. This upload runs quietly in the background, only on unmetered connections, never while your phone is hot or in Low Power Mode, and never ahead of something you are actively doing in the app. You can decline or revoke photo library access at any time in iOS Settings, which stops the library part entirely. What is in your camera and your camera roll is your decision and your responsibility. We do not choose, curate or review what is there. By turning these permissions on you confirm you are entitled to provide those photos and that you have any permission needed from people who appear in them, and you take responsibility for them. The Terms set that out in full.
- Device and technical info. Device model and specs, operating system and version, device identifiers, carrier, IP address and the approximate location it implies, language and region, app version, sensor data, and the push notification token that lets us deliver notifications to your device.
- Usage and analytics. When and how long you use Relay, the screens and features you touch, navigation paths, how you move through and interact with a screen, crash and performance logs, and metadata attached to what you post.
- If you email us. Your email address and whatever you include in the message, used only to help you.
Personalization and telemetry
Relay runs a first party personalization system that observes how the app is used and makes small, often invisible refinements to your experience. It is on by default, and what it learns is used internally only. We do not sell it and we do not use it for third party advertising. It may look at things like:
- The screens you visit, your session times and frequency, and what you view, post, boost, and comment on.
- How you handle the app: the general area of the screen your taps land in, how quickly and how far you scroll, how long a post stays in view, and where you arrive and leave again without doing anything. This is measured as counts and totals, never as a recording or a replay of your screen.
- How a post comes together before you share it: how long you take to decide, whether a caption was written and removed, whether you switched between journal and feed, how long a photo waited in your roll, and how many photos you discarded rather than shared.
- Whose posts and profiles hold your attention, including people you look at often without liking, commenting or messaging, so ordering and suggestions can reflect what you actually pay attention to.
- Your most used reactions and emojis, your caption and message style, and how much you post versus watch.
- Device and environment signals (model, OS, screen, battery and thermal state, memory, language, network, audio routing, and the general shape of your clipboard, never its actual contents).
- Whether a few well known apps are installed, to infer broad interests. We never look inside other apps.
- How often Relay has been installed and when, which may persist on the device across reinstalls so the app can recognize a returning install.
From these signals we may build internal profiles, scores, and inferences. Those derived works belong to TSS, and none of them are statements of fact about you.
The Neon data market
Neon is TSS's companion app for creators and businesses on Relay. Through Neon, creators and businesses can buy aggregated, anonymous audience statistics only: things like when the network is most active, which reactions are popular, and overall posting patterns, always combined across many people. They can never see your messages, your name or username inside any report or insight pack, your photos, or your precise location. Nothing individual is ever sold.
- Participation is on by default and controlled by the Neon data market toggle in Settings, under Privacy and data. Turning it off excludes you from every aggregated Neon statistic, report, and audience estimate going forward.
- Businesses can run clearly labeled sponsored posts in the Relay feed. Every one carries a visible "Sponsored" tag, every campaign is reviewed by us before it runs, and you can ask for fewer ads like a given one by long-pressing it.
- Sponsorship deals and payouts between businesses and creators on Neon are visible to Relay's administrators, who can intervene at any time.
Location
Approximate location is inferred from your region, time zone, currency, and carrier country, without precise location services and without asking permission. It is used for safety and to enforce where Relay is available, and you can disable it in Settings. Precise location is off by default and only collected if you turn it on and grant the system permission. You can withdraw that anytime.
Experimental diagnostics
Relay offers optional diagnostic tools, each off by default and toggled in Settings, that can estimate network quality, sense whether the device is being held or is in motion, or read the general shape of your clipboard without ever reading its contents. None of them run unless you turn them on.
AI features
Fictional characters. Relay includes a few clearly labeled fictional characters you can chat with. When you message one, your messages in that conversation (and recent context from it) are sent to a third party AI provider (currently Poe, operated by Quora, Inc.) to generate the character's replies. Those messages are handled by the provider under its own terms. Do not share sensitive personal information with a fictional character. Characters carry a persistent fictional label, wind down long conversations, and step out of character to point to real help if you seem to be in crisis.
Relay Glow (AI retouch). Glow is an optional beta feature. When and only when you tap it on a photo, the original image is sent to the same category of third party AI provider to generate a retouched version that comes back to your device. Nothing is posted automatically, you review it first, and you can discard it. Glow is limited to a few uses per day, and Glowed photos may carry a visible note so others know the image was altered.
How we use your data
To operate, maintain, secure, and improve Relay: to run features, authenticate you and prevent fraud, deliver notifications you have asked for, provide support, analyze usage and performance, enforce our Terms, and comply with the law.
Who we share it with
- Service providers. We share only what is needed with providers who run the service for us: hosting, database, and file storage (Google Firebase), push notification delivery (Apple and Google), and AI generation (currently Poe, operated by Quora, Inc.) for the AI features above. This can include your photos and messages, since that is the content we store and process for you.
- Law enforcement and safety. We will disclose data when legally compelled, or when we believe in good faith it is needed to comply with the law, prevent harm, or report illegal activity, including reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children where required.
- Business changes. If TSS is ever acquired or merged, your data may transfer with the service under this same policy or one at least as protective.
- No sale of data. We do not sell, rent, or lease your personal data for marketing, advertising, or money, and we have not done so in the past.
Content moderation
Photos are screened on your device by Apple's sensitive-content technology, and comments are screened on device as well. Content that is posted, reported, or flagged may additionally be analyzed by automated AI models, including those from third party partners such as Anthropic, PBC, to detect and remove prohibited content, and reported content is reviewed by a person. Using Relay means you consent to this.
How long we keep it
- Content you delete, and accounts you delete, are removed from the app immediately and purged from our systems within about 30 days.
- Instants are viewable once and are not recoverable by other users after opening.
- Originals and library copies are retained on the same footing as everything else here, and are purged within about 30 days of you deleting the related content or your account. They are not deleted the instant a snap is removed.
- We may retain limited records longer where the law requires it, to enforce bans and blocks, to investigate abuse, or to keep required safety records.
- Server backups roll over on their own schedule, so residual copies may persist briefly after a purge before the backup expires.
Your responsibility for what you provide
Relay is a camera and a place to put photos. It does not decide what you point it at, and it does not inspect your camera roll before you grant access to it. Everything Relay collects from your device originates in a choice you made, so you are the one who owns that choice.
- You confirm you are entitled to provide every photo Relay collects, and that you have any consent, release or permission needed from every identifiable person in it, including a parent or guardian if that person is a minor.
- You accept responsibility for that content and, to the extent the law allows, you waive claims against TSS arising from our collecting, transmitting, storing or retaining it, and you cover us against claims brought by anyone who appears in it. The binding version of that is in section 3 and section 12 of the Terms.
- If you are not comfortable with a photo being collected, do not take it in Relay and do not grant photo library access. Revoking access in iOS Settings stops the library copies immediately.
- If someone appears in a photo we hold and wants it removed, write to help@relayyyy.com and we will deal with it.
Security
Your data travels over encrypted connections and is stored with Google Firebase, which encrypts data at rest. Access to production data is limited to the people who operate Relay. No app can promise perfect security, so use a password you do not use anywhere else, and tell us at help@relayyyy.com if you believe your account has been compromised.
Your controls and rights
In Settings, under Privacy and data, you can:
- Turn off any single category of collection (usage and activity, device and technical, app environment, social patterns, capture habits).
- Turn the personalization system off entirely.
- Opt out of the Neon data market, which removes you from every aggregated statistic Neon offers.
- Control each experimental tool and precise location, all of which are off by default.
- Request erasure of the personalization and device data tied to your account.
- Delete your account, which removes your photos and your data.
Turning off a category stops that collection going forward. Erasure requests are handled manually within a reasonable time, and in any case within the timelines California law sets. You can also email help@relayyyy.com to request a copy of your data, correction of something wrong, or deletion, and we will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.
Relay Anchor, the parent portal
Relay Anchor at parents.relayyyy.com is an optional parent portal. It only ever shows a parent an account that has been deliberately linked from inside that account holder's own copy of Relay, using a one-time code that expires in fifteen minutes. There is no way for anyone to link an account without a person holding that phone agreeing to it.
An Anchor account is separate from a Relay account. It is identified by an email address, its password is stored only as a salted scrypt hash, and it is kept in a part of our database that no app client can read or write. Sessions are random tokens stored hashed, and they expire.
Once linked, the parent can see: snaps and their captions, whether a snap is in the Journal, the friends list and pending friend requests, the names of people the account holder exchanges messages with along with message counts and timestamps, minutes of active use per day, streaks, blocks, reports filed, and how many photos the on-device screening blurred.
A linked parent cannot see the contents of any message, in any conversation, one to one or group. Anchor has no screen that can open a conversation. It also never shows a password, a location, or anything that was deleted. The account holder sees this same list inside Relay under Settings, then Parents, along with every limit the parent has set. Nothing about the link is hidden from them, and they can start an unlink at any time, which notifies the parent and completes after 48 hours.
Minutes of use are only recorded while an account is linked. If nobody is linked, Relay records nothing for this purpose. Usage records are deleted after about 120 days. Unlinking stops all of it.
Children
Relay is not for anyone under 13, sign-up checks a birthday and refuses accounts under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a younger child has an account, email us and we will remove the account and delete its data.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date above and post the revised version here, and for meaningful changes we will also say so in the app. Continuing to use Relay after a change means you accept it.
Contact
Questions or requests: help@relayyyy.com. The full, binding agreement lives inside the app and on the Terms page.