Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Ezkey is an independent software project led by Marc Gagnon (Pincourt, Québec, Canada). It produces the Ezkey Android mobile app (currently in internal testing — not listed on Google Play or other app stores), the ezkey.org website, and an optional alpha community instance at ezkey.online. The project is in active development and remains alpha.

Privacy inquiries: privacy@ezkey.org — General: support@ezkey.org

2. The two-layer model — self-hosted software

Layer 1 — Ezkey the project (software publisher). The Ezkey project publishes software (mobile app, backends, Admin UI, documentation) under MIT. For ordinary self-hosted deployments, the project does not operate your organization’s authentication servers or databases and has no visibility into how you use a backend that you (or a third party) host. The mobile app does not integrate project-operated analytics, crash reporting, or advertising SDKs.

Layer 2 — Your organization’s self-hosted backend. To use Ezkey with your own stack, you enroll with an organization that runs its own Ezkey backend on its own infrastructure. That organization is the data controller for any personal data processed on their server. You should consult their privacy policy for information about how they handle your data.

This section does not cover the community instance on ezkey.online — see the next section.

3. Community instance (ezkey.online)

For the community instance hosted at ezkey.online (including related hosts such as admin-ui.ezkey.online, admin-api.ezkey.online, and demo-acme.ezkey.online), the Ezkey project is the operator of that backend and is the controller for personal data processed there in the course of evaluation (for example account or enrollment data you create while using the instance).

• Purpose: alpha evaluation and demonstration only.
• Availability: best-effort; no uptime SLA; the instance may be paused, reseeded, or shut down without notice.
• Retention / backups: there is no backup guarantee. Tenant or evaluation data may be wiped on reseed, maintenance, or shutdown. We do not publish a detailed retention schedule we cannot verify in practice.
• Commercial posture: the community instance is not sold as a service.
• Contact: privacy@ezkey.org.

Further honesty bounds for evaluators are described on Community instance — alpha on ezkey.online.

4. Data stored on your device

The Ezkey app stores the following data locally on your device only:

• Cryptographic key pairs — Generated on enrollment and stored in the Android Keystore (hardware-backed when available). Never transmitted off your device; used only to sign authentication challenges.
• Enrollment metadata — The name and URL of each organization you have enrolled with, and the enrollment display name assigned by your organization’s administrator. This information is stored in the app’s on-device metadata storage and does not leave your device except when needed to interact with your organization’s backend.
• Enrollment proof token — A long-lived local secret used by the app to identify the enrollment context during authenticated device polling. This value is stored through the device’s secure credential storage rather than in the app’s ordinary enrollment metadata store.
• Pending authentication state — Temporary data held in memory while you are responding to an authentication challenge. This may include contextual information provided by your organization’s backend about the action to approve (e.g. a title such as “Document Signature Request” and a message describing the specific action). This data originates from your organization, not from the Ezkey project, and is not retained after the session completes.

Uninstalling the app removes all of the above data from your device. Any record of your enrollment on your organization’s backend remains subject to their own data retention policy.

5. Data sent over the network

The app communicates exclusively with the backend URL obtained from the QR code you scan during enrollment. That URL is the endpoint of an Ezkey server — typically your organization’s self-hosted deployment, or, for community evaluation, the project’s ezkey.online instance. The app sends:

• During enrollment (verify step): the device public key (EC P-256), a cryptographic signature proving possession of the corresponding private key, and a device security capability label indicating the hardware protection tier of the key storage (e.g. STANDARD or STRONG), as reported by the device.
• During each authentication poll: a stable enrollment identifier, the enrollment proof token associated with that enrollment, and a freshly generated signed one-time device proof token — together identifying the enrollment and proving device participation for that specific request.
• When approving or denying: the decision (approved or denied) and a cryptographic signature over it. No personal or contextual data originates from the device.

The app also receives data from that backend. When a contextual approval request is initiated, the pending response may include a title and message describing the action to approve (for example: “Document Signature Request — Please approve the signing of the NDA with partner Acme Corp.”). This data originates from the backend operator, is displayed to you after the app verifies its cryptographic signature, and is not stored beyond the authentication session.

For a third-party self-hosted backend, the Ezkey project does not receive that traffic. For the community instance, protocol traffic is processed by the project-operated backend (see section 3).

No analytics, crash reports, telemetry, or advertising data is transmitted by the app to the Ezkey project.

6. Android permissions

7. Third-party SDKs and services

The Ezkey app does not integrate any SDK that collects user data, including but not limited to advertising SDKs, analytics SDKs (Firebase Analytics, Mixpanel, etc.), or crash-reporting SDKs (Crashlytics, Sentry, etc.).

The app uses the following open-source libraries for their stated technical purpose:

• React Native — UI framework
• react-native-vision-camera — camera access for QR scanning
• react-native-keychain — secure credential storage
• Conscrypt (Android) — cryptographic primitives (Ed25519)
• MLKit Barcode Scanning (on-device) — QR decoding without network calls
• axios — HTTP client used exclusively to communicate with your organization’s self-hosted backend; transmits no data to third parties
• AsyncStorage — on-device persistent storage used for enrollment metadata; data never leaves the device

None of these libraries transmit data to their authors or any third party.

8. The ezkey.org website

The ezkey.org website is a static site hosted on Cloudflare Pages. It does not use cookies, does not set tracking pixels, and does not load third-party analytics scripts.

Cloudflare may collect standard web server logs (IP address, user agent, timestamp) for security and infrastructure purposes, subject to Cloudflare’s privacy policy. The Ezkey project does not receive or process those logs.

9. Children

The Ezkey app is not directed at children under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under 13, please do not use the app.

10. Your rights

Data on your device

You can delete all data stored by the app at any time by uninstalling it from your device. Android’s “Clear data” function in App Settings achieves the same result without uninstalling.

Data on a self-hosted organization backend

Any enrollment record or authentication history held by an organization’s self-hosted Ezkey backend is subject to that organization’s own data retention and deletion policies. Please contact that organization’s administrator to exercise your rights (access, rectification, erasure, portability) regarding that data.

Data on the community instance

For data processed on ezkey.online, contact privacy@ezkey.org. Remember that the instance is alpha evaluation infrastructure: data may already have been wiped by reseed or maintenance, and there is no backup guarantee.

Quebec residents (Act respecting the protection of personal information — Law 25)

For the mobile app and self-hosted third-party backends, the project does not collect personal information beyond what is described above. For the community instance, the project may process evaluation-related personal data as operator. Questions or requests: privacy@ezkey.org.

EU residents (GDPR)

For ordinary self-hosted deployments, your organization’s backend is the relevant controller; the Ezkey project is not the controller of that traffic. For the community instance, the project acts as controller for data processed on that evaluation backend. For personal data held by Cloudflare (web server logs for ezkey.org), refer to Cloudflare’s GDPR documentation. Contact privacy@ezkey.org for community-instance requests.

11. Data security

Cryptographic keys generated by the app are stored in the Android Keystore, which provides hardware-backed protection on supported devices. Network communication with your organization’s backend uses HTTPS. The Ezkey project recommends that organizations configure their backend with a valid TLS certificate.

Long-lived persisted application secrets, such as the enrollment proof token and the stored integration verification key, are protected separately at rest. On Android, the current reference app uses a dedicated app-level AES key in the Android Keystore to seal those values before they are written to app storage. This is distinct from the Android Keystore path used for the device’s private signing key; the app does not currently rely on one StrongBox-backed private key to decrypt every other local secret.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the project evolves. Significant changes will be noted in the table below. The current version is always available at https://ezkey.org/privacy.html.