Privacy Policy

PocketChan talks directly to 4chan and keeps everything else on your device. We cannot see what you read or what you post, because none of it reaches us. The only thing that ever reaches us is a message you deliberately send through the contact form on this site.

From the app, none. PocketChan has no sign-up, no login, and no user profile. We operate no analytics, advertising, attribution, or crash-reporting SDK, and we do not create a device identifier or advertising ID.

The one exception is the contact form on this website, which only receives what you type into it and only when you choose to send it. It is described under “The contact form” below.

The app saves the following locally so it can work between launches. Nothing here is sent to us or uploaded anywhere on its own. It is included in your own encrypted device backups if you use them, and is deleted when you delete the app:

• Favorite boards and favorite threads.
• Watched threads and their unread reply counts.
• Threads you have saved for offline reading.
• Recently visited threads, for as long as you choose to keep them.
• Unsent reply drafts, and a record of the posts you have made so you can find them again.
• Your filters: hidden posts, hidden threads, blocked poster IDs, and keyword filters.
• App settings such as theme, accent color, text size, refresh interval, and media preferences.
• Cookies set by 4chan when you complete its verification, so that posting works.
• A temporary cache of 4chan API responses, which you can clear at any time from Settings.

You can erase any of it from within the app. History, watched threads, filters, hidden content, and the cached API responses each have a clear action in Settings, and saved threads, favorites, and your list of posts can be removed item by item. Deleting PocketChan removes all of it at once.

Settings › Data & Storage also has an Export action, which writes your settings and favorites to a file and passes it to the iOS share sheet so you can keep a copy. That is the only way this data leaves your device, it happens only when you ask for it, and where the file goes is up to you.

While you browse, PocketChan requests content from 4chan's own public endpoints. It reads from these hosts and no others:

• a.4cdn.org for board, catalog, and thread data
• i.4cdn.org for images and video
• s.4cdn.org for spoiler and placeholder images
• boards.4chan.org for a board's rules, when you open them
• i.ytimg.com for a video thumbnail, when a post you are viewing links to YouTube
• files.catbox.moe for a preview image, when a post you are viewing links to one there

The last two are not 4chan. They are fetched automatically to show a preview when a post contains that kind of link, without you tapping anything, so those hosts receive your IP address as part of loading the thread. YouTube thumbnails are served by Google and are covered by Google's privacy policy.

Those requests carry your IP address to 4chan, exactly as visiting the site in a browser would. 4chan's handling of that data is governed by its own privacy policy and terms, which we do not control. Opening an external link hands you off to your browser, where that site's policies apply.

If you add the PocketChan home screen widget, it refreshes on its own schedule, set by iOS, and fetches thread data and thumbnails from a.4cdn.org and i.4cdn.org to do it. That means 4chan receives your IP address at those times even when the app is closed. Removing the widget stops it.

PocketChan can post replies to 4chan on your behalf. When you submit one, the following is sent to sys.4chan.org and becomes publicly visible on 4chan:

• Your comment text.
• Any name, options, or tripcode you entered.
• Any image or video you attached.

4chan receives your IP address with the post and applies its own rules, logging, and moderation to it. Once a post is public, removing it is up to 4chan, not us.

Verification is handled by 4chan's own captcha, which loads boards.4chan.org inside an in-app sheet. Solving it sets 4chan cookies, which are stored on your device by the system and sent with your post so that 4chan accepts it, in the same way a browser session would. Your browser's identifying details are passed along with the post for the same reason. We do not see or store any of it.

4chan sometimes puts an anti-bot service of its own in front of that page, such as hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, or Google reCAPTCHA. When it does, that service runs inside the sheet and collects browser and device signals to decide whether you are a bot, under its own privacy policy. PocketChan does not integrate any of them, does not choose which one appears, and receives nothing from them beyond 4chan's own answer that you passed.

If verification will not complete, the reply screen offers to open the thread on boards.4chan.org in a web view so you can post there instead. That loads the real 4chan page as a browser would, including any advertising or tracking resources 4chan serves on it. It only happens if you choose it.

Drafts stay on your device until you choose to submit them, and are never uploaded anywhere. Attaching a file uses the system file picker, so PocketChan only ever reads the file you pick.

Reporting a post opens 4chan's own report page in a browser, and the report goes to 4chan. We never see it, and 4chan decides what happens next.

You can clear the 4chan cookies at any time by clearing the app's stored data or by deleting PocketChan.

PocketChan asks for access to your photo library the first time you save an image or video from a thread, and uses it for nothing else. The permission is add-only: the app can write the file you asked it to save, and cannot read your existing photos.

iOS may also ask for camera access, but only at the moment you choose to take a photo or video while attaching a file to a reply. The app never opens the camera on its own, and declining leaves everything else working.

PocketChan asks for nothing else. There is no location, contacts, microphone, or tracking prompt, because there is no code that would use them.

PocketChan displays user-generated content hosted by 4chan. We do not host, create, or moderate that content, and it may be offensive or explicit.

You can hide a post, mute a thread, block a poster ID, or filter by keyword at any time. For anything else, see the support page.

This website has a contact form. Using it is entirely optional, and the app never sends anything to it on its own. When you submit it, these are transmitted to a message relay that forwards them to the developer:

• The subject, category, and message you wrote.
• Your email address, but only if you choose to fill in that field. It is optional, it is used for nothing except replying to you, and leaving it blank still sends the message.
• The time you pressed send.
• A token from the captcha below, which is what the relay checks before accepting the message.
• Anything you choose to put in that message, so avoid including sensitive details you do not want to send.

The relay is PayloadRelay, which receives the submission and passes it on. This site is served by Cloudflare Pages. As with any web request, both they and the networks in between receive your IP address and browser user agent, and may log them for security and abuse prevention, under their own privacy policies. Messages are used only to answer you. They are not used for marketing, and are not sold or shared.

The form is protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which checks that you are not a bot. reCAPTCHA collects hardware and software information from your browser and sends it to Google for that purpose, and is governed by Google's own privacy policy and terms of service. It runs only on the contact page, and on no other page of this site.

Because the app collects nothing, there is nothing of yours for us to keep, hand over, or delete. What follows is about the data on your own device, and about a message if you have sent one.

• The cache of 4chan API responses expires after seven days, holds at most a couple of hundred entries, and can be cleared at any time from Settings.
• Your browsing history is kept for the period you choose in Settings, and older entries are removed automatically.
• Everything else in the list above is kept until you remove it, and goes when you delete the app.
• A message you send through the contact form is kept only as long as it takes to deal with what you wrote about.

You can take a copy of your settings and favorites with the Export action in Settings › Data & Storage. Deleting is built into the app, as described above, and needs no request to us because we hold nothing.

If you have sent us a message and want a copy of it or want it deleted, ask through the contact form under “Other”. Depending on where you live you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port personal data, or to object to its use. Those rights apply to that message, since it is the only personal data we ever receive.

PocketChan is not directed at children and is age-rated accordingly on the App Store. The app collects nothing, so we do not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children, and we ask that children do not use the contact form.

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted here with a new “last updated” date. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.

Questions about this policy, and requests about a message you have sent us, can go through the contact form.