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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-06-16

Podkey is a browser extension that holds a Nostr/did:nostr key on your device and uses it to sign Nostr events (NIP-07) and to authenticate to Solid pods over NIP-98. It is a local signer: your key never leaves your device, and Podkey has no servers, no accounts, and no analytics.

What Podkey stores, and where

All data is stored locally in the browser's extension storage. Nothing is sent to the Podkey developers or any third party.

Data	Where	Notes
Private key	`storage.local`, encrypted	Stored only as an AES-256-GCM ciphertext, wrapped by a scrypt key derived from your passphrase. The plaintext key is never written to disk.
Private key (unlocked)	`storage.session`, in-memory	After you unlock, the decrypted key is held in memory for the browser session, then cleared when the browser closes.
Public key	`storage.local`	Your `did:nostr` identity. Not secret.
Trusted origins	`storage.local`	Sites you approved to sign without re-prompting, plus an optional per-site auto-sign preference. Revocable from the popup.

There is no telemetry, no tracking, no advertising identifiers, and no remote logging. Podkey collects none of your browsing history or page content.

How your key is used

Signing (NIP-07), NIP-44 encryption, and Solid authentication (NIP-98) happen entirely inside the extension's background service worker. The raw private key is never exposed to web pages: the page receives only the resulting signature, ciphertext/plaintext, or Authorization header.
A site you have not approved triggers a consent prompt on its first request; closing it, or a 60-second timeout, denies it.
Podkey makes no network requests of its own. A NIP-98 Authorization header is attached only to requests you initiate to a server you have trusted; the data goes to that server, under your control, not to Podkey.

Permissions, and why

storage: to keep the encrypted key, your public key, and your trusted sites locally.
Host access (<all_urls>): as a NIP-07 signer, Podkey injects a window.nostr provider into pages and, for trusted sites, attaches NIP-98 auth to your own requests. Podkey does not read, collect, or transmit page content or browsing history; host access is used solely to expose the signer and to intercept auth for origins you explicitly approved.

Data sharing and retention

Podkey does not sell or share any data. No data broker, no third-party processor, no off-device transfer of your key or activity.
All data stays on your device until you delete it. Removing the extension, or "Forget key" in the popup, erases the stored vault, public key, and trusted sites.

Back up your private key before forgetting it or uninstalling. Without a backup it cannot be recovered.

Your control

Unlock / lock your key on demand from the popup.
Review and revoke trusted sites at any time.
Export your private key (after unlocking) to back it up.
Forget the key entirely to start over.

Contact

Podkey is open source under AGPL-3.0. Questions, issues, or security reports: github.com/JavaScriptSolidServer/podkey/issues.