Privacy policy

Last updated: 28 September 2026

This policy covers the Not A Browser app for Android and the notabrowser.app website. It is written to be read rather than to be survived, so the short version comes first.

The short version. Not A Browser has no accounts, advertising or servers of its own. Charlvdh Apps does not receive your browsing history, camera images or QR scan contents. QR images and results stay on your phone. Google's bundled ML Kit library collects limited app, device and performance information for diagnostics and usage analytics.

Everything below is the detail behind that paragraph.

Who is responsible for this policy

Not A Browser is operated by Charlvdh Apps of 76 Marlborough Avenue, Craighall Park, Johannesburg, 2196, South Africa.

Contact for anything in this policy: hello@notabrowser.app.

What Charlvdh Apps receives

No app data is sent to Charlvdh Apps.

More precisely, Not A Browser does not collect, and has no mechanism to collect:

• names, email addresses, phone numbers or any other contact details
• accounts, usernames or passwords, because the app has no sign-up and no login
• browsing history, bookmarks or a record of pages you have opened
• search queries, because the app has no search function of any kind
• location data
• advertising identifiers, and it shows no advertising
• crash reports, usage analytics or telemetry operated by Charlvdh Apps
• your contacts, photos, files, calendar or microphone

Not A Browser does not operate servers that receive data from the app. The limited diagnostic data collected by Google ML Kit is described under Third parties below.

What stays on your device

Some data necessarily exists on your phone for a browser to work at all. None of it reaches us.

Website data. When you open a page, the system browser engine may store cookies, cache and local storage for that site, exactly as any browser does. This is what keeps you signed in to a site between visits. It lives in Not A Browser's own private app storage, separate from Chrome or any other browser, and no other app can read it. You can erase all of it at any time: Settings → Apps → Not A Browser → Storage → Clear storage. Uninstalling Not A Browser deletes it too.

Camera and QR codes. Not A Browser requests camera permission for one purpose: reading QR codes. The camera image is analysed on your device, in memory, to find a web address. Images are not saved, not uploaded, and not retained after the frame is analysed. The decoded address is used to open a page and is not stored. Not A Browser has no photo library access, and the camera is active only while the scanner screen is open. You can refuse or revoke the permission at any time in Android's settings; the rest of the app works normally without it.

Preferences. A small amount of local app state, on your device only.

Third parties

We use as few as possible, and here is the complete list.

Websites you visit. Not A Browser renders pages from other people's servers. Those sites receive your IP address and whatever else your requests contain, and they run under their own privacy policies, which we neither control nor can see into. Opening a page in Not A Browser is, from that site's point of view, an ordinary visit from a browser. A browser with no address bar does not make a website any more private.

Android System WebView. Page rendering uses the browser engine that is part of Android itself, supplied and updated by Google. Its behaviour is governed by Google's terms and by your device settings.

Google ML Kit (barcode scanning). QR decoding uses Google's ML Kit barcode library, which is bundled inside the app. Camera images and scan results are processed on your device and are not uploaded by the scanner. Google says ML Kit collects device and app information, per-installation identifiers, performance metrics, API configuration, feature input and output sizes, feature versions, event types and error codes for diagnostics and usage analytics. Google says this data is encrypted in transit and is not shared with third parties. Charlvdh Apps does not receive it. This library links parts of Google Play Services into the app, so it would be wrong to claim Not A Browser contains no Google code.

Google Play. Distribution, updates and purchases are handled by Google Play under Google's own terms. Google processes payments and Charlvdh Apps receives purchase status only, never your card details.

Charlvdh Apps does not use its own analytics, attribution, crash-reporting or advertising SDKs.

The website

notabrowser.app sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and embeds no third-party trackers, fonts-with-tracking, social widgets or advertising pixels.

The site is hosted by Vercel Inc., which processes ordinary technical request information (IP address, user agent, requested page, timestamp) for security and to deliver the pages, as any web host does. That processing is covered by Vercel's privacy policy.

Legal basis and your rights

Not A Browser is operated from South Africa, so the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is the law that governs how it handles personal information, and the Information Regulator (South Africa) is the authority you can complain to.

If you are in the UK, the EU, California, or anywhere with comparable law, you have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict and port your personal data, and to complain to your own regulator as well.

Charlvdh Apps holds no personal data received from the app, so there is nothing from the app for us to produce, correct, delete or export. Google handles ML Kit diagnostics under its own terms and privacy policy.

The only personal data we ever process is the content of an email you choose to send us: your email address and whatever you write. We keep it while we deal with your message and for a reasonable period after, and use it for nothing else. Ask us to delete it and we will.

Children

Not A Browser is not directed at children under 13. Charlvdh Apps does not receive personal data from the app. It renders whatever web page it is given, and it does not filter web content, so it is not a substitute for parental controls. Android's own Family Link and Digital Wellbeing settings are the right tools for that.

Data transfers, retention and security

Charlvdh Apps holds no personal data received from the app, so we have nothing from the app to transfer internationally or retain. Google's processing of ML Kit diagnostics is governed by Google's own terms and privacy policy. Data that stays on your device is protected by Android's application sandbox and by your device's own encryption and lock screen.

Changes

If this policy changes we will update the date at the top and, for any change that materially affects you, note it in the app's release notes. Not A Browser has no account or mailing list, so it has no way to contact you directly.

Contact

Charlvdh Apps hello@notabrowser.app