Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 26, 2026

Information We Collect

• Account information such as email address, display name, and sign-in provider identifiers.
• Subscription and purchase status needed to activate Premium access.
• Device and installation information such as a random device identifier, platform, app version, install source or store, source public IP address, and an approximate country derived from that address. We use this to keep access device-scoped, prevent abuse, select supported service and payment options, and understand installation reliability.
• VPN session metadata such as selected server and protocol, connection status, start, end and expiration timestamps, assigned internal VPN address, and aggregate upload and download byte counts. These counters do not contain traffic content.
• Optional connection diagnostics, when enabled in the app, such as protocol, connection stage, duration, error category, tunnel health, and validation result. Diagnostics are disabled by default in the macOS app.
• Optional peer-assisted relay information, when a compatible signed-in user explicitly enables helping, such as the consent version, device readiness, selected Art VPN server, relay-pair state, validation result, termination reason, and aggregate byte counters. Short-lived peer connection candidates and the participants' public IP addresses are used only to establish the requested encrypted connection and are not retained as product telemetry.
• App interaction, diagnostic, push-notification, and advertising information processed by Firebase or Google Mobile Ads where those features are present in the separate iOS or Android app. Platform tracking choices and permissions are respected. The macOS app does not include third-party advertising or analytics SDKs.
• Website analytics events from the public landing page, collected through Google Analytics, such as page views, referrers, approximate location, device, and browser information.
• Support and Telegram bot contact information when you contact us or use the Telegram unlock flow.

How We Use Information

We use this information to create and authenticate an optional account, provide device-scoped guest or account VPN access, create and end sessions, show session time and aggregate traffic totals, select an available server, manage subscriptions, prevent abuse, measure connection reliability, and provide support. We do not use VPN service data for advertising, tracking, behavioral profiling, data mining, or unrelated secondary purposes.

VPN Traffic

Art VPN does not collect or store the content of VPN traffic, packet payloads, browsing history, requested URLs or domain names, DNS query history, destination IP address history, files, communications, or activity in other applications. We do not sell, rent, license, use for any secondary purpose, or disclose to third parties any data obtained from VPN traffic. Operational VPN session and connection-health records are used only to provide, protect, troubleshoot, and prevent abuse of the service.

Optional Peer-Assisted Relay

On compatible mobile versions, a signed-in user may explicitly choose to help another Art VPN user whose normal direct VPN connection has failed. The helper provides only an encrypted transport hop into the helper's already active Art VPN tunnel; the recipient's traffic still exits through a backend-selected Art VPN server. The helper is not the final public exit, cannot select the recipient's destinations, and does not receive browsing history or traffic content from Art VPN. During P2P establishment, the two devices may learn each other's current public IP address. Helping uses the helper's unmetered Wi-Fi connection, battery, and a limited amount of network capacity, serves at most one recipient at a time, and stops when consent is disabled or the required VPN, Wi-Fi, battery, or health conditions are lost.

VPN Infrastructure and Third Parties

We do not share collected VPN user information with advertisers, analytics providers, data brokers, or other third parties. Infrastructure hosting providers operate our backend and VPN nodes only as technical processors needed to deliver the service. They are not authorized to use this information for their own purposes and are required to protect it under applicable law and their data-processing terms. VPN traffic is necessarily forwarded through the selected VPN node to destinations chosen by the user, but we do not attach the user's Art VPN account identity or device identifier to that forwarded traffic.

After a connection starts, the macOS app may send fixed, non-user-specific requests through the VPN to Cloudflare DNS and Google's generate_204 endpoint solely to verify that DNS and HTTPS traffic use the secure route. These requests contain no Art VPN account identifier, device identifier, original public IP address, browsing activity, or user-provided content. The endpoints see only the VPN server exit IP and the fixed test request; Art VPN retains only the connection validation result.

Payments

In-app purchases are processed by Apple App Store, Google Play, or Amazon Appstore. Where store billing is confirmed unavailable and a regional option is supported, payment may be processed by YooMoney, CryptoCloud, Crypto Pay, or another checkout provider shown before payment. We and the payment provider process the plan, amount, currency, payment reference, and payment status needed to complete the payment and activate access. Payment providers process payment details under their own privacy terms.

Retention and Security

We keep information only for as long as reasonably needed to provide the service, maintain security, meet legal or accounting requirements, and resolve disputes. We use access controls, encrypted transport, and protected storage appropriate to the type of information.

Website Analytics

The public landing page uses Google Analytics to understand visits and improve the download flow. Google may process analytics data according to its own privacy terms.

Account Deletion

You can request account deletion inside the app from Settings. Deleting your account removes your account record and related service data from our backend, subject to records we must keep for legal, tax, fraud-prevention, or security reasons.

Contact

For privacy questions, contact us at support@artvpn.net.