NetClaw Mobile — Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 29, 2026

NetClaw Mobile ("the app") is a companion client for a NetClaw Border — a network-automation assistant that you, the operator, host and run yourself. This policy describes what the app does and does not do with your information.

Who controls your data

NetClaw Mobile does not send your data to NetClaw's developer, to any analytics service, or to any advertising network. The app connects directly to the Border you personally set up and control — questions you ask, answers you receive, approvals you grant, and any photo, video, or audio capture you send all travel directly between your phone and your own Border over an encrypted connection you configured during enrollment. We (the app's developer) have no server that sees this traffic and no account system of our own.

Your questions and captures are sent to an AI model your Border operator chooses

What is sent: the text of any question you type or speak to NetClaw Mobile (speech is transcribed on-device first), and any photo, video, or audio capture you choose to submit.

Who it is sent to: your own Border, which forwards it to whichever AI language model your Border's operator configured when they set up that Border, in order to generate an answer. This is the operator's own decision, made at installation time — NetClaw does not require, default to, or control which AI provider, if any, is used. That choice may be a third-party cloud AI service, or it may be a model the operator runs entirely locally and offline, in which case nothing about your question ever leaves the operator's own infrastructure at all.

When this happens: only when you actively ask a question, or choose to send a capture — nothing is sent in the background without an action from you.

Your consent: the app requires you to read and acknowledge this before your first use of any question- or capture-sending feature, on the explanatory screen shown before enrollment.

Third-party protections: because the AI provider is chosen entirely by your Border's operator (who may be you), this policy cannot name one specific third party in advance the way a single-vendor app can. Ask your Border's operator which provider they configured, and refer to that provider's own privacy policy for how they handle data they receive.

What stays only on your device

• Your conversation history and pending-approval state are stored locally in the app's own documents directory.
• Your enrollment credentials (the key that lets your phone talk to your Border) are stored in the device Keychain via iOS's secure storage — never in plain files, never synced to iCloud by this app.
• App preferences (theme, app-lock, notification settings) are stored locally the same way.

Device permissions the app requests, and why

• Camera — to scan an enrollment QR code, and to capture photos/video you choose to send to your Border. Captures go directly to your Border; the app's developer never receives them.
• Microphone — to record a voice question you choose to send, and for audio/video captures. Speech is transcribed on-device before anything is sent.
• Face ID / Touch ID — used only locally, to confirm approval decisions and (optionally) to lock the app itself. Biometric data never leaves your device; the app only receives a yes/no result from iOS.
• Local network access — to reach your Border, which is often running on the same network as your phone.
• Notifications — to alert you when your Border has an answer or an approval request waiting.

Push notifications

To deliver notifications when the app isn't open, NetClaw Mobile registers a device push token with Apple's Push Notification service and, via Firebase Cloud Messaging, with Google. This token is used solely to route a notification your own Border sends — it does not carry the content of your conversations, and neither Apple nor Google can read what your Border sent you.

Tracking, analytics, and advertising

NetClaw Mobile does not track you across other apps or websites, does not include advertising SDKs, and does not sell or share your data for marketing purposes. The app's declared privacy practices are documented in its iOS Privacy Manifest, submitted with every App Store build.

Data deletion

Removing this device from Settings → "Remove this device" clears the app's local enrollment and conversation data on your phone. Because your Border is self-hosted, any data already sent to it is governed by however you operate your own Border — this app has no ability to delete data from a Border it doesn't control.

Children's privacy

NetClaw Mobile is a network-engineering tool and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this same URL with a new "last updated" date.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be raised via the project's GitHub repository: github.com/automateyournetwork/netclaw.