Privacy Policy
Effective date: September 28, 2026
Andineering operates Retro Walkie, a public-channel voice app and its website. This policy explains how the current service handles information when you visit the website, listen as a guest, or sign in to speak. The service is intended for adults aged 18 and over.
Who to contact
Andineering is responsible for Retro Walkie. For privacy questions or requests concerning your information, contact andy@andineering.com.
Information we use and why
Account and session information: Google sign-in provides a unique Google account identifier. We store that identifier, an internal account ID, your callsign and account creation time to identify your account and enable speaking. We request your Google-verified email address to check administrator access. Only an allowlisted administrator email is stored; other email addresses are discarded after the access check. We do not request your name, profile photo, contacts or password. We store session identifiers, a hash of each member session token and its expiry time for authentication. Guests receive a temporary session for listening.
Location: with your permission, the app sends foreground location coordinates to our server to find nearby participants and route conversations. The app does not request background location tracking. If you choose approximate IP-based location, your public IP address is sent to the IP geolocation provider, currently ipwho.is, to estimate a city-level position. We do not send your precise coordinates to other participants or keep a location-history database.
Voice and channel activity: after microphone permission, live microphone audio is transmitted when you use push-to-talk. Listening as a guest does not require microphone access. Our server handles channel membership, callsigns, session identity, connection information and speaking status to connect participants. The native app also has a fallback that records short audio segments, approximately 1.5 seconds each, in temporary device files and relays them through our server. These files are used for transmission or playback and the app attempts to delete them afterward. We do not keep a server-side conversation archive or transcribe conversations.
Reports and safety: when you report a participant, we store the reporter and reported account identifiers, channel, reason, date and review status. Moderation records may include reviewer identifiers, decisions, reasons and ban expiry times. We use these records to address abuse and enforce restrictions.
Device storage and technical information: the app stores your session on your device to keep you signed in, and the website may store your language preference. Hosting and network services process IP addresses, connection metadata and operational logs to deliver and protect the service. If you contact support, we receive the information you choose to include in your message.
The native app uses Expo/EAS to deliver updates and diagnose update failures. Update requests send a persistent app-installation identifier (EAS Client ID), platform, runtime version, current and embedded update identifiers, and recent failed-update identifiers to the update provider. These identifiers and diagnostics help select compatible updates and investigate delivery or startup problems.
Your acceptance of the community rules and their version, and the account identifiers and callsigns you block, are stored locally on this device. Blocking stops received audio from that account on this device; it does not apply to your other devices or prevent someone from using a newly created account. These local preferences are not uploaded as a server-side block list.
When information is shared
Public channels are not private conversations. Other participants can hear audio you transmit and see your callsign and speaking or presence status. A listener may independently record what they hear; Retro Walkie cannot prevent this. Avoid sharing personal or confidential information over a public channel.
Google handles Google authentication. Cloudflare provides website delivery and WebRTC connection/relay services, Railway hosts the API, and database hosting stores account and moderation records. The IP geolocation provider receives your IP address when an approximate-location lookup is requested. These providers process information needed to supply their services and may operate in other countries.
Audio normally uses WebRTC between participants, directly or through a relay. The native fallback sends audio segments through our server over an encrypted WebSocket connection; the server can process that audio to relay it. Connection setup can expose network addresses to peers and network providers. HTTPS, secure WebSockets and WebRTC protect data in transit, but public conversations are not private and we do not promise end-to-end encryption for every audio path. We do not use advertising trackers or sell personal information in the current service. Information may also be disclosed where required by applicable law.
How long information remains
Access history: to operate the service and investigate access problems, we record member sign-ins, guest session starts, session reconnects and explicit sign-outs, with callsign, event time and member account ID when applicable. Only administrators can view these records. This history does not store IP addresses, user-agent data or session credentials. It covers events after activation, with reconnects recorded at most once per session every 15 minutes. Records are visible for 90 days and older records are deleted by hourly cleanup while the API is running. Browser closure is not treated as sign-out.
Our server does not persist conversation audio. Temporary audio files may remain on a device if playback, cleanup or the app is interrupted. Active channel presence and location are held in server memory rather than a location-history database. IP-derived location results are cached by a coarse network prefix with a default validity of 24 hours; an expired result is not reused, but this does not guarantee immediate removal from memory.
Guest sessions expire after 7 days and member sessions after 30 days. Expiry ends access; it does not automatically delete stored member session or account records. Signing out revokes the current session but does not delete your account.
Account and moderation records and expired member-session rows have no automatic retention deadline, except the access-history limit described above. Account deletion removes the records described below from the active database. Moderation records concerning other people may remain. Provider logs and backups follow their respective retention settings and may not disappear immediately when an account is deleted. Contact us about a particular record or deletion request; we will explain any records that need to be retained and why.
Your choices and requests
You can listen without a Google account, decline microphone access, and revoke microphone or location permissions in your device or browser settings. Disabling location limits nearby features. You can sign out and clear site or app storage to remove local session data; this does not remove server-side records.
You can delete your account from the app’s account controls or at retrowalkie.com/account. Confirm ownership by signing in again with the same Google account, then explicitly confirm deletion. Deletion removes your Retro Walkie account, sessions, access history, reports you submitted or that concern your account, and restrictions against your account. Moderation records about other people can remain, with your administrator/reviewer references removed. Active radio sessions end. Deleting Retro Walkie does not delete your Google account, and uninstalling the app does not delete your Retro Walkie account. For access, correction, deletion problems or other privacy requests, email andy@andineering.com with the subject “Retro Walkie privacy request” and your callsign or account ID if available. Do not send passwords or session tokens. We may need to verify account ownership before acting.
Adults only
Retro Walkie is intended for people aged 18 and over and is not directed at children. If you believe a child has provided personal information through the service, contact us so we can review the situation.
Changes to this policy
We will update this page when our information practices change and show the effective date above. For a material change that requires additional notice or consent, we will provide it as appropriate before the new use.