Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Nookara (formerly Velora) is operated by Ikelene (Natalie H.), an individual based in Alberta, Canada ("we", "us"). We are responsible for your personal information and handle it under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Privacy questions: [email protected].

This policy covers nookara.cc and ember.nookara.cc, Ember servers hosted by Nookara (addresses ending in .nookara.cc), the Ember desktop and Android apps, the Hyperfocus launcher, Nookara's own games and tools that use your Nookara account, and the older velora.ikelene.net addresses. It does not cover:

• self-hosted Ember servers, which are run by their operators;
• projects, games, bots and apps made by other people, including ones shown on Nookara's community or featured-projects pages;
• the websites of services you link or connect.

See section 6 for what those receive from us.

2. What we collect

Account

• Account details: username (public), email address (optional for some staff-created accounts), password (stored only as a bcrypt hash), language, plan, rank and credit balance.
• Birthday: asked for at sign-up so we can check you're old enough (section 11), together with the country you signed up from and the minimum age that applied. Only you can see your birthday; staff only see your age.
• Sign-in sessions: for each session, the browser or device description, which app or project it's for, the permissions it has, when it started and when it was last used, plus your total number of sign-ins and your last sign-in time.
• Sign-in history: when you signed in, how, the country of the connection and a hash of the connection (never the IP address itself).
• Linked accounts: if you sign in with or link GitHub, Discord or Fluxer, your ID and name on that service. If you connect Spotify, your Spotify ID and name and access tokens, so we can show what you're listening to if you choose to.

Profile and activity

• Profile (you choose): picture, banner, bio, pronouns, website, country, timezone, name colour and badges.
• Presence and activity: online status, custom status, when you were last online, what you're playing or listening to (if you share it), and which official Nookara app you're using.

Messages and content

• Messages and content: Ember server messages, DMs, group chats and Instant Messages (section 5), reactions and saved media, files you upload and temporary files, project storage data, and the Ember servers you own or join with their roles and settings.
• Message-signing key: Nookara creates a signing key for your account so your Ember apps can sign messages for you. The public part is open; the private part is stored encrypted on our servers.
• Voice and video: calls are passed through live and not recorded. We keep when a call session started and ended, and how many voice minutes a server used.

Games and payments

• Games: Hyperfocus playtime, achievements and cloud saves, games you own, buy or refund, game keys, and data from Nookara games such as Badge Arcade and Pushmo.
• Credits and payments: your credit balance, transfers, purchases, payment requests and subscriptions. For Pro through Ko-fi, the email address, amount, tier and date Ko-fi sends us, and any refunds. We never receive your card details.

Safety and support

• Safety and moderation: reports you send, with their evidence and a snapshot of the reported user's picture and banner at the time; for reports of a DM message, the snapshot described in section 5; warnings, suspensions and bans; blocks you make; monitoring and feature restrictions; and a log of staff access to your account.
• Support, bug reports and suggestions: your name, email address, message and any files you attach, and for the support form a hash of your IP address and your browser description.
• Staff: if you join the Nookara staff, your onboarding progress and the staff agreement you sign, including your full legal name, the time, a hash of your IP address and your browser description.

Security and technical data

• API request logs: for each request to our API, the time, method, path and query string (with anything that looks like a password or token removed), the response status and how long it took, your username if you're signed in (or, for a sign-in attempt, which account it was for and whether it was refused, never the password), a hash of your IP address, your country (section 8), your browser description and the website that made the request.
• IP addresses: we only store IP addresses as salted, one-way hashes. A hash lets us recognise repeated abuse from the same connection, but it can't be turned back into your address. This includes IP bans.
• Sign-up protection: for each sign-up attempt, a hash of your IP address and of your network, and the outcome. We also record when you passed a captcha.
• Temporary files: to decide how long a shared temporary file lives, we count unique viewers using a one-way hash of each viewer's IP address.
• Notifications: your notification settings and, if you turn on push notifications, your browser's push subscription (an address at your browser's push service, encryption keys and the browser description).

3. How we use it

We use your information only for these purposes:

• To provide Nookara: your account, profile, messages, Ember, storage, games, Pro and credits, notifications, and the projects and apps you sign into.
• To check your age: your birthday and the country you sign up from tell us whether you're old enough.
• To keep Nookara safe: stopping spam, abuse, fraud and ban evasion, enforcing our Terms and country or region restrictions, investigating reports, and securing accounts.
• To talk to you: verification, password resets, security, moderation and account notices, and, if you allow it, notifications and announcements.
• To fix and improve Nookara: using bug reports, error logs and overall numbers (for example how many people are online). We never use your data for advertising.
• To meet legal obligations: for example reporting child sexual abuse material to the authorities.

By using Nookara, you consent to these uses. For optional features, such as connecting Spotify, push notifications and optional email notifications, we ask separately, and you can turn them off at any time.

4. What other people can see

• Public profile: if your profile is public, anyone can see your username, picture, banner, name colour, pronouns, bio, website, badges, achievements, Hyperfocus playtime and the date you joined. Your birthday and age are never shown publicly.
• Profile preview images: when someone shares a link to your profile (for example on Discord), we generate a preview image with your picture, name, rank, Pro or bot label, pronouns, a line of your bio, your join date, badge and achievement counts and Hyperfocus hours. It never includes your email address, birthday or anything private.
• Friends-only profiles: people who aren't your friends see only your name, name colour and picture, including in preview images. Staff, your friends, and projects approved with the profile permission can see the full profile (section 6).
• Friends list: you choose whether your friends list is public.
• Presence: your online status, custom status and activity are shown to your friends, people you have DMs or group chats with, and members of servers you share. If you appear invisible, you show as offline to everyone.
• Messages: everyone in a channel, server, group or DM can see what you post there, including bots added to that server and, on self-hosted servers, the operator.
• Screen shares: in a call, the person sharing their screen can see who is watching.
• Blocked users: if you block someone, or they block you, each of you appears not to exist to the other. Staff can't be blocked.

5. Private messages

DMs, group DMs and Instant Messages are private: in Nookara's apps, only the people in the conversation can see them. Here is how they are handled:

• They are not end-to-end encrypted. Messages are stored on our servers in a form we can technically read. Connections to our servers are encrypted (HTTPS).
• Staff tools never show the contents of private messages, apart from reported messages (below).
• We only look at a conversation through a report, or when we need to investigate a serious safety or legal issue (for example a threat to someone's safety or child sexual abuse material). Outside a report, only the owner can access stored messages.
• A project or bot can only read your messages if you gave it the message permission.

When someone reports a DM message

Anyone in a DM or group DM can report a message in it. The report sends Nookara staff a snapshot containing:

• the reported message;
• up to 10 messages before it and 5 after it in that conversation, from everyone who wrote them;
• copies of the attachments on those messages;
• who sent the report, when, and the reason they gave.

Staff who handle reports (Moderators, Network Administrators and the owner) can see the snapshot, read-only, and each time it is opened is logged. The reported person isn't told who reported them. The snapshot is stored with the report and kept as evidence for as long as the report is (section 9), even if the original messages are deleted later. The rest of the conversation is never sent to staff.

6. Projects, bots and Ember servers

Projects that use Nookara sign-in. A project must ask for specific permissions, which you approve or decline. It can only act for whoever is signed in. It can't read or change other people's accounts, except that a project with the profile permission can read other users' public-profile fields, including users who limited their profile to friends. Projects never receive your birthday. This is enforced on our servers, and if staff switch a feature off for your account, projects lose it too. Projects are run by their developers under their own policies.

Bots and webhooks. A bot added to a server can see that server's messages and member information, within the permissions it was given. Bots are run by their owners, who must say what they store. Bot payment requests show you who receives the credits before you approve.

Ember servers. When you join an Ember server, Nookara confirms who you are to that server by sending it your user ID, username, profile picture, whether you have Pro, and the permissions you approved.

• Servers hosted by Nookara (addresses ending in .nookara.cc) store their messages, files and settings on our infrastructure, and this policy covers them.
• Self-hosted servers are run by other people. Their operators must accept our Ember Server Operator Terms and publish their own privacy notice. Messages, files and voice you send there are stored and controlled by that server's operator, under their rules. We can't access, export or delete data held on servers we don't run. Check who runs a server before sharing anything sensitive.

Bridges. Some channels are bridged to Discord or Fluxer, or to games such as Minecraft. Messages posted in a bridged channel are copied there and handled under those services' terms, and we can't delete them from those services.

7. Our service providers

These providers process information for us, only to provide their service:

We don't share your information with advertisers, data brokers or analytics companies. Apart from the providers above, we only share it:

• with the people, projects, bots and servers you choose to share with (sections 4 to 6);
• when the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety (for example reporting child sexual abuse material);
• with a new operator if Nookara changes hands, and we would tell you first.

Outside Canada. Our servers are in Canada. Some of the providers above process information in other countries, including the United States, where it may be accessible to local authorities under local law.

8. Location and country restrictions

We don't collect your precise location. We look up which country your connection comes from, using Cloudflare and the DB-IP Lite database (db-ip.com, licensed CC BY 4.0). We use it to:

• set the minimum age when you sign up (section 11);
• enforce country and region restrictions, because Nookara isn't available everywhere;
• spot abuse, and record the country in our request logs;
• block some VPNs, proxies and hosting networks used for abuse.

When a connection is blocked, we log the time, the country, the page or API it tried to reach and, if you were signed in, your username, and staff are notified. The notification only ever shows the start of the connection's hash, never the IP address.

9. How long we keep information

Some copies sit outside our main database:

• our backups and maintenance copies, as above;
• cached copies of public files at Cloudflare, for a few hours;
• email threads with our support mailbox;
• messages bridged to Discord or Fluxer;
• data on self-hosted Ember servers.

The Hyperfocus community site keeps its own records, and erasure requests cover it too.

10. Cookies and local storage

• No tracking or advertising cookies. We use a few strictly necessary cookies (for example during maintenance and to remember your language), and Cloudflare sets security cookies to protect the site.
• Local storage: your browser's local storage keeps you signed in (your session token), remembers recently used accounts on that device, and stores your settings, such as language, theme and chat preferences. Nothing in local storage is sent to third parties.
• Captcha: our sign-up and payment pages use Cap, a captcha we host ourselves. It runs a short check in your browser and doesn't track you.

11. Children and age checks

Nookara is for people aged 13 or older, or the age of digital consent in their country if that is higher.

How the check works. When you sign up, we ask for your birthday. The minimum age is set by the country your connection comes from at sign-up; if we can't tell the country, it is 13. If you're under the minimum age, sign-up is refused and the birthday you entered isn't kept.

After sign-up. Your birthday is visible only to you, in your settings and in your data export. Staff only see your age. Projects, bots and Ember servers never receive it. You can't change it yourself; corrections are made by staff on request through nookara.cc/support. Accounts created before birthdays were required can't use Ember or DMs until a birthday is added.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under the minimum age, we delete it and its data. If you think a child under the minimum age is using Nookara, tell us at [email protected].

12. Your rights and choices

Do it yourself

• see and edit most of your information on your account page;
• download a copy of your account data (Account, then Export);
• choose who can see your profile, your friends list and your activity, and who can DM you;
• block people;
• turn notification types and push notifications on or off;
• revoke sign-in sessions and project access;
• unlink GitHub, Discord, Fluxer or Spotify;
• delete your account. Deletion is instant and permanent, with no recovery period. If you have an active Pro subscription, end it first or contact us.

Ask us

Write to [email protected] or use nookara.cc/support to:

• get a complete export as a ZIP file, including your files;
• have everything erased, including records linked only to your email address, such as support requests;
• correct your information, including your birthday;
• withdraw consent for an optional feature;
• ask a question or make a complaint about how we handle your information.

We'll check that the request comes from you, and we aim to answer within 30 days.

What a full erasure does:

• deletes your account, messages, files and records;
• removes your name from records that also belong to someone else, such as the other side of a credit transfer or a ban a staff member made;
• keeps only what we must: reports held as safety or legal evidence (your name inside DM report snapshots is replaced with "[deleted]"), and backups and maintenance copies until they expire after 14 to 15 days;
• leaves a record that a request was handled, without your name or email address.

An erasure can't remove data on self-hosted Ember servers or messages already bridged to Discord or Fluxer.

Complaints. If you're unhappy with how we handled a request, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca). Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under local law; contact us and we'll help you use them.

13. Security

• Connections to Nookara use HTTPS.
• Passwords are bcrypt-hashed, and session tokens are stored only as hashes.
• IP addresses are stored only as salted, one-way hashes.
• Message-signing keys and backups are encrypted.
• Access to our servers is limited to the owner; staff access to accounts is limited by role and logged.
• Private messages are not end-to-end encrypted (section 5).

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we'll tell you as soon as possible, by email if your account has one and on the site, and report it to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the law requires.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy, and the version and effective date at the top will change. For significant changes, we show the new version when you next sign in and email accounts that have an email address.

15. Contact

• Email: [email protected]
• Support: nookara.cc/support
• Operator: Ikelene, Alberta, Canada

This policy is available in English, German and Portuguese. If a translation and the English version differ, the English version prevails.