How Privacy Works at nostr.build

• The free gallery and your account are different things
• What we know about you
• What “private” means, exactly
• Why we don’t keep your media forever
• No lock-in
• That’s the whole system

There’s a lot of confusion about what “private” means when your files live on someone else’s server. We want to spell out exactly what it means here: what we know about you, who can see your uploads, and what happens to your media over time.

§The free gallery and your account are different things

nostr.build started as a free image host for Nostr, and that part hasn’t changed. Anything uploaded for free lands in the public gallery, where our subscribers can browse it, and anyone can become a subscriber. That’s the whole point of the free tier: you’re publishing something for the world to see, and we keep those files up so links and images don’t rot across Nostr.

An account is a different product with a different promise. Media you upload to your account is not in any gallery. Nobody can browse it, search it, or stumble onto it. Until you share a link, no one else even knows a file exists. You choose, file by file, what stays private and what gets shared.

Keep those two offerings straight and everything below makes sense.

§What we know about you

Very little, and that’s deliberate.

We never ask who you are. No identity verification, no documents, no phone number. You sign in with your Nostr key, which only you hold. Email is optional; some people add one for account notices, plenty don’t bother.

Payments work the same way. You can pay in Bitcoin, or with a card and other methods through our payment processor. Card numbers go to the processor and stay there; they never touch our servers. There’s also no auto-renewing subscription, because we don’t keep a payment method on file. When your year is up, renewing is a decision you make, not a charge that happens to you while you’re not looking.

Why run it this way? Because data we never collect can’t leak, can’t be sold, and can’t be demanded from us later.

§What “private” means, exactly

We’d rather be precise here than impressive.

Nothing in your account is listed, indexed, or discoverable. Private on nostr.build means nobody knows your file exists until you decide otherwise.

Sharing works by link. When you post an image to Nostr or send someone a link, anyone holding that link can view the file. It has to work that way, or your image couldn’t load in other people’s Nostr clients. So think of the link as the key. Keep it to yourself and the file stays yours alone. Hand it out and it’s shared. Change your mind later, delete the file, and the link stops working immediately.

We don’t decide which of your files are private. You do.

§Why we don’t keep your media forever

Big platforms never delete anything if they can help it. Your photos feed their ad profiles and their AI models, so “free storage forever” really means your data is worth more to them than the storage costs.

We charge for hosting instead, which lets us treat your media as yours and nothing else. It also means the arrangement has a natural end. Your account is an annual agreement you renew by choice. If it expires, we send reminders before and after, and we keep your media for up to a year past expiration in case you come back. After that, we delete it.

And if you do come back during that year, nothing is lost and nothing is owed. Renew and you pick up right where you left off, with no penalty and no charge for the time your media sat waiting. You pay for the year ahead, nothing more.

Even the deletion itself isn’t abrupt. When the date is finally set, we notify you once more, bundle your entire library into a single downloadable backup, and hold everything for another 30 days. Your media stays online that whole time, the backup is yours to download and take anywhere, and renewing still calls the whole thing off. Only when that last window closes do we actually delete.

We think that’s the only honest way to run a private media host. Files sitting on our servers for an account that ended years ago don’t protect anyone. They’re pure risk: one more thing that could surface in a breach or a legal fight long after you’ve forgotten they exist. Privacy laws like Europe’s GDPR and California’s privacy acts are built on the same principle, that personal data shouldn’t be kept longer than it’s needed. We apply it to everyone, not just where a regulator requires it.

Public gallery uploads are the opposite case, so they get the opposite treatment. Those were shared with the world on purpose, and they stay up for the world.

§No lock-in

The other half of privacy is knowing your files aren’t hostage:

• Your account belongs to your Nostr key, not to an email login we control.
• You can download your media whenever you want.
• Deleting is instant and real. No 30-day “deactivation” that quietly keeps a copy.

§That’s the whole system

Public when you choose it. Private when you don’t. Almost nothing about you on file either way. If that’s the kind of hosting you’ve been looking for, take a look at the plans.