1. Who this covers
PC Tether is a Windows and Android app that lets you see and control your own PC from your own phone. It's made and run by an independent developer based in Canada. In this policy, "PC Tether", "we", "us", and "our" mean that developer. "You" means anyone who uses the app or visits pctether.com.
PC Tether is free while it is in early access, both on your own network and away from home. Nothing is for sale right now, so we take no payment and hold no payment details of yours at all.
Who is responsible for your data
PC Tether is an independent software developer based in Canada, and is the data controller responsible for the personal information described here. You can reach us:
- By email: support@pctether.com. This address is monitored.
- By post: our postal address is available on request by email, and will be provided to any individual exercising their privacy rights, or to a regulator, without charge.
The person accountable for privacy (our Privacy Officer, as required by Canada's PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25) can be reached at the support address above. Mail sent there is read by the individual personally accountable for these decisions.
2. The big idea: your screen is yours
When you use PC Tether, your PC and your phone talk to each other directly. The picture of your screen, your taps and clicks, and any files you send are wrapped in end-to-end encryption: locked on the device that sends them, and only unlocked on the device that receives them.
That means no server sees your screen. Not ours, not anyone's. There is no cloud copy of your desktop in a data centre, and no support agent who could watch your session. None of that rests on a promise. It is how the app is put together.
3. The one relay (and what it can't see)
Whenever possible, your two devices connect straight to each other. Sometimes a home or office network won't allow a direct connection. In that case, PC Tether uses a single relay to pass the data along, like a sealed pipe between your devices.
The relay only forwards the already-encrypted data. It cannot read your screen, your keystrokes, or your files, because the encryption keys never leave your two devices. To route traffic, the relay necessarily handles the network addresses (IP addresses) of the devices connecting. We don't use that to build a profile of you.
Our relay runs on Cloudflare's network. Cloudflare acts as our service provider and may process the connection data needed to move traffic and keep the service secure, under Cloudflare's own privacy terms.
4. What we don't collect
It's easier to list what we don't gather, because it's most of it:
- No accounts. No sign-up, no username, no password.
- No analytics or telemetry. The app doesn't send us data about how you use it.
- No screen recordings. Your screen is never captured to any server.
- No activity logs. We don't record what you view, type, or do during a session. (We do keep one timestamp of when a code first connects, to catch abuse; see what the app sends.)
- No advertising trackers, no third-party ad networks, no data sales.
- No location tracking.
5. The little we do handle
A few small pieces of information reach us. Some arrive automatically when you connect; the rest, only when you choose to give them:
Automatically, each time you connect
To set up and protect the connection, the app makes a few small calls to our server whenever you connect:
- It shows your invite or licence code so we can check it's valid and let you in.
- It asks whether a newer version is available, so we can prompt you to update.
- It asks for the relay servers to use if your two devices can't reach each other directly.
We also record the first time each code connects (a timestamp, plus one word for the kind of device, such as “pc”) so we can notice a code that's been shared or abused. None of this includes your screen, your keystrokes, your files, or what you do during a session.
If you join a waiting list
If you ask for an early-access code on our website, the only thing you give us is your email address. There is no other box to fill in. Along with it we store a short fixed label saying which page you asked from, so we can tell where people are finding us. That is written by the page, not by you. We use your address only to send you that code and to manage the list, and we never sell it or use it for advertising. You can take yourself off the list at any time with the remove me link beside either sign-up form: we email that address a link, and pressing the button on it deletes the address. The same link is in the email that carried your code. You can also just write to support@pctether.com.
If we ever start charging
Nothing is for sale right now, so none of this has happened to anyone. If we ever start charging, payment would happen on Stripe's checkout page (see the next section). Our server would receive Stripe's confirmation that the payment succeeded, and we would keep your licence code, the plan you bought, its start and end dates, and Stripe's transaction references, which we would need to honour a refund. We would not keep your name, your billing address, or your card details.
If you email us
If you write to support, we receive whatever you send (your email address and the contents of your message) so we can help you.
6. Payments are processed by Stripe
None of this is happening today. Tether is free while it is in early access, there is no checkout anywhere on this site, and no payment information of yours has ever reached us or anyone acting for us.
If we ever start charging, we would be the seller, and Stripe would process the payment for us. The whole payment step would happen on Stripe's own checkout page: Stripe would collect your card details and billing address there, and we would not keep them.
Stripe would process your payment information under Stripe's Privacy Policy. PC Tether never touches your card data.
7. Cookies & the website
Our website, pctether.com, is a simple site with no advertising or tracking cookies. We don't run analytics that follow you around. The site is served through Cloudflare, which, as our hosting and security provider, may process standard request information (such as IP address and basic security logs) to deliver the pages and protect against abuse. There is no checkout on this site today, so no payment cookies are set. If we ever start charging, the payment step would happen on Stripe's own page, which may set cookies necessary for payment to work; those would be governed by Stripe's policies.
8. Your privacy rights (GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA, Law 25)
Wherever you live, you have rights over the small amount of personal information we hold. Depending on your region (including under the EU/UK GDPR, California's CCPA/CPRA, Canada's PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25), these can include the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you;
- Correct information that's wrong;
- Delete your information (for example, remove your email from the invite list);
- Take your data with you (portability);
- Object to or restrict certain uses, and withdraw consent at any time;
- Not be sold out: we do not sell your personal information, and never have.
To exercise any right, email support@pctether.com. We won't treat you differently for asking. For payment-related data, you can also contact Stripe directly. If you're in the EU/UK, you have the right to complain to your local data protection authority; if you're in Canada, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and in Quebec the Commission d'accès à l'information.
Our legal bases for handling your data
Where the EU/UK GDPR or Quebec's Law 25 applies, we rely on a specific legal basis for each purpose:
- Your invite/waitlist email: your consent, which you can withdraw any time by asking us to remove you.
- Connection & security data (such as the IP addresses the relay must handle, and the first-connect timestamp used to catch abuse): our legitimate interest in keeping PC Tether working and free from abuse.
- Purchases (none today): if we ever start charging and you buy a licence, our basis would be to perform our contract with you and to meet the legal obligations that apply to sales records.
- Support emails: our legitimate interest in answering you, and your consent when you choose to write to us.
EU/UK representative
PC Tether is operated from Canada and is not currently marketed to people in the EU or UK. If and when we do offer it there, we'll appoint a representative in the EU and the UK under Article 27 of the GDPR and name them here: an EU/UK representative will be appointed before that point.
9. How long we keep things
We keep personal information only as long as we need it:
- Waiting-list emails: deleted at whichever of these comes first. The first time you use your code, which deletes the address on the spot. The day you confirm a removal, using the link we email you. The day your code runs out, thirty days after we send it, which our nightly cleaner acts on within a day. Or the end of the invite programme. The nightly cleaner only acts on a code with an end date that has passed, so if yours has no end date, or we have switched it off, ask us and we will remove your entry. Two things outlive that: the message that carried your code sits with the service that delivered it under their own retention, and our database keeps a restore point for up to thirty days, so a deleted row can still be recovered from a backup inside that window.
- Support emails: for as long as needed to help you and keep a reasonable record of the conversation.
- Order records (none today): if we ever start charging and you buy a licence, Stripe would retain the payment records under its own policies and as financial law requires, and we would keep your licence code and Stripe's transaction references for as long as we needed them to honour the purchase and to handle refunds, disputes, and the sales records we are required to keep. A refunded or disputed licence would be switched off rather than erased, because we have to be able to tell a refunded purchase from a fresh one.
10. Children
PC Tether isn't designed for or directed at children. Please don't use it if you're under 16 (or the minimum age in your country). We don't knowingly collect information from children.
11. Where your data is handled
Your screen stays between your own two devices and doesn't cross our borders at all. The small amount of information we do handle may be processed in Canada and, through our providers (Cloudflare, Resend, Zoho, Google, and Stripe if we ever start charging), in other countries where they operate. Those providers commit to appropriate safeguards for international data transfers.
12. Security
Your connection is end-to-end encrypted, and there's no central store of your screen to break into. Still, no system is perfectly safe, and part of staying secure is on your side: keep your phone and PC locked and your operating system updated, and don't share your invite or licence codes with people you don't trust.
If a data breach ever affected your personal information and created a real risk of significant harm, we will notify you and the relevant regulator, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (and, where the GDPR applies, the appropriate EU/UK authority), without undue delay, as the law requires, and tell you what happened and what to do.
13. Services we rely on
To run PC Tether, we use a small number of providers, each acting on our behalf:
- Stripe (not in use today): payment processing, if we ever start charging. Nothing of yours has reached them. See Stripe's Privacy Policy.
- Cloudflare: website hosting, security, and the connection relay. See Cloudflare's Privacy Policy.
- Resend: delivers the email that carries your code, so your address passes through Resend. See Resend's Privacy Policy.
- Zoho Mail (Canadian data centre) and Google: our support@pctether.com mailbox is hosted at Zoho and forwarded to a Gmail inbox, so anything you write to us is handled by both. See Zoho's Privacy Policy and Google's Privacy Policy.
14. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle privacy, we'll update this page and move the "Effective date" at the top. If a change is significant, we'll make a reasonable effort to let users know. Continuing to use PC Tether after an update means you accept the new version.
15. Contact us
Questions about privacy, or want to exercise a right? Email support@pctether.com and a real person will get back to you.