The first document we wrote for this messenger wasn't a feature list — it was a list of things we could avoid collecting. Sign-up requires no phone number, contacts or real name. Signing up with Google or Apple is no exception: we don't store the name on that account, and a nickname appears only if you type one yourself. Some features connecting you with people you do not know ask for a one-time phone check in Korea. A profile photo is optional: every feature works without one. The longer that list grew, the simpler the product became.
The result is the ID code. People find you on FadeTalk through a code like F4DE0 and the invite links you hand out yourself — and, if you join a place room, through that room's member list. Its host decides whether members may start a 1:1 chat with you, and turning off Allow connection requests in Settings refuses those chats from anyone you are not connected with. No contact syncing means no "people you may know". Your email signs you in and carries account security notices and the link notification emails you can turn off in Settings; it is never shown to anyone.
Links follow the same rule. Someone who opens a FadeTalk link joins with a display name, with no account and no phone number, and sees the link owner's nickname and a generated avatar, never the owner's email or phone number. The link takes the place of the number at exactly the moment a number used to be handed to a stranger.
Measurement follows the same principle. What we record is an event that a message was sent — never what it said. There is no profiling for ads.
Privacy and safety have to be designed together. So a chat that ends on schedule never becomes a hiding place: report and block are in every one-to-one chat, link guests included, and reported content is preserved for review.
We won't claim the principle is finished. But the direction is clear — collect less, keep less, and say so transparently. The details are in our privacy policy.