Last updated: 2026-08-26
BrowserID is a free, open-source project operated by one person (see the contact page). This policy covers the website (www.browserid.me), the identity service (browserid.me), and the hosted wallet and verifier. It is a hobby project, run with care but on a best-effort basis: there are no SLAs, no compliance certifications, and no legal department — please treat the service accordingly. The full source code is public, so every claim on this page can be checked.
If you create an account, the identity service stores your email address, a password hash if you set a password, the public keys of your devices and agents, the names you give them, and the warrants (permission grants) you sign — who may act, where, with what scopes, until when. Private keys are generated and kept on your devices; we never see them.
Sign-in codes are sent to your email address and expire within minutes. A session cookie keeps you signed in on browserid.me.
We collect basic product analytics: page views and a few named button clicks on the website, and server-side events on the identity service (for example, that an account was created). Identity-service events identify users only by an opaque hash of the email address; raw email addresses, verification codes, and IP addresses are never included in analytics events.
Like almost every web service, our servers keep standard request logs, which include IP addresses. We use them for operations and abuse prevention, including rate limiting.
If a site uses our hosted verifier, its verification requests tell us who signed in there. A site that would rather we not see that can run its own verifier.
Analytics events from both origins are processed by PostHog Inc. (US) on our behalf. Sign-in code emails are delivered through our email provider, which necessarily sees the recipient address. The service runs on servers rented from commodity hosting providers. We do not run ads, do not sell data, and do not track you across other sites.
Revocation status lists are published so relying parties can check them; they contain opaque bit positions, not names or emails. Guestbook entries — display name, issuer domain, and message — are public, and they remain on the wall after the account that signed them is deleted. Warrants you grant are held by the sites you granted them to.
browserid.me sets one cookie, for your signed-in session. www.browserid.me sets no cookies; it uses localStorage for your theme choice and the analytics state.
Sign-in codes expire within minutes. Access certificates are short-lived and expire on their own. You can revoke any grant, remove any agent, or cancel your account at browserid.me/account; cancelling deletes the stored account data — email addresses, password hash, keys, names, and grants. Revocation takes effect on a relying party's next status check. Guestbook entries are not stored with the account and are not removed by cancelling it. Server logs are kept briefly and rotated.
Changes to this policy are posted here with a new date. Questions: the contact page. The whole stack is open source and self-hostable — a service you run yourself is not covered by this policy.