Where your emails live

Your emails stay at home 🏠

Imagine your emails are letters. Many email apps keep a copy of all your letters in their big building, somewhere far away.

Talanoa doesn’t. When you connect your email, Talanoa brings a copy of your letters to your own computer and keeps them there. That’s why searching is so fast: everything is already in your pocket, not in a building across town.

Your emails stay on your computer. Talanoa stores your emails locally, on your device. They’re never uploaded to Talanoa’s servers, and the Talanoa team can’t read them.

So who has your emails?

Only two places:

1. Your email provider (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud…). It’s where your emails have always lived. Talanoa doesn’t change that. When you archive or delete an email in Talanoa, your provider is told, so everything stays in step.
2. Your computer. Talanoa keeps a copy there so it can show, sort and search your emails.

The “keys” that let Talanoa open your mailbox are kept encrypted on your computer too. They’re never sent to us.

What Talanoa does know about you

To run your Talanoa account and your subscription, we keep a very short list:

• your first and last name,
• your email address,
• your computer’s system (macOS, Windows or Linux),
• a customer number from our payment provider, if you subscribe to Pro.

When the app crashes, it can send us a crash report so we can fix the bug. These reports never include the content of your emails.

That’s it. No ads, no selling your data, no profiling. The full details are in our privacy policy.

The times something leaves your computer (because you asked)

To be completely honest, there are a few moments where you choose to send something out:

• Sharing an email with a link. The email is locked before it leaves your computer, and the key only lives in the link. Not even Talanoa can read it. See Share an email with a secure link.
• AI with your own AI app. Talanoa’s AI can run fully on your computer. If you prefer (or your computer isn’t powerful enough), you can plug in an AI app you already pay for instead. In that case, your emails are anonymized first (names and addresses are removed) before going to that AI. See Private AI that stays on your computer.

Checked by people who know

Talanoa passed an independent security audit by TAC Security and is CASA Tier 2 certified. That’s the level of checks Google asks for from apps that can read Gmail. You can read more on our security page.

Questions you might have

“If I lose my computer, do I lose my emails?” No. Your emails are still with your email provider. Install Talanoa on a new computer, connect your account, and they come back.

“How do I remove my emails from this computer?” In Settings → Accounts, click More actions next to the account, then Purge local emails. Talanoa removes its copy, and your emails stay safe with your email provider. Uninstalling Talanoa also removes everything it stored on your computer.

“Can the Talanoa team read my emails?” No. They’re not on our servers, so there’s nothing for us to read.

Still stuck? Write to us at [email protected]. A real human will answer.