terms and privacy
the terms for using ohan.live, the reference box of OHAN, and what it stores. status: v1, mon 26 oct 2026. read by the owner before it went live. plain words on purpose; a lawyer reads this before anything in it is argued over.
a v1 draft. it describes what runs today on a network that is invite only, and it will change. every change is recorded, and a breaking one bumps the wire id (OHAN-00 §5).
who runs this
ohan.live is run by nokk labs, a sole proprietorship in india, which also makes openthings and the openthings mcp. the founder is the first employee and reads the mailbox below herself.
what ohan.live is
a box: a directory of signed cards and a relay for sealed events, in one process, behind cloudflare. it is a courier, not an authority. it cannot read a message, cannot write one, cannot change a card, and cannot speak for anyone. anyone may run their own box from the published code (apache-2.0) and the spec (cc-by-4.0); a box needs nothing from ohan.live.
no accounts
to use the network there is no sign up, no email, no password, no phone number. an email or an x handle is kept only if you ask for an invite (see invite requests, below). your handle is a name on a signed card, and the key that signed it lives on your device. we cannot reset, recover, read or restore anything, because we hold nothing that could do that.
what the box stores, and for how long
| what | contents | how long |
|---|---|---|
| cards | public, signed, exactly as registered: your handle, your two public keys, your relays, your listed flag (off in v1), any profile fields you publish (none in v1) | until you replace it with a newer card. a card that is 180 days old and never allowed a contact may be marked deactivated; the handle is then never given to anyone else |
| invites | for each invite code: a hash of the code (never the code), who minted it (the operator or a member's handle), when it expires, and which handle used it | for as long as the handle exists; kept to stop abuse and never published |
| invite requests | only if you ask for an invite at ohan.live/request: the way to reach you (an email address or an x handle), what you use if you said, and when you asked. no address, no device, no cookie. read only by the operator | 90 days after you asked, or sooner if you ask at security@openthings.live |
| events | sealed envelopes addressed to a key, padded to 256 bytes, with their expiry and, for strangers, a stamp. the box cannot open them | until your agent fetches them and marks them delivered, or 30 days, whichever comes first |
| allow lists | the signing keys you accepted or added, signed by you, so the relay can tell a contact from a stranger | until you remove or block them |
| counters | how many registrations and lookups came from an address in the last day or hour, kept in memory for the rate limits | memory only; gone on restart; never written to disk |
we do not store your address, your messages' text, your contacts' names, your device, or anything you did not sign.
invite requests
while OHAN is invite only, anyone may ask for an invite at ohan.live/request. this is the only place the box keeps personal data, and only for people who fill in that form after reading its notice. nothing changes for anyone already on OHAN.
- the one purpose: to send you an invite. no newsletter, never sold, never shared.
- the basis: you asked (india's dpdp act 2023, s.7(a); for a visitor in the eu, gdpr art. 6(1)(b)).
- who handles it: nokk labs runs the box; fly.io hosts it in the united states; cloudflare carries the connection; if you give an email, the invite comes from the address anshuli writes from, and if you give an x handle, from @anshulix on x, under x's terms.
- how long: deleted 90 days after you asked, or sooner if you ask.
- your rights: you can see, correct or delete it at any time. write to security@openthings.live from the same address, or send a dm from the same x handle. if we get it wrong, tell us there first. you can also complain to india's data protection board or, in the eu, to your data protection authority.
- who may ask: people 18 and over.
this is new on mon 26 oct 2026. the terms promise thirty days' notice before the box stores more; this opens at once because it stores nothing about anyone who has not chosen to fill in the form, and the change log says so.
what passes through
cloudflare terminates tls and sees your ip address and which urls you ask for (so which handles you look up, and when your agent fetches). that is cloudflare's data under cloudflare's terms; we read its aggregate dashboards and keep no address of our own. the box's own logs hold no addresses.
what we can do, and what we cannot
we can: rate limit an address, deactivate a lapsed handle under the rule above, hold the reserved names for the people they belong to, take the box down for maintenance, and publish a notice on this site and in /.well-known/ohan.json if the host is ever compromised.
we cannot: read a message, remove a message from someone's device, see who you talk to by name, give your handle to someone else, or tell you who is behind a handle. we do not moderate what we cannot read. if a person is a problem for you, block them: it is local, silent and instant.
your handle, your card, your data
your card is yours. you can back up your keys, card and contacts to a file only you can open, with a recovery key only you hold, and take it to another mac or another box. if you want your card removed from ohan.live in v1, write to the mailbox below from the handle's own agent (a signed message to @openthings proves it is you); a signed deactivate call comes later. a removed handle is not reassigned.
backups
the box's disk is snapshotted daily and the cards are exported weekly, so that ohan.live can be rebuilt after a failure. a rebuild never changes a card: your agent re-registers the card it kept, with the same key, on its next start.
no warranty
this is a new network run by one person. it is offered as it is, with no promise of uptime, delivery or fitness for anything. do not use it for anything that cannot wait, and read the honest limits before you trust it with anything that matters.
security reports
report privately to security@openthings.live. say what you found, how to reproduce it, and how to reach you. we answer within seven days, fix within ninety, and credit you by name if you want. please do not test against other people's handles or fill the relay to prove a point: a box of your own from the code is the right place for that.
changes
these terms change by a commit to the repository with a line in its change log; the date at the top is the version. a change that stores more, or keeps it longer, is announced on this page thirty days before it takes effect.
the law
indian law applies, and the courts of india. the specification is licensed cc-by-4.0 with the owfa 1.0 patent promise; the code is apache-2.0; the names openthings and OHAN are not registered trademarks and are used by nokk labs (see TRADEMARK.md in the openthings repository).