Last updated 29 September 2026

Podmail is owned and developed by Private Insights Pty Ltd (ABN 84 699 859 713) (“Private Insights”, “we”, “us”). Private Insights builds privacy-first software. This policy explains what personal information Podmail collects, why, and how we handle it. We aim to handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

This policy covers the Podmail apps (Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux, and the web app at https://app.podmail.me ), the Podmail mail server (podmail.me) that delivers mail to and from @podmail.me addresses, and this website (https://podmail.me ). It also covers Podmail development and test mail servers (dev.podmail.me and dev.privateinsights.au) which our developers and testers use. They are hosted in the same place as our production server, podmail.me, and handle data in the same way, with the same retention periods. If you host your Pod on a Solid server run by Private Insights, the Private Insights privacy policy covers that server.

We believe that privacy is a human right that should be available for everyone.

Podmail implements the Solid specification, an open standard for decentralised data storage, which separates access and control of the software app code from access and control of user data. Using the Solid specification, we make apps that provide users with ownership, access and control of their data. There is more information about the Solid specification at https://solidproject.org and the UK Open Data Institute , which recently became the global steward for Solid.

Podmail gives you ownership of your mail using Solid Personal Online Datastores (Pods). As a user of Podmail, you choose the server that hosts your Pod. Using our Solid-based consent management system developed by the Australian National University Software Innovation Institute , you own and share your data and have full control over who can read or use it.

Private Insights minimises the collection of any data about you by implementing the Solid specification to provide you with ownership and control of your data. At Private Insights, we are working towards compliance with 7012-2025 - IEEE Standard for Machine Readable Personal Privacy Terms .

At a glance

Your mail lives in your own Pod, encrypted so that only you can read it. This is everything the Podmail service itself holds about you:

What we hold	Why	How long
Your @podmail.me address, linked to your WebID and Pod address	So mail sent to your address reaches your Pod	until you ask us to delete it
Classic email you send, while it is being delivered	To deliver it to the recipient’s mail server	Until delivered. If the recipient’s server is temporarily unavailable, retried for up to about 30 minutes, then deleted
Classic email you receive, encrypted so only you can read it	Held until your Podmail app collects it into your Pod	Deleted from our server as soon as your app collects it
Spam-check history: sender, recipients and spam score, with the subject hidden	To tune spam filtering	At most 5 days, and only the latest 50 messages
Spam-filter statistics: hashed word counts, which can’t be read back as text	To recognise spam	Up to 100 days
In-app donation records: product, Google Play purchase token, date, your WebID	To verify your donation and email your receipt	until you ask us to delete them
Server logs: addresses, WebIDs, recipient addresses, IP addresses	To operate and secure the service	30 days
Website donation records: your email, the amount and the date	To confirm donations made through Stripe	until you ask us to delete them
Settings and passwords for other email accounts you connect	So Podmail can send and receive with them	We never store them: they are encrypted in your own Pod. The web app passes them to our server for one request at a time
Messages you send us	To reply to you	As long as needed to deal with your enquiry

How Podmail keeps your mail yours

Your Pod, your keys. Podmail encrypts your mail and files on your own device, using your security key, before they are written to your Pod. We never see your security key, so neither we nor your Pod provider can read the content of your mail.

Pod-to-Pod mail is end-to-end encrypted. Mail between Podmail users is encrypted on the sender’s device with the recipient’s public key, so only the recipient can read it.

Classic email is different. Email to and from ordinary addresses (such as Gmail or Outlook) uses the standard email system, which requires a mail server to handle the message in readable form. Our mail servers do that for your @podmail.me address, as described below, and keep as little as possible for as short a time as possible.

What we collect, and why

Signing in. You sign in with your Solid Pod account (your WebID), which you create with a Pod provider of your choice. When the app calls our mail servers, it sends the sign-in token from your Pod provider, so the server can check which WebID is making the request. We don’t store the token.

Your Podmail address. When you claim a name@podmail.me address, our mail servers store the address, your WebID and your Pod’s address, so that mail sent to your address can be delivered to your Pod. We keep this until you ask us to delete it.

Classic email you send. When you send to an ordinary email address, including messages to Podmail support and feedback sent from the app, the app sends the message to our mail server. The server signs it (DKIM) so recipients can verify it came from podmail.me, and delivers it to the recipient’s mail server. It is not stored. If the recipient’s server is temporarily unavailable, the message is held and retried, for up to about 30 minutes in total, and deleted as soon as it is delivered or delivery is abandoned.

Classic email you receive. Mail sent to your @podmail.me address arrives at our mail server from the sender’s mail server, in readable form, as all standard email does. The server checks it for spam, then immediately encrypts it with your public key, so only you can read it. The encrypted message is held until your Podmail app collects it into your Pod, then deleted from our server.

Your other email accounts. You can connect your other mailboxes — such as Gmail, Outlook, Fastmail, iCloud or Yahoo — so Podmail can send and receive with them. Their server settings and passwords are encrypted with your security key and stored in your own Pod, never on our servers. In the desktop and mobile apps your device connects to your provider directly, and we see nothing at all. A web browser cannot make those connections, so the web app asks our server to make them on its behalf: the settings travel with each request, are used only for that request, and are never written to disk or to a log. For Outlook and Microsoft 365 accounts the app signs you in with Microsoft and sends only a short-lived access token, never a password.

Deleting mail in a connected account. By default, deleting a message in Podmail removes only the copy in your Pod — the message stays where it is in the connected account. You can turn on Also delete on the server for an account, and Podmail will then act on that mailbox too: deleting a message moves it to that account’s Trash, restoring it moves it back, and deleting it forever removes it for good. Podmail’s own Trash empties after 30 days, and for an account with this setting on that also deletes the message from the account — including when the app does it in the background, without asking you again. POP3 accounts have no Trash folder, so for those the deletion cannot be undone from any device or from webmail. The setting is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time.

Spam checking. To keep spam out of your inbox, our mail server:

• looks up the sending server’s IP address and the web links in the message in public spam blocklists (for example, Spamhaus);
• keeps a short history of the messages it checked (sender, recipients and spam score, with the subject hidden), for at most 5 days and only the latest 50 messages;
• keeps statistics about words common in spam and non-spam, stored as hashed counts that cannot be read back as text, for up to 100 days.

In-app donations. If you donate through the Android app, Google Play processes the payment. We never see your card or payment details. Our server stores the donation product, the Google Play purchase token, the date and your WebID, so that it can confirm the purchase with Google, make sure each donation is only counted once, and email a receipt to your @podmail.me address. We keep these records until you ask us to delete them.

Server logs. Our mail servers keep operational logs, which record @podmail.me addresses, WebIDs, the addresses mail is sent to and received from, and IP addresses. We use them only to operate, secure and troubleshoot the service. Logs are deleted automatically after 30 days.

This website.

• Contact form. If you use the contact form, we receive your name, email address and message by email, delivered by our email provider, Fastmail. We use this only to reply to you.
• Website donations. Donations made on this website are processed by Stripe. We never see your card details. Stripe tells our server when a donation is completed, and we record your email address, the amount and the date, to confirm the donation.
• Visits. Our web servers do not keep a log of the pages you visit. If a request fails because of a server error, the error log may record details of that request, such as your IP address, and it is kept for no more than 30 days.
• We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

On your device. The app keeps your settings and your sign-in session on your device.

What we don’t collect

Podmail has no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting software, and does not collect your location, contacts, photos, or device identifiers. We cannot read the encrypted contents of your Pod, and we do not read, analyse, sell or share your mail.

Service providers and third parties

• Akamai Cloud (Linode) hosts our mail servers and this website, on servers in Sydney, Australia.
• Google Play processes in-app donations. See Google’s Privacy Policy .
• Stripe processes website donations. See Stripe’s Privacy Policy .
• Fastmail delivers contact form messages to us. See Fastmail’s Privacy Policy .
• Google Fonts. Pages on this website load fonts from Google’s servers, so your browser sends your IP address to Google when you visit.
• Spam blocklist providers, such as Spamhaus, receive the IP address of the server that sent you mail, and the web links in it, when our server checks incoming mail.
• Recipients’ mail servers receive the classic email you send, as with any email service.
• Your other email providers, if you connect an account, receive connections from your device — or from our server, for the web app — using the credentials you gave us, just as they would from any mail app.
• Your Pod provider and identity provider, chosen by you, store your Pod and handle your sign-in. Their own privacy policies apply.

We use your personal information only for the purposes described above, or as otherwise permitted or required by law. We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information, and we do not use it for marketing without your consent.

Where your data is stored

Our mail servers (podmail.me, and dev.podmail.me and dev.privateinsights.au for development and testing) and this website are hosted by Akamai Cloud (Linode) in Sydney, Australia. Some of the service providers above, such as Google, Stripe and Fastmail, may store data outside Australia. Where that happens, we choose providers that take reasonable steps to protect it.

Deleting your data

You can ask us to delete any of the data we hold about you using the data deletion request form . We aim to complete requests within 30 days. You choose what to delete: your @podmail.me address, mail waiting on our servers, your donation records, or messages you’ve sent us.

If you delete your @podmail.me address, it is retired and never given to anyone else, so mail meant for you can never reach someone new.

The contents of your Pod are yours: delete them in your Pod, using Podmail or any Solid app. Server logs and spam-filter data expire automatically, as described above.

Children

Podmail is not directed at children under 16.

Security

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. The Podmail apps communicate with our mail servers and your Pod over encrypted connections (HTTPS). We keep personal information only as long as described above, or as required by law, and then delete it.

Access and correction

You can ask to access or correct the personal information we hold about you by contacting us using the details below. We will respond within a reasonable time.

Complaints

If you have a concern about how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first so we can try to resolve it. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner .

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The current version will always be available on this page, with the date it was last updated.

Contact us

Private Insights Pty Ltd
108 North Road, Australian National University,
Acton ACT 2601,
Australia
Email: info [at] privateinsights.au