Privacy Policy
Last updated 22 October 2026
ABDA ("the app") is a third-party client for forums that run the Discourse software. It is published and operated by Molecorp Esports Sociedad Limitada under the ForumCopilot name ("we"), reachable at [email protected]. Molecorp Esports Sociedad Limitada is the controller of the personal data described here. This policy explains what the app stores, what it sends and to whom, and what our notification server keeps.
The short version
- There are no ABDA accounts, no analytics, no ads and no tracking.
- The app talks directly to the forums you open, using each forum's public API. Your posts, messages and sign-in go to that forum, under that forum's own privacy policy.
- Notifications are optional and set per forum. If you turn them on for a forum, our notification server keeps what it needs to deliver them: a key that can only read your notifications on that forum, your username and user id there, and your device's push token. Turn notifications off or sign out, and it is deleted.
What the app stores on your device
- The forums you have opened — their address, name, logo and colours — so they appear on the Home screen. Removing a forum from Home deletes this.
- A per-forum sign-in key. When you sign in to a forum, you do so on that forum's own web page, and the forum issues the app a User API Key. The app stores that key in the device's secure storage (Keychain on iOS, encrypted storage on Android). The app never sees or stores your password. Signing out revokes the key on the forum and deletes it from the device.
- Preferences such as theme, language and whether onboarding has been shown.
- Caches of images and forum data, to make the app fast. They can be cleared from the device's settings.
What the app sends, and to whom
- To the forums you use: everything you do in them — reading, posting, reacting, messaging, chatting — is a request to that forum's server, as a web browser would make. Photos you attach, or take with the camera, are uploaded only to the forum you post them in; the app asks for camera or photo access only when you use it. Requests carry your phone's standard browser user agent with a short tag for the app. Each forum's own privacy policy governs that data.
- To Google, when the app starts: the app uses Firebase Cloud Messaging for push notifications, and its software registers the app installation with Google to obtain a push token. The token stays on your device unless you turn notifications on for a forum. The app uses no other Google service, and no Firebase Analytics.
- To our notification server, only for forums where you turn notifications on. The next section explains what it receives and keeps.
The app contains no advertising and no advertising identifiers.
Notifications
A Discourse forum only pushes notifications to servers its administrators have approved, so ABDA fetches them for you instead. When you turn notifications on for a forum, that forum's own page asks you to grant ABDA a second key that can only read your notifications: it cannot post, and cannot read anything else on the forum. The app then sends our notification server at betterdiscourse.app:
- the forum's address and that notifications-only key;
- your user id and username on that forum;
- your device's push token and platform (iOS or Android), and an identifier the app created for this installation.
About once a minute, the server uses the key to ask the forum for your new notifications. For each one it sends a push message through Firebase Cloud Messaging (and, on iPhone, Apple Push Notification service) with the forum's name, who did what, and the topic title and link, so tapping it opens the right place. The server does not keep the content of your notifications. The one exception is likes and reactions: for 24 hours it remembers who reacted to which of your posts, and with which emoji, so the same like is not pushed to you twice.
What the server keeps, and for how long:
- The key (encrypted), your forum user id and username, your push token, the number of the last notification it delivered, and the result of its last check. All of it is deleted when you turn notifications off for that forum, sign out of it, or revoke the key on the forum's website. When you turn notifications off or sign out, we also revoke the key on the forum. If you uninstall the app, Google tells us the push token no longer works: we stop checking at once, and delete the rest 30 days later.
- A delivery log of which notifications were sent — notification number, type and whether delivery succeeded, never the content — deleted after 30 days.
- Server logs — IP address, time, the forum's address and any errors — deleted after 14 days.
The server runs on Amazon Web Services in the United States (Oregon). Traffic to betterdiscourse.app passes through Cloudflare. Push messages pass through Google and, for iPhones, Apple; their handling of push tokens and messages is governed by their own policies.
Analytics and crash reports
The app currently collects no analytics and sends no crash reports. If we add either, this policy will say what is collected before the change ships, and it will not include the content of your posts or messages.
The forum directory
The app ships with a list of public Discourse forums, compiled from public sources. Browsing the list involves no request to us. Forum logos shown in the directory are loaded from the forums' own servers.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13. Individual forums set their own age requirements.
Your choices and rights
- Sign out of a forum to revoke its key.
- Turn notifications off for a forum in the app's settings; our server deletes what it held for that forum.
- Remove a forum from Home to forget it.
- Uninstall the app to delete everything it stored locally.
- Email us to ask what our notification server holds about you, or to have it deleted. Tell us the forum's address and your username there.
We process notification data to deliver the notifications you asked for, and keep server logs to run and secure the service. Depending on where you live — for example in the European Union or the United Kingdom — you have the right to access, correct, delete or export your data, to object to its processing, and to complain to your data protection authority. Our providers (Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare and Google) process data in the United States under the safeguards the law requires for international transfers.
Changes
We will post any changes to this policy on this page and update the date at the top.