NullKey Who we are
NullKey is an Android app made by Alvento Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 16394298, registered office 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom (“Alvento”, “we”, “us”). Contact us at hello@alvento.uk.
These terms apply to the NullKey app on Google Play (package uk.alvento.nullkeyapp) and to the optional NullKey Unlimited purchase. By installing or using NullKey you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the app. Google Play’s own terms also apply to downloading the app and to any purchase.
Why the app works this way
NullKey keeps your notes, documents, files and photos encrypted on your phone, with no account and no developer server. We never receive your vault, its contents or the keys that open it. That means we cannot recover, reset or open your vault for you or for anyone else. Several of the terms below follow from that design.
Your licence
We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and use NullKey on devices you own or control, for lawful personal use or authorised use in your business. You may not sell, rent or redistribute the app, remove its notices, or present a modified version as an official NullKey release. The NullKey name, mark and code remain ours or our licensors’. Third-party components stay under their own licences. Nothing in this section removes rights the law gives you, for example to study software for interoperability.
Lawful use
Privacy and encryption are legitimate purposes. You are responsible for using NullKey lawfully and only for content you have the right to keep. You must not use it to commit or help commit a crime, to keep or share unlawful material, to exploit or abuse another person, to infringe someone else’s privacy or intellectual property, or to hold data you have no right to access.
Your vault content belongs to you, and so does responsibility for it. We do not host, receive or see it, so we cannot review, remove or hand it over.
Your passphrase, recovery key and backups
You choose your passphrase and receive a recovery key. We do not have either and cannot bypass them. If you lose both, and no other unlock method is still active on your phone, your vault cannot be opened and we cannot help.
Optional unlock methods you turn on, such as biometrics, your phone’s screen lock or a NullKey pattern, let anyone who can pass them open the vault. Screen-lock and pattern unlock pause after an app update or after seven days without your passphrase, and restoring a backup turns optional unlock methods off, so do not rely on them in place of your passphrase.
A recovery key opens existing data; it does not replace a backup. Keep your recovery key safe and away from your phone, keep a checked encrypted backup somewhere else, and keep the secret that opens each backup. Do not make NullKey the only copy of anything you cannot replace.
What encryption does and does not protect
NullKey encrypts what it stores on your phone. It does not make you anonymous, it does not protect a phone that is unlocked or compromised, and no security system can defeat every attack. A malicious or compromised phone, keyboard, accessibility service or other app can see what you type or display. The security page explains how the app works and its limits.
Removing originals and exporting copies
Importing a file copies it into the vault and keeps the original by default. The optional setting to remove originals deletes eligible source files on this phone only after NullKey checks that the encrypted copy matches. Photos and videos go to Android’s trash after you confirm in Android’s dialog; other supported documents are deleted permanently. Deleting is not a guaranteed secure erase, and cloud, synced or other copies may remain.
A readable copy you export, and text you copy to the clipboard, are outside NullKey’s protection and may be kept by other apps. Check what you select before you confirm. You are responsible for what you choose to delete or export.
NullKey Unlimited
NullKey is free for up to 30 photos, files and notes. NullKey Unlimited is an optional one-time in-app purchase that removes that limit. It is not a subscription and does not renew. Google Play shows the price for your country before you pay.
Google Play processes the payment, and Google Play’s terms and refund policy apply to the purchase. The unlock belongs to the Google account that bought it. Buying or restoring it needs Google Play and an internet connection; your vault itself works offline.
Whether or not you buy, your existing items, editing, export, backup and restore stay free, including a vault that already holds more than 30 items.
If you buy NullKey Unlimited as a consumer, you have legal rights if it is faulty or not as described, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in the UK. Contact us first so we can help. Nothing in these terms affects those rights.
Requests from authorities
We follow applicable law. We do not hold your vault, its contents or any key to it, so a request cannot make us hand those over. We may hold other information, such as emails you send us and order details Google Play provides to us as the seller. We check requests for authenticity, legal authority and scope, and disclose information we hold only where the law requires or allows it. We may not always be able to tell you about a request, for example where the law forbids it or we cannot identify you.
Our responsibility to you
We supply NullKey with reasonable care and skill. We do not promise that it will be free of errors, work on every device or Android version, or never lose or corrupt data.
We are responsible for foreseeable loss and damage caused by our breach of these terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable, or for loss caused by you or by things outside our control, including a lost or forgotten passphrase or recovery key, not keeping a backup, originals you chose to delete, readable copies you exported, or a compromised phone or app.
Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or your statutory rights as a consumer.
Changes and ending
We may update NullKey and these terms. When we change these terms we will update the date on this page, and we will describe a significant change in the app’s release notes or on this page. Older app versions keep the behaviour they were built with.
You can stop using NullKey at any time by uninstalling it. Uninstalling deletes the vault on your phone, so keep a backup first if you want your data. We cannot remotely access, suspend or erase a vault on your phone. We may stop offering NullKey, or end your licence if you seriously break these terms.
Law and disputes
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you have a concern, please contact us first. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can bring a claim in your local courts, and you keep any protection your local law gives you that cannot be waived.
Contact
Alvento Ltd, 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom.
Email hello@alvento.uk with “NullKey” in the subject. Never send passphrases, recovery keys, backups or private vault contents.
Read the NullKey privacy policy for how the app handles your information.