Security
What is protected, how, and — just as usefully — what is not yet.
Where your data lives
Your notes are Markdown files on your own disk. That is the primary copy and it never depends on us.
If you enable the cloud replica, a copy is stored on Cloudflare infrastructure: Markdown in object storage, metadata in a per-tenant database, and embeddings in a vector index. All three are namespaced per tenant and every query is filtered by tenant at the storage layer, not just in application code.
Encryption
| Layer | Protection |
|---|---|
| In transit | TLS 1.3 between your machine, our service, and AI clients |
| At rest | Encrypted by the storage provider, keys held by us |
| Passwords | PBKDF2-SHA256, 200,000 iterations, per-user salt |
| Tokens | Only SHA-256 hashes are stored; raw tokens are shown once |
We hold the keys, so our systems can technically read your replica. We say this plainly rather than implying otherwise. It is the direct cost of the feature you are paying for: for memory to be searchable while your computer is off, a server has to be able to compute over it. End-to-end encryption and server-side semantic search are not compatible with today's technology.
If that trade is not for you, the free tier is local-only and permanent.
Access to the service
AI clients authenticate with OAuth 2.1 — authorisation code with PKCE, S256 only, no implicit grant, no plaintext challenge. Authorisation codes are single-use and burn on first exchange. Access tokens expire after 30 days. You can revoke a client at any time and the token stops working immediately.
The desktop sync agent uses a separate device token, scoped to writing your own vault. It cannot read another tenant's data and cannot act as an AI client.
What we do not do
- We do not train models on your content.
- We do not sell or rent data, and we run no advertising.
- We do not log the text of your queries or the content of results.
- We do not store credentials found in your notes — a guard refuses to write content that looks like a secret, and tells you where to put it instead.
What we have not built yet
Being honest about this is more useful to you than a badge wall.
- No SOC 2. A Type II audit takes months and real money. We will do it when a customer needs it, and we will not claim it before.
- No data residency choice. Everything is stored in the United States today. EU-resident storage is available on request for business plans.
- No customer-managed keys outside business plans.
- No third-party penetration test yet.
Reporting a vulnerability
Email security@varven.net. Please include enough detail to reproduce it.
- We acknowledge within 3 business days.
- We aim to confirm or dismiss within 10 business days.
- We will credit you publicly unless you prefer otherwise.
- We will not pursue legal action for good-faith research that respects other people's data and does not degrade the service.
There is no paid bounty programme yet. Machine-readable contact details are at /.well-known/security.txt.
Incidents
If a breach affects your data we will tell you without undue delay, and notify supervisory authorities within 72 hours where the GDPR requires it. We will say what happened, what we know, and what we are doing — before we know everything.