Private communication should actually be private.
Nothing is collected.
Tone does not collect, sell, analyze, or monetize user data — and never will. Data that is never
collected cannot be leaked, sold, profiled, or handed over.
Your messages belong only to you.
All messages are and will remain end-to-end encrypted. Only the intended participants should be
able to read them.
Strong cryptography. Always.
Tone uses modern, publicly scrutinized cryptography and continuously improves its security as
standards and threats evolve. Unnecessary cryptography is not invented, and encryption is never
weakened for convenience.
Offline first.
The messenger is designed to operate without the Internet wherever possible. It does not depend
on cloud services, analytics platforms, trackers, or other online infrastructure unless they are
genuinely necessary for a feature you choose to use.
No tracking. No profiling.
Your conversations are not a product. Your behavior is not a product. Your identity is not a product.
No traces.
You stay in control of what remains on your device. Messages and app data can be deleted at any
time, with deletion designed to leave the minimum possible traces on the device.
Open source, permanently.
The application's source code remains open under the CORE License. Anyone should be able to
inspect how the messenger works, verify these claims, find weaknesses,
and contribute improvements.
Code resilience.
A safe copy of the source code will always be preserved independently. If a Git
service deletes the public repository, the preserved copy will be published through an
alternative service - keeping the code open and available, now and in the future.
No backdoors.
No mechanism will be intentionally created to bypass encryption or secretly provide access to
private communications.
Useful features. Strong security.
Tone aims to deliver genuinely useful features, but never at the cost of security or privacy.
New capabilities must improve the product without weakening the protections users rely on.
Your device. Your keys. Your conversations.
Communication should not require surrendering control of your digital life.
Communication should demand neither trust, data, nor privacy in return.
“The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.”
Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto