Privacy Policy

1. Data We Do Not Collect

The Blackout Drive does NOT collect, transmit, store, or process:

• —Personal information (name, email, phone, address, IP address)
• —Usage analytics or data collection
• —Chat conversations or AI responses
• —Files you upload or create
• —Browsing behavior or session data
• —Device identifiers or fingerprints
• —Cookies or tracking pixels
• —Location data (GPS broadcasts via mesh radio stay on the local radio network — see Section 5)
• —Any data of any kind to any external server

There are no accounts. There is no sign-up. There is no login. There is no user profile. There is nothing to opt out of because there is nothing to opt into.

2. Data Stored on Your Drive

All data created by The Blackout Drive is stored exclusively on the physical USB drive in your possession:

• —Chat history — saved to the drive's local filesystem only
• —Uploaded files — saved to the drive's USER_DATA/ directory only
• —Encrypted files — AES-256-GCM encrypted and stored on the drive only
• —Settings — saved as JSON files on the drive only

When you unplug the drive, your data goes with you. We have no access to it. We have never had access to it. There is no mechanism in the software for us to access it.

3. Optional Content Downloads

If Network Lock is disabled, The Blackout Drive can optionally download free public-domain books and reference material from our content server. During this process:

• —A GET request is made to our Cloudflare-hosted content catalog (a static JSON file)
• —File downloads are standard HTTPS requests to our R2 storage bucket
• —NO personal data, device identifiers, chat history, or user content is included
• —No cookies or tracking headers are sent
• —Download logs are not stored on our servers

When Network Lock is enabled (default), The Blackout Drive makes zero network connections of any kind.

4. AI Processing

All AI inference runs locally on your machine using the Ollama runtime bundled on the drive. Your questions and the AI's responses never leave your machine, are never sent to any server, are never used for model training, and are stored only on the physical drive (if chat history saving is enabled).

The AI model is Qwen3, developed by Alibaba Cloud (Apache 2.0 License), running via the Ollama runtime (MIT License). The Ollama runtime may create a small history file in its default directory on the host machine (~/.ollama/ on macOS/Linux). This file contains only model names loaded during the session — no user prompts, responses, or personal data.

4.5. Voice Input & Text-to-Speech

The Blackout Drive supports voice input (speech-to-text) and text-to-speech (read-aloud) using your browser's built-in speech engines.

• —Text-to-Speech (TTS): Uses your browser's built-in speech synthesis. All audio is generated locally on your device using pre-installed voices. No data is sent anywhere.
• —Voice Input (Speech-to-Text): Uses the Web Speech API with the processLocally flag set to true, which forces all speech recognition to run on your device. Your voice audio is never sent to any external server.
• —If your browser does not support on-device speech recognition, the microphone button is not displayed and the feature is unavailable.
• —No voice data is recorded, stored, or transmitted by The Blackout Drive.

5. Mesh Radio Communications

If you purchased the Mesh Bundle, your Blackout Drive can transmit and receive messages via LoRa radio frequency. These are local RF signals, not internet traffic. Messages are encrypted by the Meshtastic radio firmware using AES-256 channel keys.

Radio transmissions can be suspended at any time via the Radio Silence toggle in Settings. When Radio Silence is active, no data is transmitted over the radio hardware, and incoming messages are not forwarded to the AI dispatch engine. However, the radio hardware may still receive RF packets passively. For true zero-emission security, physically disconnect the radio hardware.

5.5. Software Updates

If Network Lock is disabled, The Blackout Drive can check for software updates from our update server. The only data transmitted is your current software version number (e.g., "1.0.0") in the HTTP User-Agent header. No personal data, device identifiers, chat history, or user content is included in update requests.

Updates are never downloaded or applied automatically — you must explicitly choose to check for and install updates from the Settings panel.

6. Encryption

The Blackout Drive offers AES-256-GCM encryption for chat history (when enabled) and files in the Locked storage partition. Encryption keys are derived from your master password using PBKDF2.

We do not have your password. We cannot recover your password. We cannot decrypt your data. If you lose your password, your encrypted data is permanently inaccessible.

7. Children's Privacy

The Blackout Drive does not collect any personal information from anyone, including children under 13. There is no data collection mechanism in the product.

8. Third-Party Services

The Blackout Drive software does not integrate with, send data to, or receive data from any third-party analytics, advertising, social media, or tracking service. The only external service is the optional content download described in Section 3.

Note: This policy covers the drive software. This website (theblackoutdrive.com) uses Shopify for checkout processing. See Shopify's Privacy Policy for details on how checkout data is handled.

9. Changes to This Policy

If we update this Privacy Policy, the updated version will be included on future drives and published on this website. Since we collect no data, there is nothing to notify you about retroactively.

10. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy:
support@theblackoutdrive.com — Hutton Technologies LLC