Can I keep private notes without an email address?
Short answer
Yes, Ushkur lets you keep private notes without an email, and no name, email or phone number is stored with your account. Anonymous note taking here means an anonymous account, not an anonymous connection.
What does anonymous note taking mean here?
Your account is identified only by your key. No name, email address, phone number or IP address is stored with it. There are no ads, no analytics and no third-party trackers.
This is anonymity of the account, not of your network. Ushkur runs on Cloudflare, and Cloudflare handles your IP address while your request travels and for rate limiting. The application itself does not store it. If you need to hide your connection, this app does not do that for you.
What is stored about me and my notes?
The privacy policy lists everything. In short, the server holds:
- A hash of your key, never the key itself.
- Your notes: title, subtitle and text (encrypted), plus creation and update times and the category.
- Your category names, which are stored unencrypted.
- Counters for the number of notes, categories and space used, which are needed to enforce the limits.
- A record for each open session, holding only a hash of the session token and timing information.
How private are private notes without email?
Titles, subtitles and text are encrypted on the server with AES-256-GCM before they are saved. This protects against a database leak and against backups. It does not protect against the server itself, because the server decrypts your notes to show and search them.
So the operator's infrastructure can technically read your notes, and the privacy policy says they are not read or used for anything else. For something that must stay secret from everyone else, such as passwords or ID numbers, do not rely on Ushkur, because it is not end-to-end encrypted.
How do I keep my private notes safe?
Your key is the only lock, so the habits around it matter most:
- Use the generated key or a long passphrase that nobody can guess.
- Store the key in a password manager and do not share it.
- Log out on shared computers. Logging out on all devices is in the account menu.
- Keep a separate copy of notes that matter. You can copy a note's text from the editor menu.
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Frequently asked questions
Does Ushkur know who I am?
No. It stores no name, email or phone number, and the app does not store your IP address. Cloudflare, which hosts the service, does process your IP address to deliver requests and limit abuse.
Can I delete everything?
Yes. Deleting your account from the account menu removes all notes and categories immediately, after you confirm with your key. It cannot be undone.
Can I get a copy of my notes?
There is no bulk export at the moment. You can copy the text of a note one by one from the editor menu.
Related guides
Are my notes encrypted in Ushkur?
Yes, on the server: titles, subtitles and note text are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored. It is not end-to-end encryption, because the server holds the encryption key and decrypts your notes to show and search them.
How does the Ushkur key work, and what if I lose it?
The key is your account: you enter it to sign in, and the server stores only a hash of it. A lost key cannot be recovered, because there is no email or phone to reset it with.