Privacy policy

What Parcel reads, and why

When you sign in to Gmail, you grant Parcel Google's gmail.modify permission. With it, Parcel reads your messages, threads, labels, and drafts, your address, and your signature, so that it can show your mail, search it, and write replies. It changes labels when you archive, star, mark as read, label, or move to trash, and it saves, sends, and deletes drafts when you write mail. It never deletes mail permanently.

When you sign in to Fastmail or another JMAP server, Parcel reads and changes the same kinds of data through that server's JMAP interface, for the same purposes.

Where it is kept

Everything Parcel keeps stays on your computer, in your home directory:

• ~/.local/state/parcel: each account's sign-in token, a copy of its mail list, the messages kept for search and their index, and the people on your mail, which compose suggests. Parcel makes these files readable by you alone.
• ~/.local/state/parcel/log: warnings, errors, and progress lines, which name messages and threads by ID but hold no message text.
• ~/.cache/parcel: senders' photos.
• Your downloads folder: an attachment, when you open it.

What leaves your computer

Parcel sends your data only to your mail provider, and these, each for a feature you see:

• Senders' photos. To show a sender's photo, Parcel asks Gravatar for it by a SHA-256 hash of the sender's address, as Gravatar requires. Gravatar sees the hash and your IP address. Parcel does not ask in spam, or once you turn off images from the web.
• Images in mail. Images a message links to load from the sender's servers, which may tell the sender you opened it. Parcel blocks them in spam, and its palette turns them off everywhere; then they load only when you ask.
• What you choose to open. Links open in your browser. One-click unsubscribe sends the request the sender's message gives. Adding an invitation to your calendar hands it to your calendar app. New mail is shown in your desktop's notifications.

Parcel does not sell your data, show ads, or share it with anyone else. No person reads your mail, and your data is not used to train AI or machine learning models.

Google user data

Parcel's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Removing your data

To remove an account and everything Parcel kept for it, quit Parcel and delete its directory under ~/.local/state/parcel/accounts; delete ~/.cache/parcel for the photos. To withdraw Parcel's access, remove it at Google's third-party access page, or delete the token in Fastmail's settings.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new one appears here with its date. Questions go to Tim Culverhouse at [email protected].